Letter sent to the Bath press about the likely closure of Bath Community Academy:
I was saddened to read that the Regional Schools Commissioner intends to close Bath Community Academy at the end of the next academic year.
On a personal level this has an impact on my children as it is their closest secondary school. Surely the most rational approach to education is to maintain smaller local schools based in the communities they serve, avoiding the problem of children trekking across town to huge impersonal institutions, adding to congestion, pollution and traffic misery. Isn’t it better for children to be able to walk to school with their neighbours?
Sadly, this rational approach is not possible thanks to the people losing democratic control of education. Free schools and academies are simply vehicles for a small number of people to profit from state education, and an abdication of responsibility by government. Academies, introduced by Labour and embraced by the Tories and Lib Dems, remove the democratic voice of the most important people - those whose children use the schools.
Only the Green Party will abolish Free Schools and academies, stop our schools being used for profit and bring them back into local democratic control so that they are accountable to parents and the community.
Dominic Tristram Green Party Candidate for Bath 2015