Save Windmill Allotments

[co-op]

Are they? I know people don't PAY to go to them...but are they run as commercial enterprises in some way?

I feel a bit torn about this, actually. Especially since having been involved in Windmill allotments briefly and knowing how chaotic it all is. But it is a really really lovely green space in the heart of Brixton. A beautiful, peaceful green spot.

It's obviously REALLY important that we try and save as many green spaces as we possibly can in London - and I can't really think of ANYTHING that is more important than that. Except for things like schools and hospitals, of which there are a dire shortage......so when you think of all the kids in Lambeth who have to travel for miles to schools outside their borough, it puts things into perspective. We need more local schools!

Arrghgh.

But here's the thing Han - I would not in any way want to put my little veg patch ahead of a school for the whole borough, and there are plenty of other allotment folk who feel the same. But it just doesn't make sense to put this play-space on the allotments:- they're in the wrong place and they're the wrong size.

The really blindingly obvious place for them is on the covered reservoir. For some reason this doesn't seem as though it's going to necessarily happen and the campaign is to push the council and Thames Water to use the covered reservoir which is currently doing nothing for anyone.

 

[brix]

Are they? I know people don't PAY to go to them...but are they run as commercial enterprises in some way?

The academies programme represents the privatisation of education. It transfers the control of schools from democratically accountable local authorities to private organisations.

In Preston campaigners are fighting the proposal by the council to hand a new academy over to the Carphone Warehouse.

In the North East of England Sir Peter Vardy, a fundamentalist christian, controls academies where creationism is now taught : http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,664608,00.html

I have a bee in my bonnet about this as the multi-cultural school where I teach is about to be turned into an academy and handed over to an evangelist.

More information here: http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/

 

[Loupylou]

Are they? I know people don't PAY to go to them...but are they run as commercial enterprises in some way?

I feel a bit torn about this, actually. Especially since having been involved in Windmill allotments briefly and knowing how chaotic it all is. But it is a really really lovely green space in the heart of Brixton. A beautiful, peaceful green spot.

It's obviously REALLY important that we try and save as many green spaces as we possibly can in London - and I can't really think of ANYTHING that is more important than that. Except for things like schools and hospitals, of which there are a dire shortage......so when you think of all the kids in Lambeth who have to travel for miles to schools outside their borough, it puts things into perspective. We need more local schools!

Arrghgh.

Yes Academies are a business, owned and run by a private company. The school's Board is not like an elected Board of governors in a state school - it's appointed by the company.

The companies who bid for the contract have to put £200 K on the table. If they get the contract they get the FREEHOLD OF THE LAND So Lord Harris must own several hundred acres of prime real estate by now......

Once they get the contract the business gets £24 million from the Govt to set up the school.

They then come cap in hand whining to the Local Authority for extra money for things like teaching kids with learning difficulties etc. So they want it both ways - to make a profit but not spend any of it on expenses like that.

The majority of Lambeth secondary school kids are eduated outside the borough, I know. That's because Lambeth Council closed loads of schools. They also flogged off loads of playing fields. So I know there's a shortage of space, but I don't believe the Windmill site is the only suitable spot.

There's the site of the old Lillian Bayliss school for example. I know that's not in Brixton, but they should open a couple of smaller secondaries in different parts of the Borough.

But that's just pointless dreaming, we're going to get a profit-driven school in Brixton and that's that really.

 

[Loupylou]

The academies programme represents the privatisation of education. It transfers the control of schools from democratically accountable local authorities to private organisations.

In Preston campaigners are fighting the proposal by the council to hand a new academy over to the Carphone Warehouse.

In the North East of England Sir Peter Vardy, a fundamentalist christian, controls academies where creationism is now taught : http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,664608,00.html

I have a bee in my bonnet about this as the multi-cultural school where I teach is about to be turned into an academy and handed over to an evangelist.

More information here: http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/

Yes I really hate Academies, a lot.

The Prospectus for the Peckham one last year had 2 pics on second page - one of 3 boys stuck in front of PCs, looking like they'd been there for years, & the pic next to it was of 3 girls doing hairdressing.

I felt sick.......

 

[Loupylou]

Then I looked at the exam reults - funnily enough this was the only one of the schools in Southwark that had included them - which considering how dire they were, was amazing really. The highest results were in 'Business Studies'. Yeah right - how to sell a carpet, courtesy of Harris Carpets.

Just had a scan of the anti academies website - it's excellent, cheers for posting it. Here's a quotation from it:

David Wolfe, a barrister specialising in human rights law at Matrix Chambers said,

‘In my office, I have 9 feet of shelves holding books on education law in this country going right the way back to the seminal 1944 Act and the protection that law offers to children and parents: none of it applies to children and parents who attend academies. Quite simply, they operate outside the law as it applies in the maintained sector and that worries me.’



The thread's vering off tangent but i think it's worth remembering that the allotments are not being threatended over a state school, it's to give the land to a massive company to run a crap school as a 'business'.

If the 'business' fails, fuckit they can always shut it down and sling up a block of luxury flats.