Blair announces UK schools shake-up

British Prime Minister Tony Blair outlined details for a major reform of Britain's secondary schools yesterday with a vow to speed up plans for more city academies.

Mr Blair said the city academies - independently-run but state-funded schools - were a way to level the playing field so all students and not just children from better-off homes had access to good education.

"Let nobody say that academics are not helping the poorest children, when a third of those attending this school receive free school meals, more than twice the national average," the Prime Minister said in a speech at the City of London Academy.

The Prime Minister has pledged to have 200 academies open or under construction by 2010.

Mr Blair said city academies were designed to raise standards in poor areas by replacing existing failing institutions.

"It is not government edict that is determining the fate of city academies, but parent power.

Parents are choosing city academies, and that is enough for me," Mr Blair said. Mr Blair also outlined changes for local authorities which would see them increasingly becoming "commissioners of education" responsible for enforcing standards, rather than direct providers who run schools.

City academies depend on private sponsors, who donate two million pounds towards each school. Critics say they worry about the influence this gives the sponsors, and argue the system diverts funds from existing schools.

The plans have also come under fire from former education secretary Estelle Morris who accused the government of "serial meddling" and warned the changes could prove damaging.

"Another round of structural change won't by itself achieve universally high standards. Worse than that it could be a distraction," she wrote in an article for the Guardian.

"In five years' time, whose children will be going to these new academies? Will choice and market forces once again squeeze out the children of the disadvantaged?"