Barry Gardiner closely questions Cllr Kabir on Village School academisation proposal

Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP for Brent North, The Village School's parliamentary constituency, has written to Cllr Sandra Kabir (Labour), Chair of Governors, with some pertinent questions about the school's proposal to form Multi Academy Trust with Woodfield School.

At the outset I want to put on record my admiration for the work the Governors and staff have done at both the Village School and Woodfield School each of which have been judged by Ofsted as outstanding. However, I write to express my concerns over the current proposal to form a Multi Academy Trust (MAT). I understand that you are inviting comments from parents and staff at schools, other local schools and elected representatives.

I am aware it is for the governing body of the school to determine who should be consulted but I hope you will consider involving local stakeholders with strong links to the school, in addition to the parents, teachers, other staff and their representatives. Can you provide me with a schedule of those you have contacted or who you intend to contact?

I would also ask if the Village School has already applied to the Department for Education (DfE) to become part of a MAT prior to the launch of the Consultation. If so, when did this happen? Can you provide me with a copy of the application and any other correspondence relating to the formation of the MAT, both with the DfE and any other relevant agencies.

The consultation document available on the Village School website sets out all the arguments in favour of forming a MAT, without setting out any of the problems or pitfalls which might arise in the process of creating a Multi Academy Trust or its subsequent operation. I would ask for a specific undertaking from you that during the consultation all responses will be given due consideration, that records of all consultations/responses and minutes of any further meetings are available, in accordance with the Academies Act 2010 and that any necessary further research is undertaken before a final decision is made. I note the five week consultation period ends on the 9th February and the consultation document says a final decision is expected by the end of March 2018.

Does this allow sufficient time for the following actions?

• Contact with all the parents and carers to explain the proposals, collate their observations and respond to them and publish the observations on line.
• Arrange a meeting with parents/carers or other opportunities to explain the proposals.
• Respond to requests (in writing) to view the proposals and answer questions.
• Discuss with staff about what becoming an academy means.
• Organise face to face meetings.

Can you provide me with a time line in relation to each of those points set out in the paragraph above.

The conversion of local authority-maintained schools to academies is a momentous decision involving legal, financial and structural changes and I have a number of concerns that I trust you will consider carefully.

The Village School benefited from a £29m capital investment from Brent Council to ensure the education of children with complex learning difficulties and disabilities would be transformed. Is it right that this public money and the capital assets should be outside of effective democratic control? In recent years the Village School and Woodfield School have worked together extensively on joint projects and in partnership with others such as the College of North West London (CNWL) for post-16 opportunities. It is unclear to me why why this positive arrangement should not continue.  This is not the case of a failing school being helped out by joining with a more successful neighbour. These are two existing successful schools. As such the case for a MAT must pass a very high threshold to show that the change is necessary.

I note that the school governors say they feel the extra freedom regarding curriculum and budget will help develop the vision for the school and ultimately improve the lives and learning of children. However, the consultation document states the leadership are still exploring the opportunities and checking staffing, finance, contracts lands an buildings. I find it difficult to see how, until the full details of the above are known, it can be sensible to rush into any change of legal status for either school.

Both schools already successfully develop children in all aspects of their lives, and I would question whether changing the status can deliver the value to compensate the extra work and extra risk involved in conversion to a MAT.

London schools within the local government framework have a proud and distinguished record of working together to reduce inequalities and raise academic achievements. This is founded on a high level of capital and revenue investment by councils across the city and, of course, payments out of the MAT budget allocation will need to be made to pay for services no longer provided by the local authority.

The Village School is an outstanding example of a school which has worked successfully with a council framework and benefited extensively from the capital and revenue investment I have referred to.

There is no guarantee that these services will not cost more 'even if taken from the local authority.' Critically the democratic oversight which the Local Education Authority (LEA) currently provides to ensure that the school provides value for money will be lost.

If the Academy were to struggle financially or academically there would be no back up from the local authority.

As a local authority school, staff terms and conditions are negotiated nationally and have protection. The Village School have said they will put in place protections to secure the staff terms and conditions are safeguarded. But what are these protection(s) and how does the school propose to make them legally binding for the future? This should have been clearly set out prior to any consultation, not alluded to during it. I am advised that many staff at Woodfield are agency staff and all staff are required to clock in and out each day.

Have the governors also considered the effect this might have on staff moral and whether it would lead to a high turnover of staff, including those with many years of experience who contribute so much to the school's current success.

I look forward to your full response to these serious concerns as a matter of urgency.

Mahatma Gandhi House converted to flats?

Prior approval is being sought by IDM (Invest Develop Manage) East London  to convert Mahatma Gandhi House, formerly Brent Council's housing office, to flats. LINK
 

The proposal is for 83 apartments in a mix of unit sizes. The apartments will be all internal alterations to the existing building with no external alteration. 

