Workers Revolutionary Party - STOP ARK TAKE OVER OF STATE SCHOOLS

The News Line: News Saturday, 27 September 2008 STOP ARK TAKE OVER OF STATE SCHOOLS

Anti-academy protestors demonstrating outside the headquarters of ARK yesterday

ANTI-ACADEMY protestors demonstrated yesterday afternoon outside the central London headquarters of ARK (Absolute Return for Kids), which is involved in the building of 12 City Academies around the country.

NUT member Bridget Chapman told News Line: ‘I am a teacher and my school, Pimlico School, was turned into an academy, now the local community have no say in how their school is run and I think this is morally wrong.

‘Academies represent the privatisation of education, the giving away of public assets. The unions should call strike action against academies.’

Jane Eades, an NUT member and Chairman of the Anti-Academies Alliance said: ‘ARK is set up by a hedge fund to run academies. Companies set up to run Academies come under the Companies Act or the Charities Act and as such are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.’

Brent NUT and ATL Secretary and leading anti-academy campaigner Hank Roberts said: ‘These hedge-fund operators have taken a tumble, they’re not so popular as they were. If any of them lost their “jobs” it would be poetic justice.’

Roberts, the leader of the Tent City anti-academy occupation of the Wembley Park Sports Ground, continued: ‘ARK is the so-called sponsor of the Wembley Park Academy and most of its funding comes from hedge-fund speculators, so it looks like it is going to be in trouble.

‘I am absolutely confident the Wembley Park Action Group (Tent City) will outlast ARK,’ Roberts concluded.