Monday 18 November 2013

Give Brent Council the power and finance to build new schools for those without a school place

The Kilburn Times LINK this weekend headlined the news that more than 600 Brent primary school children are without a school place. I recently obtained figures from Brent Council under a Freedom of Information request that sheds a little more light on the situation.

There are in fact vacancies in some Brent primary schools but these may not be geographically convenient for parents of children out of school, especially when they involve children in a family attending several different primary schools.


This is the snapshot of  vacancies and children out of school on November 8th. Brent Managed and School Managed refers to the administration of admission applications. You can see that there is a slight surplus of school places in Years 3, 5 and 6.

The schools with several Reception vacancies at the time of the snapshot were Ark Franklin Primary Academy (the academy converted former Kensal Rise Primary), Brentfield Primary, Fryent Primary (recently expanded) and St Mary's RC Primary. The position changes rapidly so it is likely that these places will have been filled by now.

The fact that many children attend schools which are not their first choice or the most convenient means that many are on waiting lists for one or more other schools. With the current movement of families due to benefit reforms this produces 'churn' - high mobility as children change schools.

Despite a common National Curriculum across local authority schools this still produces disruption for children as they get used to a new school,  new teacher and new classmates, and is disruption for teachers as they cater for an ever changing class population.

Research indicates that such mobility has an initial impact on standards of achievement of the children who change schools.

The exceptional nature of the place shortage in Reception means that in total there are almost 2,500 on waiting lists in Brent. On the day of the snapshot five schools had more than 100 on the Reception waiting list: Anson 118, Ark 264, Islamia 104, Malorees Infants 102 and Wembley Primary 100.

I have asked for further information on how many of these are pupils on several waiting lists.

Things become much more settled at Year 1 with Barham the longest waiting list at 30, with a more equal distribution across schools, totalling 546. By Year 6 the total is 360.

The schools

I requested figures on the number of children out of school by planning area in order to get a picture of the geographical distribution. Brent Council said these figures were not available and instead provided distribution maps which are not exact. The blue figures on the map below indicate groups of children needing a Reception school place.


The demand for Reception places reinforces the need for planned construction of new primary schools by local councils rather than reliance on the vagaries of free school providers popping up in areas of need. The Council presently has a statutory duty to provide education for these children without having the powers to do so apart from expanding schools which are already often on crowded sites.

The Government needs to give local authorities back the power to plan and build new schools as well as the finance to do so. Instead they are wasting money of unwanted free school vanity projects.

Full documentation on my Freedom of Information Request can be found HERE


















































































Sunday 17 November 2013

‘I’m an Ark Academy apologist. Get me out of here!’


Copland staff  and parents underwhelmed by  ‘consultation’ process.  

Guest blog by 'Participatory Democracy'

Copland staff have always been a little sceptical about ‘consultation’, possibly since ex-Head Davies once announced to a full staff meeting (on applying for Trust status) : ‘the consultation period is over’, having omitted to do anything to indicate that it had ever actually begun. So when various Ark representatives, including the Ark Academy Head, Dame Delia Smith OBE, and IEB members fronted a ‘consultation’ meeting for Copland staff last Thursday, no one was expecting them to get a warm reception. And that’s exactly what they didn’t get. Still, as almost all the staff had only ever seen one member of the IEB before, it was, if nothing else,  a chance for them to get a glimpse of this year’s latest  new bosses. Or, as one ‘deleted’ teacher put it: ‘it’s always nice to be able to put a face to your redundancy notice’.

Saturday 16 November 2013

Five to go on to Labour's Brent Central ballot

Labour's Brent Central Parliamentary Selection Committee has chosen five candidates to go on to the ballot of members after today's interviews, according to my sources.

The selected contestants are said to be the four candidates who got most nominations from wards and affiliates: Dawn Butler, Sabina Khan, Zaffar van Kalwala and Parmijit Dhanda plus Dr Sundar Thava who as I reported via Twitter this morning has had a late surge of support.

This information has not been officially confirmed.

The ballot outcome will not be known until December.

Meanwhile Dawn Butler has tweeted her congratulations to Uma Kumaran followed her selection as Labour PPC for Harrow East.

Dinosaur and developer join protest against loss of Cricklewood green space


Demonstrators protesting against the possible loss of the green space outside B&Q in Cricklewood Lane in a deal between Barnet Council and the Brent Cross developers, coped quite well when they were joined by a dinosaur.


They were rather more surprised when they were joined by Jonathan Joseph, of Brent Cross Cricklewood Development Partners, and the man they have been battling since at least 2009.

Friday 15 November 2013

Demonstrate tomorrow to save Cricklewood's only green space from developers

Outside B&Q :

Unit 1, Broadway Retail Park Cricklewood Lane Cricklewood, London LONDON NW2 

11am Saturday 
November 16th

Brent X Coalition LINK

Now Woodfield School consults on academy conversion

Woodfield School, a secondary special needs school in Kingsbury, Brent has announced that it is consulting on the possibility of converting to secondary status.

It would be the first special needs school to convert and the last of the local authority secondary schools to move to academy status.

The document below has sent out to interested parties and sets out the Governing Body's position:
The Governing Body of Woodfield School is exploring whether to convert to academy status. As part of this exploration, the Governors are seeking responses about whether to convert, especially the reasons for the views that are held. The responses will help inform Governors’ final decision.

Willesden's local harvest yields fruit, wine, cider, chutney and crumbles!


Photo: Jonathan Goldberg
Brent's fruit picking groups have had a bumper harvest this year, saving almost three tons of fruit that would otherwise go to waste in local gardens. The three groups, “Kensal to Kilburn Fruit Harvesters”, “Willesden Fruit Harvesters” and “Mapesbury Residents' Association” (MapRA) have between them picked a record amount of fruit, which has been shared with local schools and community groups.

Controversial school expansion plans bring accusations of skewed consultation

Princess Frederica Primary School, Kensal Rise
I have been reporting here for some time some of the controversies around school expansion: loss of play space, loss of additional rooms such as libraries and ICT suites for classroom conversion, and concerns that primary schools can become too big and lose the intimacy and family centredness valued by many parents.

Present government policy restricts local authorities' ability to build new schools where they are most needed so they instead expand existing schools to cope with increased demand.  The government argues that Free Schools can provide additional places but this is dependent on a provider setting up in an area of shortage and many actually set up where there are already enough places. In addition Free School are not democratically accountable through the local authority system and do not have to employ qualified staff.  They are also much more expensive to set up than a local authority school and thus deprive LAs of finance.

Barry Gardiner MP and Cllr Michael Pavey have both supported the campaign for local authorities to be given powers to plan and build new schools. Meanwhile the problem remains,

The proposed expansion of Princess Frederica Primary School has been particular controversial with parents raising concerns in a letter to the governing body as long ago as July.

Now a local parent and residents has written to MPs and councillors about his concerns over the way the consultation has been carried out and made a formal complaint to Brent Council: