Very strange indeed...

Without going too deeply into the City Academies beloved of Tony Blair, what with their darling arrangements where any private interest who puts up 10% of the money gets 51% of the votes, and it has to be a private interest, not a group of parents nor a local council even if they have the money, shall we examine a strange point brought up in a letter deep below the Guardian's fold, down in the education supplement?

One fairly sensible thing this government did was to create a General Teaching Council, analogous to the General Medical Council, that would permit for the better regulation of the teaching profession and the exclusion of incompetents, perverts, crooks and such. One classification, though, of teachers is not required to register with the GTC.

These are teachers at those "City Academies". Now why on earth do these fine institutions need the right to employ teachers who may have been run out of their last school behind a barrage of police teargas as screaming mobs gather? Remember, they are meant to be better and finer than any others, and get more money to that end. So - why would they want to hire incompetent teachers?

I can think of only two explanations within the borders of the reasonable. One is that the academy concept is meant to draw in nonteachers who would by definition not be registered. Local entrepreneurs and faith-based enablers, no doubt, like the ones whose homilies Alan Milburn wanted to fill school breaks with. Another is that this was a condition set by large academy investors, like used-car dealer Sir Peter Vardy, who want the right to hire teachers who agree with their religious beliefs even if they would fail professional exams-that is to say, if they do not believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago in seven days by a chap with a beard, and lack the sense not to mention this in a geography exam.

Can anyone offer an alternative explanation?