Showing posts with label Roke Primary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roke Primary. Show all posts

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Forced academies: Victory and victims

Parents at Snaresbrook Primary in the London Borough of Redbridge were celebrating tonight after the Department for Education decided not to intervene in their school.  After being judged 'Inadequate' and put in Special Measures the school faced being forced to become an academy, a fate that has befallen Salusbury Primary School in Brent and is being challenged by parent campaigners at Gladstone Park Primary.

Unlike Salusbury and Gladstone Park, Snaresbrook and its parents had been strongly backed by Redbridge Council.

A DfE spokesperson said:
Our policy remains unchanged - we cannot stand by when a school is judged inadequate and believe that becoming an academy with the support of a strong sponsor is the best way to ensure rapid and sustained improvement.

Snaresbrook Primary School does not have a history of underperformance and has made significant progress after being judged to require special measures by Ofsted in June. We therefore do not plan to intervene to convert Snaresbrook to an academy.

However, being judged inadequate by Ofsted is extremely serious and we will continue to monitor the school’s progress in coming out of special measures.
Gladstone Park Primary too did not have a history of under performance and previously had a 'Good' Ofsted rating. Its results are still above the national average at Key Stage 1 and Key stage 2.  However despite passionate requests from parents Brent Council did not get behind their campaign or make strong representations to the DfE. Governors are currently consulting on an academy sponsor.

Meanwhile Roke Primary School (now Harris Primary Academy) parents are facing the consequences of the Croydon school being taken over by the Harris Academy chain in September.

Inside Croydon LINK reports than 1 to 1 SEN support has been removed in a move that some parents interpret as an attempt to reduce the number of SEN pupils in the school.  Children and parents were in tears after the news.

In a further move showing disregard for parents and pupils, the management  closed the Bourne Children’s Centre, which ran toddler and parents’ groups.  The building into a storeroom, causing a marked decrease in provision of service for families with children at the school.

Parents also accuse the academy managers of manipulating pupils attainment data in order to create the impression that the new academy is out-performing expectations. Parents report that pupils previously said to be exceeding levels in face to face meetings with teachers are now categorised as below expectations, enabling the school to claim vast improvement at the end of the year.

Inside Croydon reports:
Harris has provided each child with targets for the next half term, yet many parents said these had already been achieved in the last academic year when the school was still Roke Primary. The headteacher sent a letter telling parents that “previous levels you have been given may vary slightly to the levels recorded on this report”.
A spokeswoman for the Roke parents’ group told Inside Croydon:
We predict that results will now show remarkable improvement during the first year of the Harris academy and be used as a false benchmark of their success in turning our school around, as well as legitimising contentious forced academy policy.

Academy status and the new management have had to apologise for mistakes in homework which appeared to be cut and pasted from American websites and for unzipping 5 year old girls' dresses to check that what they wore beneath met the new school uniform requirements.

The Snaresbrook victory, along with the news from Lewisham, should reinforce campaigners' determination to fight for our public services. Let's hope Brent Labour will get behind them.







Sunday 24 March 2013

Dear Mr Gove (This is War)

As teachers prepare for their Easter conferences and their fire is trained on Michael Gove and Michael Wilshaw LINK I thought I would share this wonderful video with you. It deserves many more viewings so please share.


Wednesday 13 March 2013

Bullying DfE Brokers - key points from yesterday's debate

Yesterday's Westminster Hall debate brought the attention of the Government to the many complaints about the forced academy process. Here are some key extracts:


John Pugh (Lib Dem Southport) Throughout the land, brokers are appearing in schools when the opportunity arises to hasten things on and ensure that the targets are met. They show up when a school suffers even a temporary decline in standards. A recent article in The Guardian by George Monbiot—not a man I ordinarily agree or see eye to eye with—compared them to mediaeval tax collectors. I happen to think that mediaeval tax collectors performed an important social function; I do not necessarily feel the same way about brokers.

Brokers appear to come to governing bodies with threats and an academy contract in hand. The threats are, “Sign the contract, or you, the governors, and possibly the head teacher, will be replaced”, or “Choose a sponsor, or if you don’t we’ll choose one for you, which we may do anyway.”

Bill Esterson (Labour,  Sefton Central)

To add to the hon. Gentleman’s examples, a Department for Education adviser said to a school in my constituency, “You lost your autonomy when you went into an Ofsted category. Either you sign the papers to become an academy, or we will put in another interim executive board to do it for you.” I wonder whether he has had similar experiences.

John Pugh

I have had very similar experiences, but they are not just my experiences. Reports are coming in from up and down the land, and there is a kind of similarity that makes them wholly plausible.

There is a hurry to get on with things. Schools are basically told, “Get on with academisation now, or we will do it for you anyway.” They are also told—this surprises me—“Don’t tell the parents or the staff until it actually happens. Consult with them afterwards.” To sweeten the pill, cash is sometimes promised, in the form of a changeover fund to accommodate change. Relief from inspection or the school’s current status is also promised: whatever pressure Ofsted or the LEA apply will disappear when academy status is established. More worryingly, I have evidence that sponsors have been recommended, particularly school chains, with whom individual brokers have prior connections.

Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield, Labour)

Can I take the hon. Gentleman back to what he said before? I have had a number of schools that have received not only that suggestion, but the message, “Don’t talk to the parents before everything is signed, sealed and delivered.” Is it not also strange that ministerial policy is that Members of Parliament should be told about academisation only after the funding agreement has been signed, thereby removing any chance for democratically elected Members of Parliament to advise, consult with the school or have any say in what is about to happen?

John Pugh

Yes, that is distressing. The hon. Gentleman is a witness to the fact that we have moved from a situation in which parents were allowed a vote to one in which parents do not have a voice.

I would like to draw attention to the well documented fact that some of the brokers’ behaviour is markedly aggressive. One governor of fairly robust temperament described a broker as “seriously scary”. I find the process appalling. Regardless of what one feels about the academy programme, I find it distressing that people who have the interests of children and their schools at heart feel that they have been put in that situation. It strikes me that it is bullying. The intention is to close the contract and sign it there and then, which is the worst kind of sharp salesmanship, if I can put it like that. It is obviously wide open to corruption; it is about making offers that people cannot refuse, straight out of the Vito Corleone textbook. I see absolutely no reason why we who wish to stop bullying in schools allow the bullying of schools.

Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West, Labour)

Fortunately, we have the Minister with responsibility for bullying here, so she can deal with any accusations of bullying.

Surely the hon. Gentleman is being completely unfair to the Government. Did he read the article by Warwick Mansell in The Guardian yesterday? It quoted Tim Crumpton, a councillor in Dudley, who said that after he made accusations of bullying, he received a letter from the Department saying:

“We carried out a thorough investigation and found no basis in the claims.”


John Pugh

I am sure that the Department took the broker’s word for it. What I am describing has been told to me by people I have known for some time, who have no axe to grind and whom I trust.

I feel particularly aggrieved about my area. Under previous regimes, not a single school in Sefton ever opted out. We had two ballots, both of which were lost. There were good reasons. Sefton was one of the first LEAs to give schools true financial independence to pioneer; in fact, I was on the local authority at the time. It has kept its central costs low. It has always prioritised education and schools. It stands favourable comparison with other LEAs. Its schools are good and, better still, there are good relations between the LEA and the schools, which themselves cluster together harmoniously and supportively. There is a genuine communitarian spirit, accompanied by good results. To make things more acutely painful, Sefton has a good record, praised by the Schools Minister, for improving its schools; it is in the top five of LEAs.

One—I think that is all right—might suppose that what is crucial to the success of education is the independence of the school. That is an understandable view. It is a simplistic and probably wrong view, but I can understand people taking it and it providing them with the motive for feeling that academies are an all-sufficient solution.

Another interpretation might be that there is an unstated plot to reorganise schools into private chains rather than in LEAs; if so, we could legitimately debate that at some point. It is likely that many primary schools, if they become academies, will form part of chains. There is nothing particularly wrong with chains, and there have been great ones in the past: Blue Coat schools, Merchant Taylors’ schools, the Woodard foundation, Haberdashers’ Aske’s schools and so on; and, in the state system, organisations such as the Christian Brothers, or the Salesian or Notre Dame schools. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with chains; they are often founded for the poor but usually end up serving the rich. The model is particularly in favour with the Minister responsible for academies, Lord Nash, who I understand supports a chain of some sorts himself.
In the past, however, huge gains to the educational system were not achieved by virtue of the state handing people 125-year leases; normally, it was done by philanthropists digging deep into their pockets. If there is a real agenda, and such motivations are genuinely behind the strange set of phenomena we are seeing at the moment, I am happy to debate that. Let us not, however, have this forced choice, with underhand persuasion and inducement.

In my years as a teacher, the worst sort of bullying was not the stuff that one saw and could stop but the stuff that was not seen and took place away from view. If nothing else, through this debate I hope to bring the bullying of schools, rather than in schools, to people’s attention.

Rose Cooper, (West Lancashire,  Labour)

All the evidence points to a Department that is ideologically wedded to the promotion of academies for all, rather than the best education for all. In our education system, only 10% of all state schools are academies and free schools, and the figure for primary schools is only 5.3%. Yet one third of Department for Education staff are assigned to the academies and free schools programme, which accounts for 18% of the Department’s revenue and capital budget—a level completely disproportionate to the size of the programme. 

Then we come to the £1 billion overspend. No doubt that money is being taken from the budgets for non-academy schools, many of which most need that investment.

The whole situation is compounded by the Gove army of brokers. Given that they earn up to £700 a day, some might suggest they are more like mercenaries. I would suggest they are conflicted mercenaries, because many are alleged to have connections to academy chains. These conflicted mercenaries—these brokers—are running round the country offering inducements of £40,000, plus£25,000 for legal costs. That approach to academisation is deplorable, and it is all being done because of the ideological war being waged by the Education Secretary. 

Our ambition and aspiration should always be to ensure that our children have access to the best possible standards of education from the start to the end of their school life. Simply forcing schools to become academies is not the solution. We know that one-size-fits-all policy making does not work. In our schools, we need good, strong leadership from the head teacher and governing bodies, with investment in schools buildings and school resources, irrespective of whether the school is LEA controlled or an academy. There should be a consensus among parents, teachers, governors and the community about the type of school they want; that decision should not be forced on the community.

I agree that we need to ensure that all schools reach the required standards. However, we should do so based on the needs of the individual school and its children, not on the imposition of a one-size-fits-all model driven by ideology. I am sure the Minister has come here today replete with the usual lines about school improvement, education for the 21st century and investment, but I remind her that we are talking about the forced conversion of schools into academies.

My message to the Minister is this: nobody believes you. As each day passes, fewer and fewer people believe you.

 David Ward   (Lib Dem, Bradford East)
 
Thank you for calling me to speak, Mrs Main. I thank my hon. Friend John Pugh for initiating the debate.
It is not too much of a secret, certainly in some quarters, that I am not a great fan of academies. I opposed them under the previous Government, and I oppose the academy regime under this Government. Within a few months of coming into the House of Commons, I voted against the Academies Bill. That was for a couple of reasons. First, many supporters of academies, who want to push for academy status, are seeking to control admissions. For them, it is about who goes into the school, not what goes on in the school.

In a private meeting with the Secretary of State, I said, “You should be far more radical and make every school an academy in terms of some of the freedoms that are proposed.” However, for those who support
academies, and who are pushing for them, that would not really work, because the secret of academies is that some schools are academies and some are not. Alongside freedoms in relation to conditions of service and so on, there would need to be some control over admissions, which would defeat the purpose of going to academy status for many sponsors, and the same applies to free schools.

I am opposed to the academies also because there is an overemphasis on the impact that the structure will have on raising achievement and attainment in schools. It is interesting that many of the new academies have not taken up some of the new freedoms: they have taken the money and stayed, rather than taking the money and running with the new freedoms. Another reason for my opposition is that I always want, as Stephen Covey said, to“Begin with the end in mind.”

If something works, generally speaking it is okay. I do not feel that there are too many strong, politically different issues or matters of principle. Most of them are about what works in a situation, with some fundamental underpinning of values. I am not clear where the evidence is for academies. In a sitting of the Education Committee a few weeks ago, I asked the Secretary of State whether he believed in evidence-based policy and he said that he very much does, but I do not see any evidence for that.

The success of the academies project seems—my hon. Friend the Member for Southport referred to this—to be judged by how many academies there are. That has almost become an end in itself. There has been much talk about needing to convert. A school is in a particular situation, and the idea of need is always introduced; but it does not mean the school will benefit from a conversion. The evidence base is not there. The idea is that the school needs to convert because it meets the criteria; but it is the Secretary of State who sets the criteria. It is like saying, “I will decide when it is raining, and I will decide what to wear in the rain.”

He is doing the same, because he is saying, “I will decide the criteria and whether they have been met.” That is the same idea as, “There is a need to put on a coat when it is raining; it is raining so we need to put a coat on.” The false logic behind the whole academies programme is: “An intervention is needed and an academy is an intervention, so you need an academy.” It is all false logic. Using a coat when it rains is an intervention, but it is not the only form of intervention and there is no evidence that that intervention is the one that would work.

There are all sorts of interventions, which could include setting up an academy—but where is the evidence? Local authority support would be a possibility: many authorities are not, as has been suggested, dreadful, and are effective at providing support. The intervention may be a new head for the existing school. It may be an integrated post-inspection plan, or an interim executive board to turn the school around. There is evidence to show that all those interventions work in certain circumstances. They all have an evidence base, but there is no evidence that the academy structure works. It is false logic.

In my constituency in Bradford, there are two schools that are going through intervention academy conversions. My two sons went to one of those schools many years ago. If someone went to a local estate agency 10 or 15 years ago, the window would have adverts stating that properties were close to the school.

The school was one of the largest and most successful in the Bradford district and it was why people moved into that area, but it has had a difficult time. It was not so long ago that the head teacher of that school, before retirement, was the executive head of another school that was failing and has now become successful. I was chair of governors at a school that was in special measures, and it became the first secondary school in Bradford to be rated as outstanding. All that was done without academy status and on the basis of interventions by an extremely good head teacher, who was able, through a new management team, to turn the school around.

In Bradford, a secondary partnership has been established. The whole principle behind it has been to offer support to other schools and negate the need for academy conversions. The partnership was formed about 18 months ago and all 28 secondary schools from the district are involved and pay an annual subscription to join. It involves developing a rigorous system of performance review. It will provide effective school-to-school support and deliver school-led professional development. Those schools do not need to be academies. There are other ways forward that do not require a change to a school’s structure.

Ideology has been mentioned a few times, but I do not think that is the issue. It is about ego. All schools can be improved, but it takes time and requires hard work. It is not glamorous and a slog is involved. It takes 18 months to two years to get the right people in place to turn a school around, but where is the glamour in that for a Secretary of State who needs to be seen to do dramatic things? Where is the glamour in that hard graft that happens day in, day out up and down the country in turning around schools that need to improve?

The problem is that that egocentric project comes with a cost. The House of Commons Library briefing shows the actual cost involved in investing in the schools and bribing them to take up academy status, as well as the opportunity cost of the money that is not available for other schools. It is frankly sickening to see schools in Bradford unable to afford basic repairs while a bottomless pit of money appears to be available to support the free schools and academies programme. That programme is a costly distraction—devoid of evidence—from the principal concern of an authority, which is to raise educational achievement and attainment through the well-established methods that already exist for turning schools around and providing the quality education that pupils need and deserve.

Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith, Labour)

We had a £33 million investment programme—at the moment, that is quite a big programme—over two years for primary schools, yet all that money was directed to voluntary-aided schools, free schools or academies, for new build, refurbishment, conversion or expansion as may be, despite the fact that very successful community schools also wish to expand and see investment put into them. I object to those double standards and to not having a level playing field. I have to ask who the ideologues are in this case, and I am afraid that they are particularly centred around the Secretary of State for Education.

None of that would matter if there were no adverse consequences, but let me explain some of the consequences. First, there will be a perception—it may be a reality, but it is certainly a perception—that we are creating a two-tier system in education, in which academies are the preferred type of schools. Parents will therefore gravitate, reasonably and understandably, towards those schools, because they believe that the schools will be preferred—with money, resources or simply the attention that they receive from local education authorities and the DFE. That then leads to a form of separate development. A number of academies are now for pupils aged three to 18, and they therefore monopolise children within an area. 

Equally, I have noticed a trend whereby secondary academies will select—particularly if they are in the same group—from their primary feeder schools, so it may be that there is no longer an interchange between primary schools in that way. I am beginning to get a lot of complaints from parents of children in community primary schools who might want to send their children to secondary academies, and they find that they are refused or are a long way down the waiting list.

I also fear that there is a possibility of politicisation of the academy system down the road. There is a strong association between the academy system and not only Conservative local authorities, but Conservative funders, peers and so on. Lord Nash has been mentioned. Lord Fink, who I think is still the Tory party treasurer, was the chairman of ARK, and he is the chairman of one of the schools in my constituency. Both of those gentlemen are very substantial funders of the Conservative party. One of them, Lord Nash—or rather, his wife, Lady Nash—was the principal funder of my opponent at the last election. It is a free country. Anyone can do as they wish, but the association of particular schools, chains of schools and individuals with a particular political party is not healthy in education. I see that as another branch of the politicisation and there is the real prospect of our moving—with every pronouncement that comes out of Government or those close to Government—to profit-making schools. If another Conservative Government were elected, we would see that trend continue, and I think that would be extremely regrettable.

Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West, Labour)

Last year I visited a group of schools that had formed an education improvement partnership. One of the primary school head teachers in it was desperate to tell me about her experience with what some people locally have described as gauleiters being sent out by the Department for Education. What she told me made my jaw drop. She told me that when the adviser from the Department turned up, she was told that she had to meet them and that no one else was to be present. When she objected to that, she was told that perhaps at a stretch she might be allowed to have the chair of governors present with her for part of the meeting. She wanted to have, and in the end she insisted on having, the head teacher of the local secondary school, which was part of the education improvement partnership, with her for the debate, but she told me several stories about how she was leaned on—that is the only way it can be described—and told that there was no alternative to her school becoming an academy, despite the fact that the governors did not want that, the parents did not want it and it was clearly an improving school. In the end, having taken legal advice, they were able to fend off the adviser who had come from the Government, using those bullying tactics, but I am told that as she left she said, “I’ll be back”, Arnold Schwarzenegger-style—no doubt after further efforts have been made to undermine the efforts being made by the school to operate as part of an education improvement partnership to raise standards in the school. That is happening around the country. I have also been told that in the same area, one head teacher has seen a gagging clause put into their contract, having been forced out of a school as part of this process. 

It is all very well, under the cloak of standards, to go around to schools and offer them an opportunity to consider academisation—the sponsored academy approach. That can be entirely appropriate on many occasions, but the bullying behaviour—we are hearing, and I am receiving, more and more accounts of it—is very worrying. I therefore want the Minister to answer a few questions about that. How many schools does she know of that have successfully resisted forced academisation procedures? How are the academy advisers recruited? How are they rewarded? Is it true that they are on a payment-by-results regime? I hope that the Minister will answer this question particularly. Is there any code of conduct for those people as to how they should behave? As the Minister with responsibility for the issue of bullying, will she give us an absolute assurance that if there is one, she will publish it, and that if there is not one currently, she will ensure that one is available? I ask that because some of the behaviour that is being described—

Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk, Conservative)  Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (education and childcare)

We are encouraging all schools to convert to academy status, so that good and outstanding schools can use the autonomy that the status provides to drive up standards. Where schools are underperforming and leadership and management need improvement, however, we cannot just stand by and allow that to continue. The cases that hon. Members have raised in the debate are about schools in which performance is not good enough. We are not talking about schools in which performance is already good. There are good schools under local authority auspices and there are good academies, but we are talking about underperforming schools. We look for two indicators of underperformance to determine which schools we should approach and work with to deliver sustained improvement: low achievement over time and whether the school is in Ofsted category 4. 

Many schools agree to become sponsored academies, because they know that academies are achieving dramatic improvements in results, particularly where new sponsors have taken on formerly underperforming schools, as I have seen that in my county of Norfolk. Sponsors bring outside influence and a wealth of experience. They challenge traditional thinking and have no truck with a culture of low expectations.

