An Independent View: Hands off Hove Park School

The likelihood is that the governors of Hove Park School will decide to convert the school into an academy.

If so, the decision will be wrong. Not because - or not just because - academies are a fundamental anti-democratic perversion of schools with a track record of serving local communities.

It will be the wrong decision because of the way it has been reached: a one-way conversation, frequently conducted behind closed doors by people who appear - if only by their muteness - to be deaf and blind to the concerns of a significant proportion of parents, staff, and the wider citizenry.

There may be arguments for poorly-performing schools to be turned into academies. That is not the case here. Hove Park School is on the way up. Radical action was required some years ago, when still-silent Conservative and Labour councillors said and did nothing.

Still, they say nothing. Except to intervene - against political intervention. In politics.

Every institution is improved by being more open and more democratic. It seems to be the only lesson unlearned at Hove Park School.