On the 26th of January in Sparkbrook, Birmingham- Montgomery Primary School held a public meeting at a local mosque. The meeting was well attended by the local community, parents staff and trade unions involved in the fight to stop Montgomery Primary School becoming an academy. The speakers included Rich Hatcher from the Alliance Against Birmingham Academies and speakers from all the trade unions involved in the campaign (NUT,NASUWT and GMB) as well as parents. The speakers made clear that the academy programme is an ideological attempt to further privatise education. Due to the audience at the meeting it was emphasised that there was no proof that academies are the magic wand to cure 'failing schools' and that in reality the parents would have less say rather than more on the way that their school was run- as they would have less parents on the board of governors and would ultimately have less influence.They also made clear that under and academy the people running their school would be businesses and that probably they would be run from London! A concerned parent- Javid Khan spoke about the impact the academy conversion would have on him and his community-
*Unfortunately since I attended the above meeting Montgomery Primary school have been been forced by Michael Gove and the government to become an academy. A day before an OFSTED inspection the school chose the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) to run the primary school. The AET are in charge of 19 academies and the government wants them to run 38.