The Daily Mail in talks to sponsor academy
By Leah McBride Mensching, Monday 26 November 2007 at 23:18 :: Training & Education :: #903 :: rss
The Daily Mail's chairman is in talks with a UK senior government education adviser to sponsor an academy near the newspaper's office in Kensington, west London.
In the past, Jonathan Harmsworth (also known as the fourth Viscount Rothermere) ended plans to start five academies, “apparently because executives within the trust feared it would compromise the papers' ability to criticise the government,” the Guardian reported Saturday.
The new plan would give the boss of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and London Evening Standard control of the new school, as well as control over designing the curriculum and the hiring and firing of staff, in return for a £2 million payment.
The new plan also means the academy would rely on two top partners, the Rothermere Foundation, a grant-making charity, and Sir Cyril Taylor, head of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.
Other Rothermere Academy partners are being discussed, Taylor told the Guardian, but he did not reveal any names.
The National Union of Teachers is opposed to academies.
“What would a Daily Mail academy teach,” said Steve Sinnott, its general secretary, according to the Guardian. “The mind boggles. The academies programme is now unplanned and operating a scattergun approach when it comes to sponsors. Anyone can run an academy now.”
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