…...We should bear it in mind that intervention takes place where schools are underperforming—where there is a problem. At meetings with governing bodies, where schools are in Ofsted categories of concern, a broker discusses sponsorship options and aims to agree a schedule of actions. As is necessarily the case in an underperforming school, that can sometimes appear challenging—of course, it can. We are saying that what is happening at that school is not delivering for the children. It is important that they receive the best possible education.

Monday 11 March 2013

DfE's 'bullying brokers' must be brought to book

More from the Guardian on DfE bullying and the tremendous campaign by parents against forced academies by Warwick Mansell and Geraldine Hackett LINK

With Gove due to reappear before the education select committee this week to answer questions about what he knew about bullying allegations within the Department for Education, news reaches us of an official complaint that has been made about "intimidation" by one of that department's academy "brokers".
The complaint came in a letter sent by Tim Crumpton, a Labour councillor in Dudley, West Midlands, to the office of Gove's schools commissioner, Elizabeth Sidwell, last November. Crumpton, the council's cabinet member for children's services, asked the office to investigate "bullying" by the broker.

As reported in this column, these DfE brokers are seeking to push many schools towards academy status. Crumpton said he had accompanied the senior official on three visits to schools in Dudley. "On each occasion, [her] behaviour has been intimidating and bullying towards governors, headteachers and local authority staff," he wrote.

The broker had provided no agenda or subsequent notes of the meetings at schools under pressure to become academies, while, said Crumpton's letter, on each occasion she had said: "The minister will make you become an academy, and will intervene both in the school and in the local authority if they do not support this action."

Crumpton told his local paper, the Stourbridge News, he had received an unhelpful response to the letter from the DfE.

The DfE said: "We carried out a thorough investigation and found no basis in the claims."

Meanwhile, campaign groups associated with at least four schools that are under sustained DfE pressure to convert to sponsored academy status have joined together to set up an organisation called Parents Against Forced Academies. The group has a proposal on the 38degrees campaigning website which, with approaching 2,000 supporters, was top of a list of "hot" issues on the site as of last week.

Parents at Roke primary school in Kenley, Surrey, have now said they intend to launch a legal challenge against the DfE's move to enforce academy sponsorship under the Harris chain.


Sunday 10 March 2013

Parents unite against Michael Gove's bullying




"If every school did the same as us...." another step forward
Parents have called  for a public enquiry into bullying behaviour endemic in forced academisation of school. They state that that parents from schools that have experienced bullying from the DfE are fighting back and launching a new campaign group - Parents Against Forced Academies (PAFA). This arose from the frustration parents feel at not being listened to on key decisions about the handing of our schools by rich businessmen running academy chains.

PAFA was born at a half term meeting by parents at several primary schools across London, where they decided to join forces in condemning what they perceive as extreme bullying tactics by Michael Gove and his academy brokers.

Governors and head teachers who resist forced academy are routinely threatened with the sack and in some cases this has been carried through Interim Executive Boards with no previous knowledge of the school or the community   Fake consultations with parents are being run after decisions have already been made and controlled by the academy chains who stand to gain most. The conflict of interest could not be clearer. In the case of Downhills Primary School in Haringey 94% of those taking part in the consultation did not want the school to become an academy sponsored by the Harris Federation. On the same day the consultation was published and available to parents the Secretary of State handed the school over to the Harris Federation. The DfE had funded the consultation to the tune of £50,000 of public money.

Parents are repeatedly being met with rude, abrupt, dismissive and patronising responses from DfE officials when they make a reasoned case for proper consultation and genuine choice over their school’s future. The behaviour of the DfE contravenes key principles set out in the government’s own legal advice and other government agendas such as localism, Big Society and community rights. When making a decision that will impact on the general public, Civil Service Departments are required to meet a series of tests in measuring the lawfulness of an exercise of public law, PAFA believes that Michael Gove is ignoring these basic rules of public life. It is more like dictatorship than democracy.

Parents from schools facing forced academy conversion are joining forces to call for a public enquiry into the decisions made about our schools behind closed doors and the privatisation of our education system by stealth. ‘We know that we are not alone in resisting the forcible academisation of our school,’ says Maria Bache, 40, an HR manager for a media group who has two children at Gladstone Primary in NW London. ‘We stand united with other schools across the country in publicising the unfair treatment we are being subjected to by the DfE.’

Another Gladstone parent, Zaman Wong, said : ‘The decision by the DfE to impose academy status on Gladstone Park Primary is a grossly disproportionate course of action, ignoring the many strengths of our school identified by Ofsted, the indisputable achievements of our pupils and the wishes of the parents. The entire process has been unjustified and artificially rushed, with a complete lack of transparency or any consultation with parents and governors’ The father of two children at the school, one in Reception, concluded: ‘Even a Year 3 child will tell you a choice with one option is no choice at all. ‘ 

PAFA is protesting against these illegal tactics. Key members along with Gladstone Park include protesting parents from high profile schools: Roke Primary in Croydon, and Downhills in Haringey. Other schools protesting schools include Calder High in Hebden Bridge and Thomas Gamuels in Walthamstow.

Angeline Hind of Roke Primary said: “We expect more and more parents and schools to join us as with Ofsted shifting the goalposts once again, there will soon be a torrent of schools subjected to the bullying and underhand methods we have experienced. At times it feels surreal like we are living in Communist China. Our schools are at the tip of a tidal wave to come as more and more schools are forced to convert. This is not about standards but political ideology and privatisation by stealth.”

