Tuesday 19 November 2013

Pavey paves the way for privatisation

At last night's full Brent Council Meeting Cllr Michael  Pavey, lead member for children and families, moved even further towards a pro-academy stance, even though his Labour colleague Krupesh Hirani shortly afterwards castigated the privatisation of the health service.

Pavey read from Ofsted reports on Copland Community High School and Wembley Ark Academy, contrasting the dire nature of the former with the glowing remarks of the latter. What he didn't tell the councillors was that the Copland report was very recent and that Ark's last full Ofsted was in 2010.

He also didn't tell them at the time of the 2010 report Ark Academy only had a few year groups in the primary school and was only just admitting the first cohort of Year 7s in the secondary school. Ark Academy was inspected under the old Ofsted framework and Copland under the new stricter framework.



There are still no Key Stage 2 results from Ark that could be used to gauge the quality of teaching and learning in the school although Key Stage 1 results have come out well on the second quartile.

Pavey also omitted to mention any responsibility that Brent Council had for not overseeing Copland properly or the fact that Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt was a member of the governing body  and had his children at the school at the time it got  into difficulty.

Perhaps all that is water under the bridge but the latest news from Cop[land doesn't look too good in terms of the new management. They had to abandon Monday's meeting which was supposed to discuss the restructuring (sackings) because once again correct procedures had not been followed. You will recall the same thing happened earlier with non-teaching staff.

Undaunted Copland staff and supporters are organising a public meeting towards the end of the month and you are invited to join the their walk to raise funds for the hire of the hall.


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