This is kind of a niche post I guess being it is about a new "academy" near Bideford where I went to school.
This is the new Bideford College. The building part opened in September 2010 to students. At a cost that can be rounded to £50 million the school was built to be able to hold a capacity of around 2,000, more than the actual amount of people who went to the school by a couple of hundred people. The school was built to be state of the art with great resources including lecture theaters that would put some universities to shame, a sports hall and a gym of great size, fit for sports including basketball, netball, indoor football, tennis and more to take place. Of course with a new school came up to date computers that worked efficiently, everything had just become better. A school that once had little hope, a school that at one point wasn't allowed to exclude pupils had just got the chance of a lifetime with the new school. Despite the name having a bad reputation from those darker days, the school could now potentially achieve huge success given the right elements of support for staff and pupils.
This was a building to be proud of for the people of Bideford and the surrounding areas for people to be able to say their children went there proudly to the parents of those who may have went to private school or further afield from Bideford. There wasn't a reason to stop your child going to this school now. Obviously though, the money had come just before the financial crunch we have found ourselves in and money has been cut from a lot of things. Although I am adamant that we should not cut education but spend as much as a nation as we need to to provide everybody a top quality education (not just your average Eton snobs like David Cameron and George Osbourne - one of whom doesn't know what "lol" means - which mean you have to come from ridiculously wealthy, sometimes partially dodgy families). This gives the poorer children a chance to achieve their dreams, possibly become an MP one day...make a change from what we have now yeah? But it seems when the economy collapses, the rich decide on state schools not doing great to face cuts. These are the places where increases in expenditure is needed most!
That said...when you've spent £50million on a new school, why support the idea for an "academy". Now from what I understand (I come from the stone age of schools...often called colleges) an academy is what is a school or college, just under a name you would more associate to a football club and it's young players. I don't understand why we had to move from school or college to academy. It's a pathetic name change to be honest. They don't teach to the same regulations sometimes, which is very strange if you ask me and needs looking into. Then there is the fact local/national government paid a lot into this unnecessary "academy". The fact of the matter is, if this is so much more "state of the art" than Bideford College, why the hell did the Governments locally and nationally not think of including them into the normal state school trying hard to succeed but include them on the "academy" that they will try to plug over the College only a few years later. It isn't on.
Plus schools funding often comes from the school having high achieving children, what's the betting we go back to the dark days where the more intelligent, higher achieving children go off to this "academy" and Bideford College see's its reputation fall as the students that would have been there achieving pretty much the same as they achieve in this "academy" and therefore a possible funding cut. The better teachers could go too if there is a better wage. This "academy" should not be there. It is only going to negatively effect the College that was there at the start. There shouldn't even be academies. It isn't good for anyone in the long run and is almost a privatisation of schools that will see another gap like the one between Etonians and the human race.
I would send this to the MP for the area, Geoffrey Cox QC, but as he presumably doesn't have the time to reply to all my issues with him and his parties politics, he has blocked me on Twitter. Maybe he's to busy being a QC rather than an MP? if someone would send this to him via that it would be cool, I doubt he'd bother to read it though.
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