The accommodation proposed is:

Ground floor 6 apartments

1st floor to 7^th floor  11 apartments each

Total 83 apartments with 33 off street parking spaces

There were rumours some time ago that the building had been ear-marked for the Gateway Free School but was turned down. 

How the Hands Off Hove Park campaign successfully opposed academisation

Natasha Steel of the Hands Off Hove Park campaign told the Anti Academies Alliance yesterday how a group of parents, teachers and community activists successfully opposed the academy conversion of their school.

Copland teachers strike for 6th time over Ark Academy takeover

Teaching staff at Copland Community High School are taking their sixth day of action tomorrow (Thursday). They have made the following statement:

How is it that a school staff can feel so united, that their pupils and their school and they themselves have been so badly treated, that they are willing to take such strike action?

Staff have passed a motion of no confidence in the IEB (Interim Executive Board) now running the school. (Please see below for the full text.) Staff have asked that a possible legal challenge be looked at as well as a complaint being made to all relevant authorities.

Michael Gove, supporter of ARK and their proposed takeover, almost daily shows the dystopian version of education by dictatorship and containment. He proposes, and is using academies and free schools, to bring in a 10 hour days for pupils. Schools to stay open 51 weeks out of 52. We say “give pupils a childhood”.

The Copland IEB's so called consultation was laughingly inadequate. Even their inadequate 'feedback form' gave a result of 86% of pupils against and 89% of staff against. Very few parents responded and though a majority were for conversion there had been no adequate correspondence with parents, no letters or documents translated to help understanding and no document explaining why the staff were against.

The Unions offered to call off the strike if the parents were given an independently overseen ballot but the IEB refused to communicate at all with the local unions.

There will be a picket at the school between 8 and 9 am tomorrow.

Copland Joint Unions Meeting 22/1/14

This Copland joint union open meeting supports;

1.        The motion of no confidence in the IEB

2.        That a complaint be made to all relevant authorities and bodies** on the basis of it and any other irregularities that come to light

**E.g. Brent Local Authority, Brent Audit and Investigation Department, The Audit Commission, Teacher unions, Michael Gove, DfE

3.        That legal action be investigated following the successful judicial review by Barking and Dagenham Council in support of Warren Comprehensive school with a view to taking legal action over the attempt to force academisation without proper information or consultation

Copland staff have no confidence in the IEB as they;

1.        Continued and oversaw a massive, indiscriminate, hugely expensive voluntary redundancy programme in the summer that took no proper account of the curriculum and failed to protect it to the detriment of pupils' education and the school.

2.        Failed to take action to improve the intake

3.        Failed to press action to get any of the money (£2.7 million) returned that was removed from the school under a previous administration, while at the same time claiming every cutback and redundancy was necessary on financial grounds.

4.        Secretly applied to the DfE to turn Copland into an ARK academy without informing, never mind consulting, and not even providing a time line to staff or parents.

5.        Have refused to allow an independently overseen secret ballot of staff or parents regarding their proposal, or properly negotiate on it, despite the Unions offer to pay for such a ballot.

6.        Have engaged in a fundamentally flawed and unfair 'consultation' procedure over support staff redundancies and are seeking such wide scale redundancies both in teaching and support staff that the education and well being of the pupils can only be harmed.

7.        Have adversely affected the school's finances by drastically reducing the 6th form numbers.

8.        Have actively pursued an anti union agenda;

a)    unilaterally abolishing the school's JCC

b)    declining to formally consult the unions over the ARK proposal

c)    unlawfully not allowing school union reps to go on training courses

Black teachers and pupils and academisation - some issues

Back in the 1970s/80s I was involved in campaigns against racism in London schools. This had many facets including attitudes towards black pupils, disproportionate numbers of black pupils in SEN and Disruptive Pupils units, ethnic differences in examination entrance, a mono-cultural curriculum and not least discrimination against black teachers.

In this Guest Blog Dalian Adofo looks at current issues regarding the academisation of education:

2013 has been an interesting year for the state of UK education, we have witnessed a youtube video go ‘viral’ laying bare all the contradictions and misrepresentations put forth by the current Education secretary, Michael Gove. There has also been independent production of multiple documentaries highlighting the enforced conversion of many schools into Academies even with resistance by teaching staff and the local communities they serve. In most cases the only justification for conversion to Academies have being that provided by Ofsted after a school inspection.

The resistance to Academies is not so hard to understand, how is education a commodity? The body of knowledge to be acquired can be commoditised yes, but the process of learning as well? It does not take much to realise that we all learn at a different paces based on different cognitive, social and other factors, hence why teachers by default are required to differentiate the learning process to give all students the opportunity to progress sufficiently in their learning.

