Grand Alliance needed to fight forced academisation

It was fitting that it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who announced the new government policy of forcing every local authority school to become an academy because the policy has everything to do with the seizing of public assets for private profit and very little to do with education.

On Twitter yesterday I called it a proposal with no democratic mandate to abolish democratic accountability fo schools.

It is now widely acknowledged that there is no convincing proof that acdemisation improves the quality of education, even when judged solely by narrow examination results. At the same time Ofsted has been critical of the educational failure of some academy chains and the high salaries (creamed off from schools) that their CEOs command.

It is easy to ignore the fact that the public service ethos in local government is not just limited to Labour or Lib Dem led authorities but is also shared by some Conservatives. LINK   This shared commitment could be the basis of a Grand Alliance to fight to maintain the role of local authorities in the oversight of educational provision.

The statement by the Local Government Association yesterday LINK is particularly significant and an opportunity for dialogue with an influential body that could make an impact on the Chancellor's plans.

The government often claims that parents are in favour of 'freeing' schools from local authority 'control' but there is no evidence for this. London Councils research in September 2014 indicated that parents would like to see MORE powers for local authorities to intervene in poorly performing academies and free schools LINK:

A new report has found substantial variation and confusion about these things. According to research by You Gov for London Councils, parents are most likely to look to their local authority, rather than Ofsted or the Department for Education, if they have concerns about school governance or leadership, inappropriate treatment of their child by staff, educational issues or bullying.

This finding reflects many parents’ imperfect knowledge about where responsibility lies. For example, 38% of London parents with a child in an academy school believe their local authority has the power to step in if the school is under performing, and no less than 56% of those with youngsters in free schools believe the same.

In fact, local authorities have no such formal powers, as academies and free schools are run by central government. Yet many parents clearly wish they did. You Gov found strong parental support for councils having powers to intervention across the spectrum of state schools. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was found to be highest, at 77%, among London parents with children at local authority maintained schools. However, 68% of parents with children at free schools and 63% of those with children at academies felt the same way. Even 35% of parents who’ve “gone private” would like their council to be able to step in in this way.

There was even stronger parental support for local authorities having influence over schools in their area expanding and supplying more places. At 81%, this is up by five points compared with the same time last year. London Councils thinks this particularly significant in view of its own estimate that the capital will need a further 133,000 school places, secondary and primary combined, by 2018 to accommodate its current baby boom. And it is highlighting all parts of the report suggesting parents favour local councils having more clout in education oversight and provision.

A campaign uniting education unions, governor organisations,  local authorities and parent groups could be very effective in maintaining the democratic accountability of schools, their public service ethos and saving them from privatisation.

In the short term there is the demonstration advertised above and a Twitter storm organised to coincide with Nicky Morgan's appearance on BBC 1 Question Time tonight:

Teacher ROAR ‏@TeacherROAR 1 hr1 hour ago

SPREAD THE WORD FOLKS! Twitterstorm tonight to coincide with Nicky Morgan on BBC QT. When the programme starts use the hashtag #tellNickyNO

A petition against the policy has also been launched: CLICK HERE TO GO TO PETITION

This is the wording of the petition:
 

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Hold a public inquiry and a referendum over turning all schools into academies 

The government has announced that every school in England will become an academy. This was not in their manifesto and is therefore a completely undemocratic move. 

There is growing evidence that academies underperform & serious questions about their financial oversight. Buildings & land are being handed over to unaccountable orgs. Once they are transferred there is no legal mechanism to get them back. Before all schools become academies we demand the government holds a full public inquiry - that takes into account educational research and the views of teachers, parents and students - followed by a referendum in order to show that they have a mandate.

  

'Traditionally Submissive' Muslim Women Hit Back at David Cameron

Do Brent Council websites and Twitter accounts have minds of their own?

Philip Grant, an occasional contributor to this blog, posted a comment on the Brent and Kilburn Times website about the above story. As, for some reason yet to be explained, it has not been published I print it below.

This is not the first time that Cllr. Butt has had difficulties because of ‘website blunders’ by Brent Council, which expose that he can say one thing publicly, but mean something else in practice.