Notes
The test measuring lawfulness of exercise of public law:
  • Legality -  Departments must act within the scope of any powers and for a proper purpose; not  acting in a hasty and disproportionate fashion.
  • Procedural fairness – for example giving the individual or individuals an opportunity to be heard.
  • Reasonableness or rationality: including the principles of proportionality and the ‘Wednesbury principle’ (when making a reasonable and rational decision all relevant factors must be taken into account and all irrelevant factors omitted). Compatibility with the Human Rights Convention rights and EU law.
·        Parents from Downhills School were involved in working with filmmaker Rhonda Evans in a film about forced academies available online http://www.academiesandlies.org.uk/

These principles are all described in the Judge Over Your Shoulder (JOYS) document issued by the Treasury Solicitor: http://www.tsol.gov.uk/Publications/Scheme_Publications/judge.pdf)









Tuesday 5 March 2013

The story behind Harris's academy aspirations

George Monbiot has given national prominence to the forced academy issue LINK which has attracted many comments on the Guardian website.

This comment sums up the issues very well:
 
Our local secondary schools were taken over by Harris, essentially forcibly. It's no coincidence that Harris is a donor to the Tory Party, and the Tory party are now repaying him. There's no clear information on how much money is now being channelled through Harris for these schools, but if you take an average secondary school budget of £3m-£4m depending upon numbers, you can start to see what big business this is. Harris is fast approaching £100m of taxpayers' cash.

Of course, much of this goes to the schools. But Harris also has set up two profit-making companies which he can instruct his schools to use for provision such as buildings and maintenance. I'm sure that there are also "preferred suppliers" for other services. In addition, Harris provide some services centrally - of course they would claim not to make a profit, but in 2011, the average cost of each member of the Harris Federation staff was over £80,000. His chief executive, and pet Gove advisor, Daniel Moynihan, paid himself a quarter of a million pounds. This came from school budgets. That's the salary of 3 headteachers, or nearly 10 new teachers.

This is just one academy chain. Dig into the others and you will find some equally odious developments.
We need to recognise what this is. Under the guise of Gove and Wilshaw's blatant lies about "falling standards", "dumbing down" and "failing schools", and aided and abetted by a mendacious Tory press happy to repeat obvious nonsense about academy status granting "freedom from LEA control" in areas in which the LEA never had any control, we are witnessing the outright privatisation of our education system.

Our schools are being handed on a plate to rapacious businessmen under the guise of school improvement, yet the real agenda is to marketise the system, remove schools from any local accountability, and allow businesses to reap huge profits from siphoning off money which we paid in taxes for our children's education. Gove and the Tories know this would never obtain public approval, so the lie is pushed again and again that this is a benign process to raise standards, but the events at Roke, at Downhills, at Kelsey Park and Cator Park, to name but a few, give the lie to this. This is a sell-off.

Labour have cowered on this issue because it was them who started this nonsense about academy status being the universal panacea, to cover up what they were really doing, which was rebranding difficult "sink" schools to try and change the intake. That policy worked up to a point as long as the intake changed. But it was always a nonsense to suggest that there was any connection between academy status and results - plenty of academic studies have now demonstrated this link is simply bogus. They are now facing the result of their own propaganda, and to stop this sell-off, they will need to face up to their own lies and mistakes, and admit that this is never what academies were about. Can you hear Twigg saying that ? No, I didn't think so.

Michael Rosen has also commented on the forced academies issue in his latest 'Dear Mr Gove' letter LINK

Friday 1 March 2013

Battle against forced academisation is a fight for democracy - Roke parents


With Gladstone Park Primary parents continuing their campaign against the school being forced to become an academy and suggestions that this might happen to other Brent primary schools, it is worth hearing about the experience of parents in other parts of London. Roke Primary in Croydon has also experienced the bullying nature of the DfE's  'brokerage' department and the parents' campaign has written to the local paper about the experience: LINK
Parents recently received a copy of a letter about forced academy at Roke Primary school from Lord Nash, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Schools to Richard Ottaway, our Conservative MP for South Croydon.
Lord Nash's letter casts Roke Primary as an 'underperforming' school, yet our school is not underperforming under any possible definition of the word and certainly not over a 'long time', which is specified in DfE's own guidance for forced academies. The latest SAT results are above the national average and place the school in the top 20% of Croydon schools. Teaching is regarded by Ofsted, the Local Authority and parents as at least good. Let's be clear forced academy at Roke is NOT about substandard education at Roke.

The reason the school is being forced to academy is that it was placed in an Ofsted category of 'Notice to Improve', mainly due to a lack of data caused by computer problems and leadership/management issues. The Ofsted report was published in mid June 2012. Areas for improvement were outlined and the school, LA and Riddlesdown (as partnering
school) sprung into action and made positive changes very quickly. Yet only 3 months later, in September the DfE informed the head governor that Roke would become an academy.

Factoring in the school summer holiday, the school was given less than 6 weeks to improve. There was no return visit by Ofsted to check on the improvements made and no chance to prove that they could be sustained. This action defeats the purpose of giving a school 'Notice to improve', if they are then denied the chance to demonstrate improvements made.

