The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has said all state school pupils in England should be taught in academy chains, stating that the pandemic has shown it is no longer viable for schools to be single entities (Gavin Williamson wants to turn more state schools into academies, 28 April).
This is a terrifying moment for individual freedom and parents’ right to choose from a range of schools. The pandemic has demonstrated that children need inspirational pastoral care and a curriculum and assessment model that is fit for the 21st century, delivered by leaders who know their communities. This of all moments is not the time for a factory model of education that commodifies children and young people. We certainly need professional dialogue and joined-up thinking, but we do not need a homogeneous, corporate lumping together of children and teachers. We do not need an outmoded conveyor belt world of production lines when we are dealing with human lives.
Sarah Raffray
Headteacher, St Augustine’s Priory, Ealing, London
• Another brick in the wall or simply another step along the Conservatives’ long-term plan to privatise the whole of the UK educational system?
Gary Bennett
Exeter
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