A politically-minded teenager has vented his opposition to schools being turned into academies, fearing "public accountability" is lost in the way they are run.

Josh Harcup, 19, from Radcliffe, has spoken out against the government’s Schools White Paper, which wants all schools to join a “strong trust” by 2030.

But Josh, who is a Radcliffe Labour branch secretary, fiercely disagrees with the way academies are run.

He said: “Schools are major parts of our communities, they’re deeply-rooted so it's really worrying that a private trust could take away our public accountability and local authority control.

“It's not right to gamble on a student’s education and with the lack of evidence that academisation benefits students, we can't say with any certainty that this is the right way to go.

“Given the recently published exclusion rates of academies, I feel that it speaks volumes.”

Josh pointed to a recent report from the Bury Times, which outlined the top five schools in the borough with the highest exclusion rates and showed that four of them were were academies.

Read more: The schools in Bury which excluded pupils most often last year

More than half of all pupils now attend academies in England rather than locally-maintained schools.

Some of the differences between the two include academies not being governed by a local authority, and that, unlike other schools, they don’t have to use the national curriculum, as long as their own curriculum is "broad and balanced".

Josh said he wants to educate people on what academies are and the difference in legislation, adding that he felt that having no national curriculum won’t enrich students learning.

He added: “The White Paper on education basically says that all our schools must become academies and I don't agree with it.  

"There is a lot of evidence out there to show that schools do perform better and provide a better education when they are in the local authority.

“I will be launching a campaign in every part of Bury from Ramsbottom to Sedgley Park.

“I'm looking to build coalitions and work with whoever wants to be involved in this, I think this is going to get broad support and I think we're going to be able to really make an impact.

“My aim for the campaign is to fight to stop the academisation of whatever school may face it.”

Another difference between schools and academies is that the latter are funded directly by the central government.

This means they would receive money that was previously held back by the local authority for extra services across all schools.

Josh said: “What we need isn’t to be selling off our schools, giving away public land and taking away public accountability we need funding from the government to be able to support those schools, we don't need more privatisation.”

In response, a spokesperson from the Department of Education (DfE) said: “Our evidence is clear that strong multi-academy trusts have a good track record of improving underperforming schools, with those academies on average improving more quickly than similar local-authority-maintained schools.

“We want all schools to be part of a strong academy trust so they can benefit from the trust’s support in everything from excellent behaviour and attendance cultures, teacher training, curriculum, financial planning and inclusivity towards children with additional needs.”

The department also stated that more than 434,000 children are now being educated in "good" and "outstanding" academies, which improved since they joined multi-academy trusts (MATs).

It added that in a 2019 DfE survey of schools that had recently become academies in MATs, 82 per cent of primary and 76 per cent of secondary schools reported improvements in the training of staff, and 89 per cent of primary schools and 91 per cent of secondary schools reported significant improvement in sharing of skills and expertise.

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