THE Evening News readers may have missed the announcement by Tony Blair of more city academies.

In case your readers do not know what he means by this, may I put my interpretation on it? It seems that these schools are paid for and run by big business or faith-based charities and are outside the control of democratically elected local government.

They set their own curriculum and are accountable to no one but the people who pay the bills. They will be allowed to poach staff from the state sector. These are staff that the taxpayer has spent millions on training. They will be allowed to choose their own pupils. I bet the brightest ones get chosen.

We have a railway system that is run by big business and what a disaster that is. It is run for the profit motive, the passengers come way down the line. What does big business want with educating our children? How are they going to make their money? Perhaps like they do from our PFI hospitals. A kind of 'build now and pay lots more' later regime.

Faith-based schools? Does not Tony Blair see that most of the problems in this world are caused by religion, Islam versus Jewry, Catholic versus Protestant and so on. Show me a war and I will show you religion behind it. Now we are to have the choice of which faith to ram down the throats of our children. Like Northern Ireland are we

to teach Catholic children to hate Protestant children and visa versa?

Kick this mad idea into touch right away. Let our children be educated as citizens of the world with a respect for each other. If you want religion taught to your children, after school hours should be the way.

TERRY JAMES,

Drakes Broughton