Connection With Education Funding
Desmond Smith was the subject of a Sunday Times investigation, which led to his resignation from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. At that time a Downing Street spokesman said "It's nonsense to suggest that honours are awarded for giving money to an academy.". This was later contradicted when it was confirmed that the 'citations' explaining the case for putting Sir David Garrard and Barry Townsley in the House of Lords 'prominently' featured their role in helping academy schools. Downing Street sources said the Prime Minister wanted their political support in the Lords for the controversial policy, adding that the Prime Minister felt that anyone who gave their time, commitment and money to establish an academy - to help children in previously failing schools - 'had a strong claim to be considered for an honour'. 'What we wanted was people with expertise in academies as working peers, taking the Labour whip, who could actively contribute with a massive amount of knowledge to the debate on education in the House of Lords.'
Garrard gave £2.4 m for an academy in Bexley, south London. Townsley gave £1.5 m for another in west London.
Read more about this topic: Cash For Honours
Famous quotes containing the words connection with, connection and/or education:
“We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The smallest fact about the connection between character and hormonal balance offers more insight into the soul than a five-story idealistic system [of philosophy] does.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“... many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)