Lord Nash states that improvement is required in relation to leadership and management. This could happen without removing the school from Local Authority control. It does not need such drastic action as being forced, against the wishes of parents, governors and local community, to become an academy and to be sponsored by Harris.

It would be far more cost effective to simply replace the leadership. Let's make no mistake this is about political ideology not standards.

Lord Nash omits the fact that the Ofsted monitoring visit happened in January 2013, the day after parents launched their campaign and a damning article appeared in The Guardian, stating that Oftsed had not visited before the decision was made. He also omits to make it clear that this was not a full Ofsted inspection and therefore it did not matter what rating for improvement was received it would not lift Roke out of the 'Notice to Improve' category. His letter reads like Roke somehow failed to improved enough to be reclassified which is untrue.

Furthermore, we have been told that the Ofsted inspector said on arrival before the monitoring inspection took place, that Roke would not get a rating better than 'satisfactory' because there was insufficient time between inspections to prove that improvements had been embedded or were sustainable. This is the real reason which, as Lord Nash writes, there is 'limited evidence that (improvements) are secure and sustainable'. It has little to do with the school's efforts but rather with the government failing to give the school enough time to achieve this within its' own inspection frameworks, before rushing to turn the school to an academy.

Lord Nash says, 'Harris has confirmed that it wishes to support notice to improve and bring about the improvement needed' at Roke. Therein lies the crux of the matter. It is highly likely, if a full inspection was to take place today that the school would perform much better, and would come out of 'Notice to Improve' or its new equivalent category.

As it stands, Harris will simply come in and take all the credit for improvements that have already taken place. We believe that Roke may have been targeted as a school where, a relatively small nudge is needed to return us to our previous 'outstanding' status. This will give Harris and academy policy false credibility.

Lord Nash says that the government recognises the 'importance of formal local consultation' and that it is 'a legal requirement before any school can open as an academy'. We suggest that his definition of 'consultation' is different to everyone else. His letter makes it clear that all decisions about Roke, its future as an academy and its sponsor have already been made. To suggest that consultation takes place after the fact is ludicrous. Moreover, to suggest that the consultation is most meaningful when it is run by the preferred Sponsor, in this case Harris, is also ludicrous and bordering on corrupt.

The consultation must be operated legally, and cannot be a presentation or a deliverance of a decision already made - it must be legally meaningful. It must be an actual consultation - you consult and decide as a result, not in advance.

As it stands key decisions about our school have been made behind closed doors before consultation has taken place. The DfE is withholding crucial information about the decision making process, as evidence by failure to disclose information requested by parents under the Freedom of Information act. The DfE has also flouted its own rules regarding forcing a school that is not actually failing. The DfE is not operating by the Principles set down by the Committee of Standards in Public Life (1985) particularly the principles of accountability, openness or honesty.

Put simply, our own British government is breaking all the democratic values that this country holds dear.
The Save Roke Campaign Committee

Friday 15 February 2013

Green Assembly Member backs parents battling against forced academy conversion

Darren Johnson, Green Assembly Member for the whole of London has issued a statement supporting  parent groups in London campaigning against their schools being forcibly converted into academies. He said:
Forcing schools to become academies is deeply wrong on every level, particularly when it flies in the face of what the majority of local parents want. That is why I am giving my full support to the Save Gladstone Park,  Save Roke  and Thomas Gamuel Primary school campaigners in their battle to keep their schools as local authority-run schools,  properly accountable to local people.


Monday 28 January 2013

Is Gove now forcing non-failing schools to become academies?

Press release from the Save Roke Primary campaign who, like Gladstone Park Primary in Brent, are fighting forced academisation:

  
Michael Gove is now forcing well performing schools like Roke Primary in Kenley to become academies, as well as long term failing ones. This fits in with his desire to accelerate his academies programme. Roke may be one of the first but many are likely to follow.

Roke Primary, a previously ‘outstanding’ school, is not underperforming but the DfE are handing it to the Harris Federation, run by David Cameron’s personal friend and major Tory donor, Lord Harris. The decision was made just 4 months after one poor Ofsted report caused mainly by computer failure. The Guardian published claims that Gove may be flouting his own guidance on forced academies, “…his department’s official direction say this should only happen when a school has been underperforming for some time and if the problems are not being tackled”. Guidance set out in the 2010 Schools White Paper is very clear. “Where there has been long-term underperformance, little sign of improvement and serious Ofsted concern, we will convert schools into Academies,…” (Section 7.18).

 Parents believe that forced academy at Roke is going against this guidance. Roke has no consistent history of low performance. The latest SAT results are above the national average. Roke has never been below floor targets. Both Ofsted and the Local Authority agree that Roke is improving. Ofsted’s recent monitoring verdict, received by parents on Friday, was that satisfactory progress has been made. This was the best rating Roke could achieve without a longer time between inspections to show improvements had been sustained. It is clear that Roke has improved without the need for academy status or sponsorship by the Harris Federation. Despite this, forced academy is still going ahead.

