New Corporate Studio Schools Mean Workfare for Children

The Studio Schools’ programme of having their pupils between the ages of 14 and 16 spending 4 hours a week working for private companies reminds me of Heidegger’s speech, when he was made rector of one of the German universities under the Nazis. He was placed in charge of the uni in order to supervise its gleichschaltung and adoption of Nazism. He declared that in Germany’s new schools and labour camps a new spirit was reigning – that of Nazism. This part of the ‘Free Schools’ movement seems to show that the Tories and their Lib Dem allies have adopted the same policies and the same mentality: forcing the poor to work for them, for free, under the spurious pretext that this is somehow ennobling and preparing them for the world of work and their correct place in society.

the void

Children as young as 14 are now being sent on a weekly basis to work for private companies without pay in a shocking escalation of this Government’s workfare policies.

Red Pepper magazine this week reports on the growth of the secretive Studio Schools, a little known sub-set of the Free Schools programme.  According to Red Pepper, for a bargain price of just £8000, businesses can have a tailor made school full of unpaid and low paid child workers.

Children and young people up to the age of 19 will only be offered a minimum GCSE level education and the schools will have long days and short holidays to mimic working life.

The schools will teach a basic version of the national curriculum with much of the rest of the time devoted to unpaid work.  Those between the ages of 14 to 16 will be required to work at least four…

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