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England’s Teacher Unions Fight Blair’s ‘Academies’

National Government Wants to Replace ‘Failing’ Schools With Ones That are Akin to U.S. Charters

British teachers’ unions, striking a chord familiar to Americans, have cast into high profile their opposition to a government plan for replacing failing secondary schools with new-style “academies” that are publicly financed but free from most local government control.

Somewhat akin to American charter schools, though only for students past elementary age, academies are being put forward by the Labor government of Prime Minister Tony Blair as an important means of raising standards for the most disadvantaged students now in the country’s most troubled schools. Plans call for the number of such schools to expand from the current 17 to about 200 by the end of the decade.

But gathered for their annual Easter-time conventions last month, three teachers’ unions—the two largest and the most moderate—separately voted for the program to be halted. Union leaders condemned academies as harmful to regular “state-maintained” schools and as privatization in disguise. An official at one conference called academies a “Trojan horse” that would strike at the heart of existing...