http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1750638,00.html The government's education bill is "a mess" that will widen the divide in the education system by creating ghettoes of schools for the underclasses, a teachers' leader will warn today.
At the opening of the teachers' Easter conference season, Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, will launch a wide-ranging attack on government education reforms, including expansion of the city academy programme, which she will brand an "untried and untested experiment".
In her speech at the start of the ATL's conference in Gateshead, Dr Bousted will say: "Choice and diversity are already available to, and exercised by, the middle class. Working-class parents and their children will find nothing in the education bill which will help them to achieve more from the state education system.
"The danger is that they will find themselves ghettoised into schools for the underclass where peer group pressure is not to achieve but to reject education and all that it can offer."
The pressure that the reforms will place on schools to compete for the best pupils "will result in a system where the poor, the dispossessed, the underclass will be educated in schools which will be shunned by the middle class".
Dr Bousted will also step up the union's criticism of the academy programme designed to transform failing schools, saying there is no evidence that getting businesses to run schools is proving successful: "Yet, in the name of choice and diversity the government is determined to press ahead - to take schools out of the democratic structure provided by the local authorities, to reduce parental involvement, and to create a market in education."
She will add: "What is worse is this untried, untested experiment is not only confined to schools, but is spreading to further education. I do wonder if the government couldn't have saved time, effort and paper combining the schools bill with the forthcoming further education bill - it's difficult to spot the difference between them."
The ATL is regarded as the more moderate of the teacher unions, with many of its members working in private schools and grammar schools. The two larger unions, the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of School Masters and Union of Women Teachers, also meet this week.
Dr Bousted will argue that there are some positive measures in the bill, but "these are straws in the wind against the prevailing gale".
She will also argue for changes to the national curriculum, saying it is too prescriptive, overburdened with content, and with an assessment system that fails to create a balanced enough education.
Yesterday Dr Bousted condemned the BBC's controversial school discipline documentary Don't Mess With Miss Beckles, branding it "highly exploitative".
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