Brent academies propose new free school and special schools a new free special school

With the present government snot allowing local authorities to build new schools to meet growing demand for school places, Brent Council has said it will pursue options with academy and free school providers.

As all local secondary schools are academies it is unable to force them to expand on existing sites. Now local academies that are not part of a chain have claimed they have been backed by Brent Council in proposing a new secondary free school in the north of Brent.

Separately a consortium of special schools have forward a bid for a new special school to meet growing demand. This also claims to be backed by the Council.

In both cases a headteacher will be appointed from an existing school and will head up the new school in addition to their present post.

Both bids will have to be approved by the DfE.

The secondary proposal is for Brent North School in the north of Brent/Wembley area and is backed by Terry Molloy, headteacher of Claremont High School; Mike Hulme headteacher of Queens Park Community School and Gil Bal, Executive headteacher of Wembley High Technology College. Gil Bal would me headteacher of the new school in addition to her role at Wembley High.

The proposers have no site in mind at the moment and readers will know the difficulties various free schools have had in finding a site in Brent. A site in the north of Brent will add to the imbalance of schools between the north and the south of the borough.

Wembley already has Ark Elvin (previously Copland), Ark Academy, Michaela Free School,  Preston Manor and Wembley High with the new 1,000 plus private French School also in the area. Elsewhere in the north of the borough there is Claremont, Kingsbury High and St Gregory's RC - the only non-academy. The Jewish Free School, situated in Kingsbury, takes few pupils from Brent.

Despite not having a site the school intends to open in September 2018 with 180 places for Year 7 pupils. It promises to admit children of 'all faiths and none, giving priority to siblings and children at local primary schools'.

The proposers  justify the need for a new school on the basis that Claremont, Queens Park and Wembley High collectively received over 3000 applications for Year 7 in 2016, including almost 1,000 first preferences for the 670 available places.

This is their brochure:


The second proposal is for a new special school and is led by Woodfield Special School Academy, Manor School and the Village School. This may prove to be controversial as there are many who want to see special needs pupils integrated into mainstream schools rather than segregated into special provision. This is dependent on resourcing that ensure high quality provision.

The school would be sited at the junction of Christchurch Avenue and Brondesbury Park NW6 which is possibly the same site that Marylebone Boys Free School had their eye on. LINK

It would provide 100 places for children aged between 4 and 18 with complex needs including ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder). The proposers say that the school is needed because the existing special schools are full.

Ms Jardine, Head of Manor School, would be headteacher of the new school in addition to her existing post.

This is their brochure:

Claremont headteacher rises to the academy bait

Getting 10% more money (at the expense of other schools and centrally provided services) and more curriculum freedom (which the Green Party argue all schools should have), is the bait provided by the government to entice schools to become academies - and Terry Malloy, headteacher of Claremont High School in Kenton has swallowed it hook, line and sinker. He remarks, 'It enhances your income giving you more money to spend on pupils and that's a good thing.' As someone remarked this is a cash grab that will deprive other schools of income and ruin central services that provide support to all schools.

Malloy was speaking somewhat prematurely as the issue has not yet been discussed by Claremont's governing body. That was another government ploy: they wrote to headteachers rather than governing bodies with the 'academy offer' revealing their disregard for the democratic structures currently in place in schools. Headteachers are in charge of the day to day management of schools, governing bodies are responsible for their strategic direction. Changing status is clearly a strategic matter and governing body as community as well as school representatives should take account of the wider impact on other schools and the community.

Labour having so strongly backed the Trojan horse of academies under Blair and Brown are now backtracking, but lack credibility. Ed Balls, speaking to the Guardian, claims that Labour's academy programme was 'a progressive and comprehensive education policy' and 'What the Tories are proposing is a total perversion of that policy. It will be focused on the schools that are already doing well not those who need extra support. And for all the rhetoric about parent power and decentralisation it will remove the requirement to consult local parents or the local authority and will mean thousands of schools reporting directly to the secretary of state.'

In fact under Labour academy governing bodies appointed governors and the academy sponsor was guaranteed a built in majority. The role of local authorities was only latterly partially restored and academy agreements made subject to agreed admissions criteria. We in Brent know how little consultation there was with local parents and community over the Ark Academy and also remember the council survey (quoted recently by John Christie, Brent's Director of Children and Families against the Coalition policy)that showed the majority of Brent residents wanted schools to be run by the local authority - not by charities, private sponsors or faith groups.Labour had already prepared the ground which the Tories are now  enthusiastically occupying.

Sarah Teather Lib Dem, Brent Central, now Children's Minister, was strongly opposed to Labour's version of academies when she was shadow minister for education, but was demoted when the Lib Dem party leadership changed and their policy softened (just in time for Brent Lib Dems to change their line on the ARK Academy). Now in the Coalition she is having to support an even worse version of the Labour policy she so vigorously criticised. During the General Election campaign she described the Tory free school policy as a 'shambles, unless you give local authorities that power to plan and unless you actually make sure that there is money is available, it's just a gimmick'.

 "Trust in me"

Michael Gove, behind the polite, mild manner and silver tongue,(resembling Kaa in the Jungle Book) is a right-wing Conservative who is implementing potentially devastating, ill-thought out policies at reckless speed. He is Teather's boss - how long can she go along with undemocratic, cash grabbing academies and the 'shambles' of free schools?  The fig leaf of the Lib Dem's pupil premium, on the back burner anyway, will not make up for the cuts and privatising that will wreak havoc in local schools.