Dave,

I haven’t read the original article, since I do not subscribe to the WSJ and my office is limited to internal publications today (which tell me about the office barbeque, but nothing about the possible connections between Ed Balls and facism).

However, your extract from the article contains the following point:

They have let the racist details of some historical fascist regimes distract them from the coercive substance of fascism.

Your follow up to this is the three following paragraphs:

Now, spurious analogy is one of my pet hates, and for the record, the attempt to draw parallels between academy schools and the abomination of apartheid is obviously a populist notion not based on a serious attempt at analytical rigour.

But for Whyte to argue that the only issue at hand is freedom of association, that no other consideration whatsoever matters, and that Balls’ stance is functionally or morally equivalent to the use of the repressive apparatus of the state to enforce racial segregation is a nasty petty slur that also fails to pass muster.

You immediately draw on the racist enactments of the apartheid regime, exactly what the original article accused people of doing. But facism was not only racist, it was controlling of everyone’s lives – everyone worked for the good of the state, in a warped form of socialism. Im its various forms, facism did indeed block association and try and regiment people, choosing who could associate with whom. This might have been done most obviously on race grounds, but the point holds true that it was done also to people of the same race.

Now I don’t necessarily agree with saying Mr Balls is acting in a way equivalent to a facist – I suspect that there are various centralising (generally accepted as) left-wing dictatorships which would provide more exact parallels to his belief in the importance of state control. But your argument utilises a line of thought which is exactly that which the original writer points out means that his point is obscured. No-one accused Mr Balls of racism (however many nasty things have been said about him, that is not one I’ve come accross); they (if I read the extracts and summary of the article correctly) accused him of showing the same desire for control over freedom of association that is characteristic of all facist regimes.

Put it down to lack of diligence on my part but I’ve never quite appreciated the nuanced differences between Mrs T’s City Technology Colleges and New Labour’s Academies nor how the latter differ fundamentally from the Gove’s academies except that I gather Gove’s academies are to be built and run through taxpayer funding while the building of New Labour academies was funded by private donors. Indeed, as I recall, this was a large part of the peerages-for-cash scandal five years ago:

Tony Blair is to reward a clutch of millionaire Labour Party donors – including the head of the Priory celebrity rehabilitation clinic – with peerages, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

In a move that will trigger a fresh row over “cash for honours”, Mr Blair is to elevate to the Lords four businessmen who between them have given almost half a million pounds to the party. . .

The list includes Sir David Garrard, a millionaire property developer knighted in January 2003 for charity work, who gave £200,000 to Labour the following May. Sir David has been a leading sponsor of the Government’s “academy schools” programme, contributing £2.4m to the flagship city academy in Bexley, south-east London.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cash-for-peerages-row-as-blair-honours-top-donors-512163.html

Murdoch-owned media org smears Labour politician? Shock!

The US is a country where if you think that universal healthcare free from the point of delivery is a good idea you’re some sort of communist crank who should be sent to Guantanemo Bay. This article does not surprise me.

Jamie Whyte, author of ‘Crimes against Logic’, has just committed one – and a brutal and unprovoked one too. Whyte misunderstands and conflates the Academies Act with ‘Free Schools’. His very first sentence is to claim that the Act “allow[s] parents to start tax-funded schools free from local-authority control”. Academies are free from local authority control and tax funded, but they are not set up by parents; they are existing schools.

Whyte entirely mistakes Ed Balls’ point, which is that allowing uncontrolled free market pressures in secondary education will mean a vicious circle: publicly funded schools in poorer areas get poorer exam results because of the pressures on pupils, so they become less favoured and the exam results get even poorer. The end result is children from poorer areas who are academically talented won’t be able to get a good education.

That is the looming social apartheid, and Whyte either can’t see it or deliberately blinds himself so he can make a rather pathetic jibe. Almost all of what Whyte describes as Ed Balls’ argument is a straw man.

Isn’t Balls and this debate rather over the top in the light of this recent news?

“Only 153 schools apply to become academies – despite education secretary’s claims that more than 1,000 had done so”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/29/michael-gove-academies-schools-claims

I’m rather puzzled about how only 153 schools opting for academy status is going to wreck all the supposed havoc claimed.

The Academies Act allows for the setting-up of ‘free schools’.

David,

You are aware that as Jako says, the Academies act allows free schools. The error there is yours I’m afraid, not Jamie Whyte’s.

S. Pill,

The US is a country where if you think that universal healthcare free from the point of delivery is a good idea you’re some sort of communist crank who should be sent to Guantanemo Bay. This article does not surprise me.

No use of hyperbole here is there? There are plenty in the US that publically call for universal healthcare free at the point of delivery, and plenty who oppose any sort of universal healthcare at all. And they are all free to voice their opinions, it having free speech.

And Guantanemo Bay was a holding place for ‘enemy combatants’ (whatever that meant) not Communists. But I’m sure you know this, and are just being silly.

