PARENTS and teachers at Belmont School Community Arts College and Durham Gilesgate Sports College and Sixth Form Centre are right to protest about Durham County Council’s proposal to form an academy (Echo, April 15).

Such schools are taken out of democratic, local authority control and handed over to a sponsor, which has usually been big businessmen.

Since the onset of the credit crunch, the Government seems to be backing away from using businessmen and is now handing over control of our schools to elite public schools and universities.

Under the proposed Durham Academy, control will be handed to a consortium led by Durham University. While it is true that Durham University has a very good record at educating mostly middle class young adults, it has no experience educating children from working class backgrounds.

Where unaccountable control is handed over to elite organisations one of two results seems to follow. Either it is a complete disaster or it is a disaster for poorer working class children, because in some academies scores of poorer children have been excluded and dumped onto another school outside their catchment area in a very British form of ethnic and social cleansing.

For more details contact www.antiacademies.org.uk John Gilmore, Secretary, National Union of Teachers, Bishop Auckland Association.