What's behind the offer of 'half price' school uniforms by free school?

The Kilburn Times this week LINK  publishes an article about a new primary free school, Kilburn Grange,  offering half prices uniforms to pupils entiled to free school meals.  The uniforms are complete with an old-fashioned 1950s style blazer.

Despite the positive gloss by the school it appears that this is a possibly desperate gambit because the Reception classes due to start in September 2015 are not yet full.  Given the shortage of primary places in the borough this is quite unusual. The closing date for this round of applications is today - Friday June 26th.

Another aspect of the 'offer' is that the school receives the pupil premium for chldren entitled to free school meals so in terms of accounting that means the pupil premium subsideses the school uniform discount. Currently the pupil premium is worth £1,300 per child.

Whether this is the best use of the pupil premium, designed to improve the educational opportunities and attainment of poorer children in order to 'close the gap' with better off children, is arguable.

A Scrutiny Committee Task Group recently published a report on good practice in Brent on the use of the pupil premium. LINK

They stated: 

The task group found that Brent schools are already very innovative and creative with their interventions on closing the attainment gap. There were wonderful examples of Brent secondary and primary schools trying unconventional interventions and being able to show impact and improved outcomes for children. 

This diagram shows the range of uses of the  pupil premium in Brent primary schools.

Subsidising a uniform is about easing access to a school with an expensive school uniform  school rather than spending it on teaching and other activities once the child is at school in order to close the gap in attainment.

I get to speak to a Brent Council meeting!

For the record. after the Full Council deputation debacle that required 5 full working days notice for a deputation, I emailed Brent Council last night at 2 minutes to 5 asking to speak at Scrutiny Committee that evening.  Scrutiny begins at 7pm.

I was granted permission by the Chair  and spoke to the Committee about the Task Force being set up to investigate the use of the Pupil Premium in Brent schools.

All a bit mystifying.

Central Middlesex A&E Closure and the Pupil Premium under Scrutiny next week

There was considerable concern at the recent Health consultation at Bridge Park In Stonebridge, over the closure of Central Middlesex A&E and particularly about whether replacement facilities will be ready. There was also concern about the recent Requiring Improvement judgement on the Northwick Park A&E while Central Middlesex A&E received a 'Good'. The A&E closes on September 10th and a demonstration is scheduled to take place to mark its demise.

The Brent Council Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on September  9th, the day before the closure, will be questioning the professionals concerned.

The Agenda states: 

The Scrutiny Committee will receive an up-date on the arrangements in place for the closure of the A&E unit at Central Middlesex Hospital, and Brent changes to related services, to ensure a high quality of health care is accessible to residents.  This will reflect recent concerns raised following  Care Quality Commission inspections at Northwick Park Hospital.  Senior Representatives from the Northwest London Hospital Trust and the Clinical Commissioing Group will be at the meeting to answer questions.

After its widely criticised lack lustre perfomance at its first meeting, the Scrutiny Committee is reportedly determined to up its game.

At the same meeting a Pupil Premium Task Force will be set up. Task Forces, with a specific remit, are one of the ways the Commmittee will carry outs its work.    The Pupil Premium is the extra money schools get for enhancing the educational opportunities for disadvantaged pupils and now forms  a substantial part of the budget of many Brent Schools.

The purpose of the task group will be to focus on analysing the current use of the Pupil Premium Grant, the outcomes which are being achieved in comparison with national performance and to promote best practise.

This will include:

• How eligible pupils in Brent have been performing since the premium was introduced

• How schools in Brent have been spending, managing and monitoring the Pupil Premium

• The possible lack of correlation between schools with the highest number of eligible pupils and the schools making best use of the PPG

• Identifying good practices in Brent schools, across the UK and learning from national organisation such as the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)

• How could schools in Brent spend the premium more effectively to raise pupil attainment

• The Future of the Pupil Premium in Brent - future funding, changes for September 2014

It will be interesting to see who is on the Task Force and whether the Scrutiny Committee goes out to teachers, parents and pupils for members of the force. It would be too easy also to just see things in terms of extra 'booster classes' rather than the enrichment activities that some schools have found really increase children's enjoyment, motivation, confidence and thus their achievement.

