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| Roe Green Strathcona staff, parents & pupils protest at Brent Civic Centre |
The Brent Council Cabinet is likely to make a decision on the future of Roe Green Strathcona School at its September Meeting. The formal consultation closed last night. It is worth reading the detailed letter that Brent North MP, Barry Gardiner, wrote to the June Cabinet which made the decision to move to formal consultation.
Meanwhile there is speculation about the possible plans that Brent Council may have for the Strathcona site including possible sell-off to a developer or provision for the Islamia Primary School which is short of space at its present site
LINK.
Barry Gardiner wrote:
I write
to you prior to the cabinet decision to be taken on Monday 17th June 2019 in relation to the future
of Roe Green Strathcona Primary School.
You will
be aware that it is very rare that I comment upon what I recognise to be the
proper functions of the council. That I do so now is because I am deeply
concerned by the proposal to move to a formal consultation on the closure of
the school which I believe to be flawed on every level.
On the
evening of the 6th of June, 120 people attended a
public meeting at the school to voice their protest against the Council, the
substance of the proposal and the process by which the council has conducted
its dealings with the school.
The
officers report for the meeting of the council where the informal consultation
was set out, presented what can only be described as an extremely partial view
of the history of the school. In particular it failed to explain the
discrepancies between the current reasons for the proposed closure and the
original reasons for opening the school in 2014 and for confirming it with
permanent status in 2016.
Brent
Council’s stated rationale for closing the School is in response to an
estimated surplus of pupil places in the borough’s “Primary Planning Area 2” at
reception level, which has been predicted in Brent Council’s 2019-23 School
Place Planning Strategy. The Council have also said that other high quality
schools in the area have capacity to provide education to those pupils who
would need to be relocated. It has also been suggested that the school receives
an additional amount of funding for operating on a split site and closure would
therefore save scarce resources.
However,
this rationale is in stark contrast to the decision made at Cabinet only three
years ago on 11 April 2016 to permanently increase the age range and expand Roe
Green Infant School on a split site. At that time councillors were explicitly
informed that whilst there was a shortage of places predicted up to 2019/20,
thereafter there was expected to be a surplus of places. Councillors in 2016
were advised that this would enable Brent to meet the guideline of a 5% surplus
which was deemed necessary to give appropriate parental choice. The current
figure was then only 2.2% and was deemed insufficient. It is simply untrue
therefore to claim that the current surplus was unforeseen and that the council
are having now to respond to a new set of circumstances.
One of
the key reasons put forward in 2016 in favour of making Strathcona permanent
was that it would save the council £500,000 and it is therefore a matter of
concern that councillors are now being told that the £200,000 split-site
funding is a reason to close the school. I trust the cabinet will want to
examine very carefully the basis upon which the original cost saving was
predicated and why it no longer appears to be the case.
When
doing so councillors will no doubt also consider that their decision in 2016 to
make the school permanent also means that those teachers’ contracts which had
originally been temporary, were at that point made permanent. A decision now to
close the school would therefore also lead to serious redundancy costs which
appear not to have been quantified in the earlier officers’ report.
Perhaps
the most perplexing issue relating to the estimated surplus of places however,
is that the council gave approval for a major expansion of places at Byron
Court Primary and the creation of a new primary school at East Lane Primary
AFTER the decision had been taken to make Strathcona permanent. The development
at Byron Court was extensively opposed by local residents, and yet the council
pressed ahead on the grounds that these places would be required. It seems
perverse now to decide to close Strathcona when it was known at the time that
the bulge in nursery admissions would decline by 2019/20.
The
officers have suggested that other schools in the area would be able to provide
places for the students who needed to transfer after any closure at Strathcona.
This ignores the disruption to the education of those children who would be
asked to change schools. Such disruption would be particularly acute for those
children expected to go into year 6 at a new school just before they sit their
SATS. The need to make new friends and settle into a different school routine
would inevitably be damaging for those children’s achievement.
It is
also right that the council consider whether their action has been fair on the
whole school.
Roe Green
Strathcona opened in 2014, in response to an emergency request from Brent
Council. A large number of children were unable to be provided with a primary
place. In fact many children had been out of mainstream education for as much
as ten months. It was on this basis that Brent asked Roe Green Infants if they
would set up a second site. Originally a site owned by Kingsbury High School
was to be the location, but when that proved too costly the Council asked Roe
Green to open the new site at Strathcona — some 1.6 miles away from their
central site. This was an enormous challenge for the school, but it was a
challenge Roe Green readily accepted.
The
Governing Body of Roe Green Infant School agreed to manage a new provision of
Students at the Strathcona site at a Governing Body meeting of 14 January 2014.
Teachers and staff worked day and night for seven weeks in order to convert the
dilapidated Strathcona buildings and meet the Council’s deadline for a fully
operational School. This was achieved and the Roe Green Strathcona site
successfully admitted its first pupils in two months later in March 2014.
