13 April 2000
	Consultations to be held on independent Christian City Academies Call to set up Christian Schools It seems that doors of opportunity may be opening for Christians in the educational world. There are general concerns every where and special concerns in inner city and urban areas in particular. The crisis in many of our schools has a spiritual and moral basis. So often the secular world looks to repair the roof rather than address the issue of secure foundations. We need to see the creation of more schools based on the truths of the Bible. The government has recently announced radical initiatives to help address the issue of standards in schools especially in heavily urbanised areas. One of these is the possibility of creating new City Academies. These would be fully comprehensive schools, independent of local authorities and which would be joint ventures between government and voluntary groups, churches and business sponsors. The model for these would be the existing City Technology Colleges. These have been one of the success stories of recent years. One of these, Emmanuel College in Gateshead, has a clear Biblical basis for what it does. As well as being highly successful academically it gives a robust spiritual and moral education to its students and is well recognised as giving a challenging and thought provoking education. This initiative presents opportunities for Christians, appropriate sponsors and others to get together and put together plans for Christian based City Academies. This will require much persistent prayer and hard work. To help stimulate Christian thinking and action two consultations have been organised. They will both be held at the King's Centre, Chessington Evangelical Church in Surrey. The two dates are as follows: Half day consultation: SATURDAY 17 June 2000 from 10.00am to 1.00pm Full day conference from 10.00am to 4.00pm on SATURDAY 14 October 2000 At both of these events there will be contributions from John Burn, former Principal of Emmanuel College and Chairman of the Christian Institute and Nigel McQuoid, current Principal of Emmanuel College, Gateshead. We hope that these days will helpful and that many will take advantage of them.