When changes were made to Brent’s Constitution last June, he told the Brent & Kilburn Times what a good idea the new “Deputations” were (on page 2 of the 12 June 2014 edition):

'Cllr Butt said, "New proposals allow the public to speak in council meetings for the first time ever is aimed at bettering how the community engages with the council and allows residents to hold us to account." '

In advance of the next Full Council meeting on 8 September, Brent Council “tweeted” an invitation to more than 8,000 “followers” on 29 August, saying (see image):

'Speak out to the whole council. Ask for a five-min slot (a deputation) @ full council. For 8 Sept. email committee@brent.gov.uk by noon Mon.'

At least one person, Martin Francis (a Brent resident and an active member of its community), did respond to this invitation, and sent a request on Monday morning, 1 September, to speak on the subject of the appointment of a permanent Chief Executive. However, he was told by Brent’s Legal Director that his request had been made after the “five day” time limit, which she calculated meant by midday on Friday 29 August, and that the “tweeted” invitation had been issued in error.

I do not know what Mr Francis intended to say in his five minute Deputation, but as Christine Gilbert was appointed as interim Chief Executive in the autumn of 2012, initially for six months, there was a valid point of concern. Her interim appointment was only extended until the May 2014 local elections because, it was claimed, she had to oversee the Council’s move into the new Civic Centre in 2013, and act as Returning Officer for those elections. Surely it was time for a permanent Chief Executive to be appointed, under the Council’s proper recruitment procedures?

I was one of several people who expressed concern over what appeared to be an unreasonable attempt to stop Mr Francis from speaking to the Full Council under a process which was meant to help residents to “hold the council to account”. I wrote to the Mayor, who as “Chair” of Council meetings has powers over how they are handled, asking him to allow Mr Francis to speak, as he had requested to do so in line with the Council’s own published invitation. He replied that he had to leave the matter in the hands of the Legal Director. At the meeting itself he simply told the councillors that ‘there are no deputations’, even though Mr Francis was there, ready to speak, and there was up to twenty minutes set aside on the agenda for hearing deputations.

I had copied my emails to Cllr. Butt, the Council Leader, and on the day after the Full Council meeting, 9 September, I sent him an email setting out details of what had happened, and saying:

‘I am writing to ask you to explain why you, either individually or in concert with the Council's Director of Legal and Procurement, did not allow Martin Francis to present his Deputation on the appointment of a permanent Chief Executive to the Full Council meeting on 8 September.’

Despite several reminders, I have not received a reply. It seems that he, or Brent’s over-staffed Public Relations team, will reply when they can put a positive “spin” on a story, but when events show that they have acted wrongly, they will either keep quiet or seek to excuse what has happened as an ‘error’, as if websites or tweets have minds of their own.

Police ask Green blogger to remove UKIP tweet

From the Guardian LINK

Police have asked a blogger to remove a tweet that fact-checked Ukip policies but did not break any laws after receiving a complaint from a Ukip councillor, prompting concern over attempts to stifle debate.
Michael Abberton was visited by two Cambridgeshire police officers on Saturday. He was told he had not committed any crimes and no action was taken against him, but he was asked to delete some of his tweets, particularly a tongue-in-cheek one on 10 reasons to vote for Ukip, such as scrapping paid maternity leave and raising income tax for the poorest 88% of Britons.

Abberton, a Green party member who writes a blog on science and green politics, described the incident on his Axe of Reason blog.

"The police explained that I hadn't broken any law – there was no charge to answer and it really wasn't a police matter.

"They asked me to 'take it down' but I said I couldn't do that as it had already been retweeted and appropriated, copied, many times and I no longer had any control of it (I had to explain to one of the officers what Twitter was and how it worked). They said that they couldn't force me to take it down anyway."
However, to show goodwill Abberton removed all instances of the offending tweet.

A Cambridgeshire police spokesman said: "A Ukip councillor came across a tweet which he took exception to. The name of the person on the tweet was identified and that individual was spoken to. We looked at this for offences and there was nothing we could actually identify that required police intervention. Clearly, the councillor was unhappy about the tweets. If every political person was unhappy about what somebody else said about their views, we would have no politics."

As for being told not to tweet about the visit, the spokesman added: "I don't know if he'd have been told that. It's certainly not the advice I would have given him. A gentleman has a right to free speech – absolute total right to free speech – we can't tell people what they can and can't say on the internet, as long as it's within the law. We certainly don't go to people's houses and say: 'You can't tweet about this'. This is not 1930s Germany."