Parents are campaigning against forced academy, and the complete lack of consultation or right of appeal. They are concerned about the speed and manner in which forced academy has occurred. They oppose Harris as sponsor. Their choice is Riddlesdown Collegiate, the local secondary academy, to which most Roke pupils progress. A long term partnership with Riddlesdown has become closer since Roke was issued a ‘notice to improve’. It is clear, from the progress made, that the partnership is working. If, forced academy must go ahead, Riddlesdown, not Harris is the governor, parent and staff choice of sponsor.

Roke parent, Angeline Hind said, “I thought sponsored academies were all about improving schools which have been underperforming for years. Roke is a good school which wavered before turning itself around very quickly. To force us into academy with a sponsor used to dealing with seriously failing schools seems like an extreme reaction”. Parent Debbie Shaw commented “Roke is a great catch for an academy chain like Harris, our results are already good and they will be able to claim the credit for improvements that have already happened”. Father Nigel Geary-Andrews said “It is alarming that the government is rushing through forced academies on schools like Roke, where there is no proven record of failure over any length of time, without any consultation with parents at all and no way of appealing. This does not seem democratic or transparent to me”

Thursday 17 January 2013

Brent Council and schools: 'Responsibility without power' conundrum

Ofsted announce today that they will be going into local authorities where schools are not doing as well as expected and inspecting 10% of schools.  They will be particularly focusing on how the local authority is monitoring schools and supporting improvement. Brent schools are doing well but do appear to be under the DfE spotlight at the moment.

There is a contradiction here because the Coalition's policy is to 'release' schools from what they call local authoirty 'control'. This has meant that schools that become academies manage their own improvement and more power is devolved to heads and governing bodies in local authority schools. Schools appoint their own Link Advisers  (the latest version of inspectors) who are supposed to act as a critical friend who are increasingly consultants, rather than being employed directly by the local authority. Some suspect that appointing your own critical friend ensures that  the critical friend is not too critical. As a result of schools' autonomy School Improvement Services have been cut.

 In Brent things have gone further with primary school headteachers decide to set up a social enterprise to manage their own improvement services with the local authority retaining only core services for schools causing concern. The danger in this is it relies on schools themselves, via headteacher, governors and link adviser, recognising that they are not doing well and seeking help from the diminished local authority.

The recent Ofsted report on Gladstone Park Primary School  LINK which had lead to it being given Grade 4 Inadequate, apart from being unique in not mentioning the headteacher, has a passage on the local authority.
Representatives from the local authority have helped the school identify where teaching could be improved but they have not asked questions about the school’s progress records so they have not had a strong impact on addressing the weaknesses in pupils’ achievement
Early this term following the Ofsted report on Gladstone Park and the earlier report on Salusbury Primary, issued an updated guide on Schools Causing Concern. It sets out the role of the Link Adviser:

  Link advisers are expected to challenge and support the school’s self-evaluation and planning.

The link adviser acts as a critical professional friend to the school, helping its leaders to:

·        evaluate the school’s performance

·        identify priorities for improvement

·        plan effective change

·        discuss with the school any additional support it may need.



The link adviser is the principal source of challenge and support to schools causing concern. 



The service deploys link advisers whose experience and expertise is well matched to the needs of such schools.  When a school is identified as in decline or a cause for concern, the link adviser is required to provide regular updates on progress to the Principal Adviser and to the Head of Services to Schools. 



The link adviser ensures that the headteacher is fully aware of the link adviser’s view of the school, as recorded in the Records of Visit and in the School Report Form (SRF). The link adviser constantly challenges the school causing concern on the pace and extent of improvement through regular, frequent link adviser visits. The link adviser will also provide the head with strong support, appropriate to the needs of that head. 
Following the Ofsted Report parents at Gladstone Park questioned Faira Ellks, Head of  Brent School Improvement Services, on why the Link Adviser did not pick up on the school's weaknesses. Minutes of the Parents' Meeting record:
Faira Ellks introduced herself and explained her role was to provide monitoring and support to schools. She said that the school’s previous Link Adviser (a new one has been appointed) was very experienced and had pointed out weaknesses in the school. Although she’d had concerns, she believed that over the course of her year’s inspections, the school had done enough to pass the Ofsted inspection and judged the school as meriting a grade 2 (Good). In hindsight, it had to be acknowledged that this judgment was over-generous partly, at least, because it did not take account of quite recent changes in the Ofsted inspection framework. Because the Governing Body, which holds the school to account, had received a report of Good, it did not act as it would have done had this assessment properly reflected the school’s inadequacies. Although the Link Adviser had recommended in her report that there was still work to be done, Ofsted did not agree that enough work had been done.
Parents at Gladstone are challenging the DfE's attempts to force it to become an academy  and calling for the DfE to recognise the strengths of their school.  In Croydon parents at Roke Primary are fighting a similar battle about what they call a 'hostile takeover' of a successful school by the Harris Academy chain:

Nigel Geary-Andrews, a parent said:
For years and years it's been a very, very, good school. There's one little blip and Michael Gove seems to have seen an opportunity and jumped in. It feels like a hostile take-over of a very much loved school.
Speaking at the Brent Executive on Monday regarding the expansion of secondary schools, Cllr George Crane said that the problem was that the local authority had responsibility for providing school places but did not have responsibility for schools now that most have become academies. It is responsibility without power. There is a danger that as a result of cuts to services and increased autonomy of schools, that the local authority will be in exactly that position at a time when Ofsted is expecting more of them.