Sarah Teather's full personal statement on her decision not to stand in 2015

In just over a week's time, I shall reach the tenth anniversary of my election to Parliament in the Brent East by-election. I took some time off this summer and found myself reflecting a great deal on the last ten years.
It has been an enormous privilege to serve as an MP in Brent. Indeed, for me personally, so much of the last decade has been both rich and surprising. I am not sure that I would ever have expected to be elected so young, and I certainly never expected that I would have had the opportunity to serve in Government.

The greatest privilege of my work both as a constituency MP and as a Minister has been the gift of being able to share in the private joys and struggles of so many people's lives - many different from one another and very different from my own. I shall always be inspired by the profound courage and dignity I have witnessed in people I have worked with, often in the face of the most extraordinary difficulties.

Of all my parliamentary work, the campaign I remain most proud of is the campaign to get my constituent released from Guantanamo Bay. I shall always count the moment my constituent walked back in through his own front door and picked up his five year-old daughter for the first time in her life as one of the most precious of my life.

In Government, the moment I count as my proudest is the one where I listened to Nick Clegg announce our intention to end the routine detention of children in the immigration system - something I worked hard to deliver, in what, at times, felt an almost insurmountable battle with the Home Office. I feel humbled too to have been able to play my part in delivering the pupil premium to schools and to extend free early education to two year olds, and perhaps the work dearest to my heart, that of reforming the system of support for children with special educational needs.

There have been so many rewards to this work -- too many to list here. But having taken the summer to reflect on the future, I feel now that at the General Election, the right time will be right for me to step aside. I wanted to explain why I have decided not to seek re-election in 2015.

I first joined the party almost exactly twenty years ago, during fresher's week at university. It was then -- and still is now - absolutely inconceivable that I could ever join any other political party. As with most party members, there have always been a few issues where I have disagreed with party policy. But over the last three years, what has been difficult is that policy has moved in some of the issues that ground my own personal sense of political vocation - that of working with and serving the most vulnerable members of society. I have disagreed with both Government and official party lines on a whole range of welfare and immigration policies, and those differences have been getting larger rather than smaller. Disagreements with the party on other areas of policy I have always felt could be managed, but these things are just core to my own sense of calling to politics. I have tried hard to balance my own desire to truthfully fight for what I believe on these issues with the very real loyalty and friendship I feel to party colleagues, but that has created intense pressure, and at times left me very tired. I don't think it is sustainable for me personally to continue to try and do that in the long term.

I want to reassure people in Brent that I shall continue to work very hard to represent them over the next 18 months until the next General Election. My constituency office will remain open five days a week, just as it has always been. I shall be out campaigning for the local elections with my local LibDem team over the forthcoming months and will campaign to get my Liberal Democrat successor elected to Parliament in the General Election. In Parliament I shall continue with my work as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees and will carry on making the case for a fair and humane immigration system as Parliament considers a new immigration bill in the coming months.

I hope that I have been able to support and represent the people of Brent well as their MP, but I feel rich beyond measure to have been able to do this work here. I shall always count myself indebted to those who gave me this opportunity to serve - to the thousands of constituents who voted for me and to the many Liberal Democrat supporters and members who campaigned and walked the streets for me over three elections. I hope that, over the last 10 years, I have at least gone some way in repaying the faith that so many have shown in me.

Sarah

Lib Dem councillor speaks out on benefit cap 'disaster' for families

It is refreshing to hear that one of our Liberal Democrat councillors spoke from the heart recently, rather than from the party script, when asked about the impact of the housing and other benefit caps and benefit cuts.

In response to a question from a member of a visiting delegation of Swedish councillors and council official  last week, Cllr Barry Cheese (Lib Dem Brondesbury Park) said.

The benefit caps and cuts will be a disaster for families and in particular children who will be forced to leave their schools. This will cause anxiety to the child who will feel insecure and it will have  a serious impact on their learning ability.   The Government created the Pupil Premium to help these very children and now the children it was meant for won't be there.

Can Teather detoxify in time for 2015?

Michael Gove and Sara Teather in happier times

Sarah Teather's interview with the Observer on Sunday has given rise to a rash of speculation about her future intentions.  Not everyone has been impressed by her statements against  the benefit cap suggesting that they are based on pure political opportunism.