On his blog, Abberton made it clear that the two police officers were extremely professional and polite, but he did wonder why they had visited him at all.

"It wasn't until after they left that I questioned why they had visited me in the first place. A complaint had been made but with no legal basis. Not a police matter. So why did they come to my home in the middle of a Saturday afternoon? Also, seeing as my profile doesn't have my location – how did they know my address, or even the town I live in? … Why would a political party, so close to an election, seek to stop people finding out what their policies are or their past voting record? And is it not a matter for concern that a political party would seek to silence dissent and debate in such a manner?"

Julian Huppert, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, who was contacted by Abberton, said he was awaiting a detailed response from the police.

"It seems astonishing for the police to get involved, there was nothing abusive or threatening in the tweets so I do want to know why they acted, and I want to know why the police told Abberton not to tweet about the visit."

Huppert said he was pleased that Ukip's policies were coming under scrutiny.

Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green party, said: "This police action is both disturbing and surprising. That an apparently general complaint from a political party about not liking what was said about them could have led to a police visit that many would find intimidating is an extremely serious incident that demands immediate investigation. Free speech is a precious right that we must defend."

Bennett said the party's only member in the House of Lords, Jenny Jones, would write to Theresa May, the home secretary, to ask her to investigate.

"What a waste of police time, energy and resources," Jones said. "Their job is to investigate crime and catch criminals, not restrict free speech."

Teachers turn on Labour after Tristram Hunt announces licensing scheme

Annoying Iain Duncan Smith

Apparently this image of the true impact of Coalition policies has been annoying Iain Duncan Smith over the holiday.

Good.

It has been retweeted thousands of times on Twitter and shared on Facebook.

Please do your bit to annoy Iain Duncan Smith

Image Source www.church-poverty.org

Brent Council deny Twitter feed censorship

I published a story earlier this week suggesting that critical Twitter comments were not getting posted on Brent Council's Twitter feed during the live webcasting of Monday's Council Meeting. LINK 

The feed displayed simultaneously displayed on the Council website beside the webcast appeared to be dominated by council friendly tweets including those from @BrentLabour and Cllr James Denselow.

I also suggested that the Council's 'House Rules' included a catch-all sentence that seems to rule out critical comments about the council itself.

If you’re offensive about the council, or anyone who works for us, or runs the organisation, we will remove your comments. Comments that are likely to bring the council into disrepute will be removed

Since then there have been various suggestions about how this happened including the feed not recognising the hashtag #BrentLive if it was not capitalised. It was pointed out to me that some of my comments did get through to the feed and thus it was clear there was no censorship - but others did not. I put this down to the censorship not being carried out very efficiently but now a Council spokesperson has issued the following statement:

We are very excited to be the first London council to integrate webcasting and Twitter for important meetings. Social media is providing new ways of making local people aware of what their representatives are discussing and enabling them to join in the debate.  

More than 300 people watched this successful first Full Council webcast and Twitter feed, more than normally attend council meetings, so this initiative has already made local democracy more open, and we hope more people will watch and comment in future. 

Brent did not censor or stop any tweets from going out on www.brent.gov.uk/democracy. We have investigated and this is down to an unexpected technical problem with Twitter itself, a problem other users have reported here https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/11765

 

We are working to have this fixed for the next Full Council meeting. 

The house rules are designed to support discussion of the council and its policies regardless of whether tweets are critical or not. The aim is to stop anyone abusing the Twitter feed by, for example, trolling individuals or bombarding it with tweets unrelated to the debate.

There were some problems with the councillors' microphones which will be fixed for the next Full Council meeting.

Selective microphones and selective twitter feed threaten to bring Brent Council into disrepute

Last night's livefeed of the Brent Council Meeting was hailed as a breakthrough but was characterised by breakup of the sound. On Twitter Cllr Denselow, the Executive's own 'techie' blamed exhausted batteries for the failure of the microphones, but today said that wasn't the problem and the microphones would 'have to be sent back'.

The problem particularly hit Cllr Paul Lorber, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, while Labour microphones generally worked well, although during a particularly fine speech on Violence Against Women, former leader Cllr Ann John was at times inaudible.