As to Mr Murdoch having an anti-Labour bias, didn’t the Sun support Labour 1997-2005? I’m sure that if newspapers have influence that is far more important than the Wall Street Journal.

Jako: Not really; the only bits of the Academies Act relevant to ‘free schools’ are the two sections (9 and 10) which deal with the consultation requirements for setting up a new Academy that doesn’t take over an existing school. There isn’t any need for new legislation to allow creation of ‘free schools’ because there is no law preventing it; it just needs a Secretary of State who is prepared to divert education funding to them.

(Do it Govey, it’s what the people want, you’ve got to do what the people want, Govey)

@7

Of course it’s hyperbole. But if you hear the Tea Party freaks talk I’m not far wrong

As for Murdoch – well he supports Cameron now, doesn’t he? So…
I see this as a bit of a dog-whistle just in case Balls makes it to be Labour leader.

I’m not sure which is more ridiculous, comparing “opposition to Academy Schools” to “fascism” (Mr Whyte) or “support for Free Schools” to “educational apartheid” (Mr Balls).

Perhaps Mr Whyte and Mr Balls need their heads banging together.

A right pair of clowns.

Forget the WSJ, it’s long been a nutcase anarcho-capitalist rag with a very nasty slant to it, making gratuitous personal attacks on people. It’s hated by most European business people I meet, let alone any normal people who read it, so I’d not get too worked up about this.

It’s a shame because the WSJ used to be respected (if not agreed with) over here among business people and used to have very sharp business news, particularly tech industry (it exposed the share-options backdating scandal in Silicon Valley, for example), but the decline started long vbefore Murdoch bough it.

“The US is a country where if you think that universal healthcare free from the point of delivery is a good idea you’re some sort of communist crank who should be sent to Guantanemo Bay. This article does not surprise me.”

That’s what happens in a country where Ayn Rand is considered a “writer” and her work a “philosophy”, rather than a degradation of the act of reading.

@12

To be fair, the US has also given us Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Hunter S Thompson, Norman Mailer, F. Scott Fitzgerald [etc] and the only Republican I enjoy reading PJ O’Rourke, so I forgive them Ayn Rand.
Just.

“To be fair, the US has also given us Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Hunter S Thompson, Norman Mailer, F. Scott Fitzgerald [etc] and the only Republican I enjoy reading PJ O’Rourke, so I forgive them Ayn Rand.”

Russia gets the blame for Ayn Rand, surely? It was Russia that bred her and Russia that formed her. She just lived in the US because she had to to survive.

Russia gets the blame for Ayn Rand, surely? It was Russia that bred her and Russia that formed her. She just lived in the US because she had to to survive.

So does that mean we can blame Austria for Adolf Hitler, but Germany has to take responsibility for Karl Marx?

If a country has free speech (and Marx was in Britain when he wrote most of his stuff remember) then people who do not represent mainstream views will be able to publish. This reflects a good thing, so it is hardly a problem with the US the Ayn Rand wrote there and is read there.

And her books are explicitly about a philosophy. You may not like it or rate it, but it is a philosophy.

Ed Balls is not a supporter of apartheid. He is a fucking hypocrite, however, because he helped establish Academies in the first place, and would’ve gone down the Free Schools route had he not been a massive control freak.

The Academies’ Bill is about two diametrically opposed ideas:

- free schools, directly run by parents
- Academies, run by private organisations and the Department of Education and which are significantly less accountable to parents than present secondary schools.

The only point in common is that the role of the Local Educational Authority is removed.

I suspêct that there will be very few schools directly run by parents. I have been involved in looking at this possibility in a particular case and the idea is unworkable for most parents. I suspect that there will be more Academies, though less than Gove claims. The result will be a loss of accountability of schools to parents through parent governors and the LEA. Academies are about centralisation and privatisation.

@2 Bob B: “…except that I gather Gove’s academies are to be built and run through taxpayer funding while the building of New Labour academies was funded by private donors.”

New Labour academies were built on the basis of a large private donation, not necessarily 100% of the capital cost and certainly not the running costs. A gift of 20% of the capital cost was typically sufficient for the donor to determine the name of a new academy and its ethos.

I think that the Mrs T Technology Colleges required a bigger gift. And there was a lot more scrutiny in the press about the nut jobs who used the system to establish schools with bizarre pedigrees.

@17 Guano: “I have been involved in looking at this possibility in a particular case and the idea is unworkable for most parents.”

Thanks for that. Without going into the detail overly, can you qualify your argument. Or maybe outline a case where parents might establish a “free school”.

@17: “The only point in common is that the role of the Local Educational Authority is removed”

I have to say I was amazed to read this recent news:

“The National Curriculum test results also revealed that in spite of an improvement in English and maths, more than a third of pupils still left primary school without a proper grasp of the basics in reading, writing and maths.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba881948-9f3f-11df-8732-00144feabdc0.html

And this from the regional press in Yorkshire, which is where Balls’ constituency was until the election in May this year:

“YORKSHIRE has the country’s fewest 11-year-old pupils who grasp the basics in reading and writing, according to national curriculum test results that were undermined by a teachers’ boycott.”
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Sats-test-scores-reveal-regions.6455344.jp

Surely news like that shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way our maintained schools are run.

