I congratulate Nunthorpe School on becoming an academy on 1 October. I am definitely looking forward to serving as one of its trustees and on its new board of directors.
 
As chairman of the School’s Student Achievement Committee, I am confident that academy status will enable the new Academy to go from strength to strength and further improve its excellent teaching and examination results.
 
Over half of England’s secondary schools are now academies. It is virtually certain that by 2015 all secondary schools will become academies.
 
For some time, the Liberal Democrats on Redcar & Cleveland Council have repeatedly called on the Council to have a co-ordinated plan for secondary schools to convert to academies.
 
The Council’s Labour bosses haven’t listened. They have left thing to slide by sitting on the sidelines and, even, obstructing sensible change. Their hands-off stance is not helpful to schools, parents and pupils. It’s easy to see why. Labour councillors locally and the unions who back them oppose academies on ideological grounds, even though it was a Labour government which introduced them.

It’s another example of their unwillingness to embrace change and make any positive step forward.
 
It will be a great pity, if young people in our borough lose out because Labour is putting politics before their education.