Someone passed me a link to a Times article about the new Thomas Deacon city academy in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, which is a 2,200 pupil secondary school without a playground. WTF? Does anyone else think that's crazy?

As a PFI funded "Academy" (ie a private school that still receives government funding, but is also corporate managed) I get the feeling that this isn't so much of a school but an educational investment, designed to turn the financiers a significant profit. A small-scale school with a large number of pupils strikes me as corporate-style streamlining. Yes, it's efficient if you're worried about gaining as much per-head pupil funding per £ invested and land bought, but it's not really great for education, is it?