@20. Bob B: “Surely news like that shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way our maintained schools are run.”

40%+ of the pupils performing the tests will be expected to enter higher education when they reach the age of 18. 30% of pupils are judged as failures at the age of 10.

You can draw at least two conclusions from that. Maybe the metrics for the curriculum tests are wrong; the tests fail to measure current ability or learning potential. Or that we are providing three classes of education: for the fliers, for the average achievers and for future failures.

I suspect that a blend of the two exists. What a tragic thought.

Dave, are you sure that Jamie Whyte isn’t a pseudonym for Glenn Beck?

The WSJ article, from what you’ve quoted, sounds like the kind of attack that Beck would make, right down to the derogatory use of “progressive”.

Thus Rupe has taken his new Stateside toy downmarket and into the same territory as Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

“The only point in common is that the role of the Local Educational Authority is removed”

I agree that fundamental improvements have to be made to education in the UK. However I have yet to see any research that indicates that LEAs are the fundamental problem or that a school managed by a “sponsor” will overcome these problems. Under New Labour, initially, the idea was that Academies should be set up with some autonomy, so that they could innovate: innovations would be monitored and evaluated. This was gradually forgotten so the idea developed that Academies are per se better than ordinary secondary schools. There is no research that supports this idea, though. All the evaluation shows mixed results from Academies and no clear conclusions about what innovations have led to improvements. My children go to an Academy and I have never been able to find out what it does that is innovative. Some of the most innovative programmes in fact are part of LEA programmes that the Academy has decided to participate in.

Few Academy sponsors have any experience of running secondary schools in challenging contexts: they have been given public assets (land and buildings) without any clear definition of what kind of innovations and improvements they should deliver in return. Gove’s ideas are based on the assumption that LEAs have been proved to be a problem, which is far from the case, and that Academies have been improved to be better, which is again far from the case.

Re # 19. A secondary school, its land and its buildings are worth at least 20 million pounds. The annual turnover is about 5 million pounds. There will be about 100 staff. Shouldering the risks of such a business would require a group of about 100 parents. Keeping together a group of 100 parents to run this business would be a major challenge, and the group would have to be replaced entirely every 10 years as their children grow up and leave the school. I like the idea of self-managed organisations but this just presents too many challenges.

Guano,

There is actually no requirement for secondary education to conform to any of those figures above – their is no legal requirement for subject expertise from teachers (which is fine – teachers know how to teach, and can learn new subjects more easily than experts in subjects can learn how to teach).

And 100 staff implies about 600-700 children (on normal staffing ratios, although I am not sure from memory if that includes contract cleaners or dinner staff). There are viable secondary schools with 200 or so pupils, either in remote parts of the country or as a historical quirk (to be fair, they do spend a lot of their time being threatened with closure by Local Authorities). That no-one has closed them for poor results suggests that there is no noticable disadvantage to this size of school.

Few Academy sponsors have any experience of running secondary schools in challenging contexts

Huh? Mossbourne….Burlington Danes….Lambeth Academy? In fact most academies established so far have been in areas with high deprivation.

. Keeping together a group of 100 parents to run this business would be a major challenge,

You don’t need to. Once the green light is given, the parents can stand down and leave the running of the school to a board of trustees made up of parents with governor experience, teachers, and independent members.Just like any charity.

@21: “Maybe the metrics for the curriculum tests are wrong; the tests fail to measure current ability or learning potential. Or that we are providing three classes of education: for the fliers, for the average achievers and for future failures.”

A series of surveys turn up with the worrying finding that at least c. 18% of adults in Britain or England have literacy problems and a larger percentage have numeracy problems:

An “unacceptably” high number of people in England cannot read, write and count properly, MPs have warned.

The Public Accounts Committee said in 2007 51,000 pupils left school without a GCSE of at least D-G in maths and 39,000 left without this in English. The report into adult literacy and numeracy also warned that only one in five offenders with poor basic skills had enrolled on a course to help them. . .

The PAC report said the government’s target of getting 95% of the adult population to have adequate reading, writing and maths skills would only bring England to the level currently achieved by the top 25% of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7856001.stm

Evidently, large numbers of teachers don’t approve of the SATs exams for 11 year-olds which is why some organised the boycott but, on the strength of the mounting evidence about the scale of adult literacy and numeracy problems, there are very good reasons why we need to worry about the finding reported @20 that: “more than a third of pupils still left primary school without a proper grasp of the basics in reading, writing and maths.”

“In fact most academies established so far have been in areas with high deprivation”

Yes indeed, but for example ULT (Lambeth Academy) does not bring any experience from elsewhere that is relevant to a school in such a challenging environment. ULT brings experience from running fee-paying schools. It may gain experience from managing Lambeth Academy which it can use elsewhere, but it isn’t bringing anything now that addresses the challenges of secondary schools in deprived areas.