Government attempts suspicious sale of school to creationist

{{msg:cotg}}

There is an extremely interesting article in Saturday's Guardian about the Emmanuel Schools Foundation (formerly Vardy Foundation) and the government's scheme of replacing failing schools with quasi-independent "academies". Academies are schools which are privately run by charitable organisations, who have some power over the curriculum (the schools must teach the national curriculum, but can teach almost anything else as well). The organisations can buy this privilege for £2 million, a relatively small percentage of the cost of building and running a school--the buildings tend to cost about £20m and running £5m a year--the rest is supplied by the government. Effectively the government is selling the right to make decisions about how to run schools for a negligible amount of money. And whose silly idea were these schools? Go on, guess. That's right, David Blunkett, the man who described the legacy of his predecessors as "a mess", and whose own legacy, having been forced to resign, is now needing some tidying up, including abandoning many of his silly ideas.

The Emmanuel Foundation is the schools charity wing of the Reg Vardy second-hand car dealership run by Christian fundamentalist (not merely evangelical, The Times also feels fit to use the term) Sir Peter Vardy. Vardy is a creationist who employs creationist teachers and hosts creationist meetings and lectures in his three academies, in Gateshead, Middlesborough and Doncaster. More importantly the curriculum of Vardy's academies puts unscientific creationist ideas alongside scientific theories in science lessons, where they clearly do not belong. The government will not do anything about this, because the schools still manage to do well in the national exams.

The foundation is currently trying to take over Northcliffe School in Doncaster, against the wishes of parents and teachers in the area. The case smells. Despite being one of the most deprived schools in one of the most deprived wards in the country, for five years up to the end of 2003 the school had continuously improved, was described as "good and improving" by the government school inspection office, Ofsted, and won a number of national awards for its achievements. In 2003 the school leavers did above average in exams, and the school was in the middle of the league tables. Despite this, the school was placed in special measures, a category for failing schools, something Northcliffe didn't appear to fit into. The LEA then decided to sell the school to the Emmanuel Foundation. The protests of the parents and teachers have forced the LEA to abandon their suspicious plans.

As an aside, I notice that our EvoWiki page on the Emmanuel Foundation is the number one google result for "Vardy Foundation", and that the foundation changed its name after we had been top of google, with a highly critical article, for a few months. I'm not suggesting that any organisation would change its name on the grounds of a google result, but why not link to the EvoWiki page? The more links it gets, the higher up google the page will be, and anybody who wants to know what the foundation is really about can just google it.