With the death of Pope Francis, the world loses not only a church leader but also a moral compass that spoke out against inequality, discrimination, war, and climate destruction, writes MARC VANDEPITTE
Academy school: Big salaries for the bosses, mediocre results for the kids
SOLOMON HUGHES takes apart the privatised education system swept in by New Labour and expanded by the Tories

OUR schools shows how far things that were in the public realm have been handed over to private interests. And how those private interests have treated themselves very well indeed.
Take the case of the Academies Enterprise Trust, where people who shouldn’t really be in charge of state schools have been handed enormous power. The results for pupils are mediocre, but for the top managers, they are pretty comfortable.
Under New Labour’s Academy programme, schools were handed to private — although not-for-profit — trusts. The Labour version just took selected schools out of local education authorities.
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