Given Education Leeds's history of public consultation, I think it is now widely recognised that these meetings are nothing more than charades, in a court where Education Leeds acts as both prosecutor and jury.

But I don't think there's anything to be gained from getting angry any more. Everyone knows that this is the case.

What is as interesting, as it is indeed dangerous, is that they get away with it. And what they are getting away with, in this case, as with the previous closure/mergers of Leeds schools in deprived areas – namely Gotts' Park, Middleton Park, Foxwood-East Leeds, Cross Green, Royal Park, Miles Hill, Asket Hill etc – is an attack on the poor, the weakest, the most vulnerable young citizens of Leeds and on their families.

These schools were, and where they still exist, are doing amazing jobs, in protecting, caring for, developing the life-skills of their charges, and doing for them what is humanly possible and useful in terms of good exam grades.

This can't be reflected in the simplistic and crass measurements that are so many GCSEs per pupil.

By this endless change and uncertainty for the inner city children central government is attacking the poor when it should be attacking poverty itself.

The government devised "academies" and gave these educational establishments this pretentious name presumably to suggest they will be somehow better than schools, maybe akin to universities. But they are no more than boot camps, where children's behaviour is strictly controlled and young people not allowed to be and to discover themselves at this vital point in their lives of self-discovery.

Academies were devised as a solution to so-called failing schools. Schools aren't failing any more, certainly Intake and South Leeds aren't, and so, in theory there should no need for them.

Pressure

So why this relentless pressure? Why not just say, Well done?

What we are witnessing is the dismantling of our public education system, and if we don't speak up, this is what are we acquiescing in.

A sense of fairness seems to have gone out of this world. "Every Child Matters" is nice little tag line, as nice as it is quite untrue.

The children who go through the changes that are these closures and mergers never recover. And nor the teaching staff who put their careers on hold to stay with children and their families in what we euphemistically call our "inner-city" areas.

Victoria Jaquiss, FRSA, Leeds teacher and school governor