REGARDING the issues facing the county council over the future management of state-funded primary schools across Oxfordshire.

I hope that the report going to Oxfordshire’s cabinet in September will address the cost in both cash terms and officer time of implementing an aggressive policy of convincing primary schools to drop their current form of association with Oxfordshire County Council.

At a time when the county is facing massive cuts, and our children’s centres are under threat, I do not want to see resources diverted into this policy of academisation.

If the Tory Government at Westminster wants all schools to become academies, it should pay for the marketing campaign to persuade them and not expect hard-pressed county councils to do so.

After all, there is nothing to stop the Government amending the current Bill about coasting schools that it is piloting through Parliament in order to introduce a clause requiring all schools to become academies under the management of the Regional Schools Commissioner, a person even more remote to most of us than the Police and Crime Commissioner. The fact that it hasn’t done so must mean that either the Tory Government hasn’t the courage of its own convictions or it doesn’t believe all primary schools should become academies.

Cllr John Howson
Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Education
Oxfordshire County Council
Rewley Road, Oxford