Parents target 'fat cat' sponsors of academies

Labour's city academies programme was hit by a new wave of protests today.

Opponents want to scare off sponsors bidding to take over two new London academies.

Parents in Islington are protesting against plans for an academy controlled by a charity founded by the boyfriend of Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson.

And teachers in Waltham Forest have vowed to hold strike ballots if they are forced to work longer hours when McEntee School reopens as an academy.

The anti-academies movement celebrated earlier this week when the UK's leading owner of private schools pulled out of the biggest academy project yet.

Global Education Management Systems (Gems) scrapped plans to sponsor two academies in Milton-Keynes, saying opposition to private firms taking over state schools was too entrenched.

The decision is the latest setback to hit the Government's ?5billion academies scheme.

Education watchdog Ofsted recently announced that one of the first of the new schools, Middlesbrough's Unity Academy, is a failure. Exam results at most of the others remain poor.

Critics of the academies are today targeting the "fat cats" behind the Islington academy sponsor, Ark (Absolute Return for Kids), whose trustees are financiers headed by Macpherson's partner Arpad Busson.

Teachers and parents, some dressed in cat costumes, are taking a letter to Ark's Westminster HQ telling it to abandon plans to sponsor the academy. Islington council wants to replace Islington Green School and Moreland School.

In Waltham Forest, there has been a long-running campaign to stop McEntee School being turned into an academy.

Fashion designer Jasper Conran withdrew from the project last year and campaigners are now fighting a new sponsor, the United Learning Trust.

The Christian charity already runs academies in Lambeth and Manchester. National Union of Teachers spokeswoman Linda Taaffe said staff at McEntee could be balloted for strikes if the trust attempted to impose a working agreement that differed from the standard contract.

She warned that industrial action could spread to other London areas where academies are in the pipeline, including Lambeth, Southwark and Islington.

She said: "What we are looking to do is to bring schools together where these changes are proposed in order to take action jointly."

Academies are state-funded independent schools that are allowed to extend teachers' hours and vary pay rates in ways not open to comprehensives.

Mrs Taaffe said the NUT had reluctantly accepted the trust's contracts in Manchester and Lambeth but was opposed to it making them mandatory at all its schools. The trust could not be contacted for comment.

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