It is therefore wise that we question the impact imposing targets and performance management directives as tools to measure ‘work efficiency’ will be in such an environment for learning. How will these pressures to perform, part and parcel of the Academies model of education, affect teaching and learning in the long run?               Will teachers be working to ensure they meet targets and keep their jobs or take time out to provide for individual learning needs and requirements, not forgetting the longer hours of work and more paperwork to complete by teachers.

Newspaper coverage from outlets such as the Independent has highlighted the despair and low morale of teachers from surveys carried out by organisations such as the National Union of Teachers (NUT), so the main question is, why is the Government not listening? And is it not obvious who teachers will ultimately be exerting such frustrations on, and will it be a positive impact on learning? I strongly doubt it.

Evidence from the US where the Charter schools model provided the inspiration for our Academies, shows that some of these institutions, usually in highly impoverished inner-city areas, are abandoned within a decade by their investors presumably because their investments has earned returns so it is time to move on.

But what about the wellbeing and development of the child, or does the money matter more? Is this the type of education we want for our children? Or is the suggestion that this is the type of education that children from such backgrounds deserve?

The other disturbing element to the Academies is the lack of Black (in the political sense) staff in senior management positions and as regular staff. Data from the recent Black Teachers Conference suggests that increasingly, non-White staff are being ‘replaced’ with White peers using the same performance management processes that are meant to encourage ‘efficiency’ and ‘high performance’. Rather bizarre?

It is rather disheartening that one of the stated objectives for introducing Academies is to improve standards in inner-city schools yet there seems to be no impetus to keep staff who best reflect the student demographic itself. It is interesting that every year hundreds of non-white individuals will successfully endure and pass teacher-training courses across the country, yet somehow when on the job they are deemed ‘inadequate’…how is this contradiction being addressed by the Government?

And if indeed, we are to entertain the ridiculous notion that non-whites are somehow inadequate in comparison to their white counterparts, then what measures has the Government introduced to ensure that this section of its populace can excel to the ‘desired standards’ once in employment? From the evidence presented at the conference, such ‘enforced removals’ are not strictly for non-whites either, even though they are in the majority. What measures then is the Government or Ofsted implementing to ensure objective measurement of performance rather than what is seemingly subjective judgments informed by nepotistim and/or favouritism?

Entertaining that idea that social standing, class or ethnicity puts one in better stead to educate children is as elitist as it is racist, and utterly preposterous- certainly not a notion to be entertained in a nation priding itself on its democratic values. What will a person from the leafy suburbs of Windsor have in common with a child from the ‘concrete jungles’ of Stonebridge, Brixton or Tower Hamlets?

How will that individual inspire the child to succeed, where is the area of commonality, shared experience and empathetic understanding of the child’s needs beyond the transference of knowledge?

My PGCE at the Institute Of Education clearly outlined the role other pertinent factors play in learning beyond the acquisition of knowledge- how important ethnic, cultural, religious/spiritual and social factors amongst others, played in motivating children to succeed. How can this vision of ‘raising standards’ for these ‘deprived’ children be realised if the only role-models they can find in their school are the cleaners, janitors and meal staff?

What exactly are we trying to get them to aspire to then- just being white and upper-class as the standard of achievement? Suffice to say, we are no longer in the days of empire, the sun set on it long ago, and for the state of education to be enriching for all, it has to grow to appreciate the important roles varied backgrounds and individuals can play in making it an inspiring experience for all involved in the educational transaction. Whilst all these political, economic and social games are being played, we must not forget the most important factor in all this- the children, and ask ourselves is this the best course of action for their future? Is this the future we want for them?

Readers may be interested in this research about black teachers in the UK LINK

Governors torn over Preston Manor academy decision

Guest blog from someone who attended  Wednesday's meeting about Preston Manor's possible conversion to a Co-operative Academy.

Both Matthew Lantos, the headteacher, and the education unions made presentations to staff and parents.  No-one spoke up for an academy. The financial argument about the loss of money if the school didn't convert was put as a key reason by  Lantos for converting now and not waiting.

Not many parents attended, the weather not conducive but also, as one parent said,  many had decided  'its a done deal so why bother'. However there was a good debate with the parent governors and those from the PTA plus some other parents. They asked Matthew Lantos detailed questions about finances, quality of provision, potential use of unqualified teachers, changes in the curriculum and what powers the governors would have if the secretary of state had the ultimate say. 

Everyone agreed that no-one could predict what will happen financially. There was a large deficit of £1bn  in the DfE academy budget. The unions said that this was why both staff and parents should say no to an academy. Things may be OK in the short term but if a certain point was reached with a large number of schools converting - currently only about 10% of all schools in England have converted - then Gove could decide to take over individual converter academies and make them part of a chain. 

The move by Gove to have schools run for profit had already started.  The Co-op principles were seen as very important by the Governors as they would be enshrined in law in the articles. This would make it very difficult to change them. It was clear that governors are very torn and have a difficult decision to make. Do get back to me if you need anything else.