In
October 2014, the Cabinet approved the “School Place Planning Strategy
2014-2018”. A refresh of the strategy was subsequently considered and agreed by
Members at the November 2015 Cabinet.
In this
report, the Council recognised the need for school places, and also
acknowledged that such places should be established through the expansion of
existing schools.
In 2015,
Roe Green Strathcona were informed by the Department of Education that their
temporary status prevented the School from extending by more that two year
groups. The School would be in breach of DoE rules, if a permanent school
status was not formalised by the next academic year. It is important to
understand that the Council officers did not approach the school to advise them
of this. It was the DoE that notified them of this deadline. On 11 April 2016,
a determination was reached by Cabinet, agreeing to expand and alter – on a
permanent basis – the age-range of Roe Green Strathcona School, effective from
September 2016 on the grounds I have set out above.
Despite
all the significant work that the school has done and the cooperation it’s
staff have given to help the council resolve the very serious problem they had
with a lack of places, the council appears not to have reciprocated that good
will. It has long been a matter of contention that Brent Council have
continuously failed to ensure the school is properly advertised on the
Council’s electronic enrolment system.
There
have been significant difficulties experienced at the School with pupil
admissions. Within the Cabinet Report of 11 April 2016, Brent Council
acknowledge that pupil admission arrangements will be a big challenge for the
School:
“Currently there is no mechanism for parents to
select the Strathcona site. By making the provision permanent it enables the
authority (as the admissions authority for Roe Green Infant School because it
is a community school) to consult in winter 2016/17 upon admissions criteria
for 2017/18 year that would enable parents to express a preference for the
Strathcona provision.”
Despite
this statement, the most recent Council report dated 17th June 2019 now states that pupil
admission arrangements at Roe Green Strathcona are “not considered to be
sustainable”. This is hardly surprising when Roe Green Strathcona does not
appear on the “drop down” list on the council’s website. It is unacceptable for
the council to fail to ensure that parents are able to access information about
the school on the electronic enrolment system and then accuse the school of not
having “sustainable admissions”.
The
effect is that parents are presently not able to choose Strathcona as a main
option for primary provision on Brent Council’s website, and that the
Strathcona School only ever appears as a subsidiary option of the Roe Green
Infant School site. Indeed, councillors might be shocked to find that even when
one uses the School’s postcode as a student’s residential address on Brent
Council’s enrolment system, the Strathcona site is not offered. Only
alternative local Schools are suggested in the search results. It is clear that
there is a strong positive correlation between the decrease in pupil intake at
the School, and the difficulty many parents have in registering their children
onto the Strathcona roll.
Council
officers have been alerted to this issue repeatedly but have never resolved the
matter. It is also the case that in the past five years, up to 85% of pupil
admissions at the Strathcona site have been during the middle of the academic
year. I understand that Ms Sidhu, the headteacher, believes that in-year
admission data has not been properly accounted for in any of the drafted Brent
Council reports.
If
council officers had actively been trying to prepare a case for the closure of
the school, these are precisely the measures they might have taken. First
ensure nobody knows about the place and even when they live next door, refer
them to another school. In fact the head teacher has said that she has several
reports of prospective parents who asked for their child to come to the school
actually being told by council officers that the roll at Strathcona is full and
they can take no more children. I would ask that the cabinet investigate these
allegations which, if true, represent a serious breach of trust on the part of
public officials.
Of course
much of this might be more understandable were the school underperforming. In
fact despite all the problems it has experienced, Roe Green Strathcona School
is an excellent School, with their first cohort of Year 6 students achieving
progress in the top 3% of Schools in England this academic year. This is
particularly remarkable when one considers the extent of mid year admissions.
In the public meeting held at Roe Green Strathcona on 6th June 2019, which was attended by
local councillors, many parents testified to the quality of teaching and the
quality of pastoral care that the school provides.
Just 3
years ago Council officers made an urgent recommendation that Roe Green
Strathcona School become permanent by September 2016. They are now trying to
persuade councillors that the school is not viable. What was then a saving is
now said to be a financial drain on the council. What was then required to cope
with the primary admissions crisis is now said to be part of an unnecessary and
unsustainable surplus. What was then said to provide parental choice into the
future is now having its very existence airbrushed from the Council admissions
website.
Teachers
and staff at the Roe Green School are rightly proud of the progress that has
been made since the creation of the Strathcona school five years ago. In a
borough where children had been out of formal education for many months, the
School has added significant value to the educational development of every
child that has entered its classrooms. They have served the council well. If
the cabinet were to rubber stamp the proposal to launch a formal consultation
for the closure of the Strathcona School site. I believe they would be
betraying that service and acting arbitrarily.
Thank you
for considering the matters I have raised.
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