On the Tom Pride blog LINK the spoof quote from Teather says:

Clearly we couldn’t give a toss what happens to people in safe Labour seats, but it is immoral of the government to try to save money by attacking the worse off people in marginal constituencies such as mine. It’s time the government stopped attacking the most vulnerable people in society such as Liberal Democrats  -  and found ways to reduce future levels of unemployment amongst the hardest-hit MPs in the country like me.

The General Election result was close between Lib Dems and Labour in 2010:

Sarah Teather	Liberal Democrats	20026	44%	Elected
Dawn Butler	Labour	18681	41%	Not elected
Sachin Rajput	Conservative	5067	11%	Not elected
Shahrar Ali	Green Party	668	1%	Not elected
Errol Williams	Christian Party	488	1%	Not elected
Abdi Duale	Respect	230	1%	Not elected
Dean McCastree	Independent	163	0%	Not elected

Since the General Election the Lib Dems in Brent have returned to grassroots campaigning, particularly over library closures, but have not managed to remove the taint of betrayal over Coalition policies. They did not stand a candidate at all in the Barnhill by-election where Michael Pavey had a comfortable win for Labour and the Conservative vote fell away. The Lib Dems have refused to call by-elections in two seats where their councillors have moved out of Brent. Expecting defeat they are putting off the evil hours while .Labour is on the doorstep most weekends.

In 2010 Sarah Teather fought a left-wing campaign based on her record in opposing tuition fees, opposition to the Iraq war,  support for the Palestinian cause, bolstered by a visit to Palestine and a record of efficient casework. As a result she probably captured some votes from Dawn Butler, the Labour candidate who had been caught up in the expenses scandal.. LINK

However, this left-wing platform left her exposed when she became a minister in the Coalition. When I carried a copy of her 2003 speech against tuition fees on this blog in December 2010 it got the highest ever number of retweets I have ever received.  The shift in her position was glaring and left her open to charges of hypocrisy. Her closeness to Michael Glove an an education minister and her acquiesce in Tory academies and free school policies further alienated her previous supporters.  As a minister Teather moved away from supporting the intergration of children with special needs and disabilities into mainsteam education, earning further approbrium.

Teather saw the Pupil Premium as a popular policy that would help her claw back some  of her support and her press team were active in trying to claim the subsequent increase in some Brent school budgets were result of her personal intervention.

When Teather absented herself from the vote on benefit reforms right-wing Tories rose against her but others on the left thought she should have gone further and resigned at this time.

She appeared to be writhing on the end of the Tory's Coalition hook and was finally put out of her misery in the recent reshuffle.

Here claim that she left the Coalition to concentrate on her constituents has been challenged by campaigners who say that if she is truly going to do that she should be opposing the closure of Central Middlesex A&E and the privatisation of the NHS, come out against the cuts in local government funding, and oppose the housing benefit and welfare benefit caps.

The question is, having addressed the latter in the Observer, how much further will she go to fundamentally challenge the Lib Dem's collusion in the Coalition?  Is her own collusion in the Coalition such a toxic legacy that she can never escape from it? Is this this the first of a series of distancing  statements that she hopes will give her a firm base from which to fight the 2015 General Election?

Will we see her at the head of marches again in the months ahead?

Dawn Butler has signalled her determination to gain Labour's nomination again in 2015 although it is by no means certain that she will succeed. A candidate may well emerge from among the ambitious youngsters on the current Brent Council Labour Executive.

Speculation is rife on the UK Polling website LINK with even a mischievous suggestion that she may defect to Labour, which would certainly put the cat among the pigeons!  Another possibility mooted by some is that she is preparing the ground for a senior position in the Lib Dem leadership with Nick Clegg  likely to go ahead of the General Election.  Teather showed that she can be ruthless when back in 2006, then a junior Lib Dem spokesperson,  she signed the letter calling for Charles Kennedy to resign. Will she do the same for Clegg?

.If she is sufficiently detoxified by 2015 she may by then represent the acceptable (and rather different) face of the Lib Dems for a potential coalition with Labour. This seems most unlikely at present but an awful  lot can happen between now and 2015.