The problem comes on top of IT and telephone problems, as well as a shortage of 'hot desks' that leaves some staff finding it easier to work from home, which some says, despite the £100m cost of the Civic Centre, was the plan all along. I hope the Council give the home workers an allowance for their winter heating.

Some may claim that there was a political bias in the microphone cut-outs, but there was more substance in the claim that the twitter feed on the Council website during the meeting had political bias. Many of my comments failed to appear on the Council feed, although they were available on the hashtag #brentlive in the public arena.

The result was a preponderance of pro-Council and pro-Labour tweets, which as I tweeted (but not published on the Council feed) rather made a nonsense of the idea of a public debate using social media.

In fact the Council's House Rules on Social Media severely restrict what can be said LINK with several catch-all rules including:

If you’re offensive about the council, or anyone who works for us, or runs the organisation, we will remove your comments. Comments that are likely to bring the council into disrepute will be removed

Personally, I think a selective twitter feed itself brings the Council into disrepute.

Twitter's creative response to 'racist van' update

The 'racist van' has spawned some creative responses on Twitter:

Historical precedent

Get the 'racist van' off the road for good this weekend

The campaign against the 'racist' vans is proceeding on several fronts as the Home Office pilot project comes to an end. The PCS has taken up the issue with the senior civil servant at the Home Office. A 'letter of intent' on legal action, probably under the Equalities Act,  has been sent by a refugee group in East London LINK and similar action is being contemplated by activists in Brent. It appears that the Home Office may not have sought planning permission for the van hoardings which raises questions of   their legality.

The Twitter campaign against the Home Office and the Promovans group has been supported widely and the trolling of the Home Office 'help line' has produced some hilarious interchanges which expose the 'Go Home' message to ridicule.

David Cameron as the head of the country's first PR government (public relations not proportional representation) as a former PR man may count the Home Office campaign as a success in getting the Coalition's 'tough stance' on immigration into the headlines but it has also served to alienate his Lib Dem Coalition partners.

Back in 1964 as a raw 16 year old I went for a job in the PR department of an advertising agency. I naively told the interviewer 'I like people'.  He instantly replied, 'That is no good. To be a success in PR you must utterly despise people'. I didn't get the job - some years later David Cameron did!

Meanwhile Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has added her voice to the debate in the Guardian:

I don't often agree with Nigel Farage, but he is right that the billboards being driven around some areas with high immigrant populations are "nasty" and "unpleasant" (Anger at 'go home' message to illegal immigrants, 26 July). The government's choice to adopt a slogan similar to that used by racists in the 70s is deeply disturbing, particularly at a time when the Muslim Council of Britain has expressed fears about a "dramatic escalation" of attacks against British Muslims. However, it is predominantly the rhetoric of Ukip that has caused immigrants to be so causally demonised by the government and other political parties. Mr Farage has spoken of "opening up our borders" to 28 million Romanians and Bulgarians, as though the entire populations of those nations were about to uproot themselves and move to the UK.

The government is clearly guilty of scapegoating immigrants for Britain's problems with housing shortages, low wages and unemployment. The fault clearly lies with its own policies, and those of the former Labour government.

PCS union protests to Home Office civil servant boss over racist van camapign

From the Public and  Commercial Services Union  website LINK

A controversial Home Office immigration campaign is "political, deeply divisive and likely to stir up racial hatred", PCS has told the department's most senior civil servant.

 

The 'Go home' billboard messages being driven around six London boroughs have been met with criticism within the coalition government.

And some users on Twitter are reporting sightings using the hashtag #racistvan and deliberately wasting the Home Office's time with bogus reports.

We wrote to the department's permanent secretary Mark Sedwill on Thursday to say we were "appalled" that the Home Office had sanctioned the initiative.

PCS group secretary Mike Jones said in the letter: "This kind of campaign will only serve to cause more racial tension within our communities."

It's "deeply divisive", he added, and will create "tension and mistrust towards anyone who looks and sounds foreign".

"This is just a political advertising stunt that differs little from the Conservative Party election campaign messages.

"It is exactly the thing right wing racist and fascist organisations such as the BNP, EDL, EVF and others feed off" and use to "stir up racial tension and hatred in these very same London boroughs", Mike said.

We pointed out that, with a reported 500,000 backlog in asylum cases, the Home Office needs more permanent staff to deal with casework, not political stunts.