Seventeen seventy-six is a
number with great resonance for Americans, but you wouldn’t expect it to
be featured on a British-government website.
But there it is, on the home page of the United Kingdom’s Department of Education: “As of 1 April 2012, there are 1776 academies open in England.”
“Academies,” as you might expect, means something different in Britain than in the United States. They are, approximately, what we would call charter schools. And there are 1,776 of them largely because of the energy and determination of British education secretary Michael Gove.
Britain, like America, has gotten pretty dismal results for years from its public schools — “state schools,” in their terminology. (British “public schools” are expensive boarding schools; they include Eton, which produced David Cameron and twelve other prime ministers, and Fettes, its Scottish equivalent, which graduated former prime minister Tony Blair.)
This is a problem that has been recognized by all three British political parties. Blair’s New Labour tried to instill more accountability with extensive testing, much as George W. Bush attempted to do with his bipartisan No Child Left Behind law.
Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/309413/charter-schools-britain-s-academies-aim-high-michael-barone
But there it is, on the home page of the United Kingdom’s Department of Education: “As of 1 April 2012, there are 1776 academies open in England.”
“Academies,” as you might expect, means something different in Britain than in the United States. They are, approximately, what we would call charter schools. And there are 1,776 of them largely because of the energy and determination of British education secretary Michael Gove.
Britain, like America, has gotten pretty dismal results for years from its public schools — “state schools,” in their terminology. (British “public schools” are expensive boarding schools; they include Eton, which produced David Cameron and twelve other prime ministers, and Fettes, its Scottish equivalent, which graduated former prime minister Tony Blair.)
This is a problem that has been recognized by all three British political parties. Blair’s New Labour tried to instill more accountability with extensive testing, much as George W. Bush attempted to do with his bipartisan No Child Left Behind law.
Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/309413/charter-schools-britain-s-academies-aim-high-michael-barone
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