Three passionate voices on the education crisis

I tweeted the above open letter, first published in the TES, yesterday on both @WembleyMatters and @GreenEdPolicy and it has been retweeted many time, including by the writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen. The letter clearly resonates at a time when many teachers are leaving the profession.

Michael Rosen posted this on Facebook earlier today:

On the Guardian thread about teacher shortages and how they could possibly have come about, I posted some government policies to keep teaching recruitment and retention down:

1. Encourage the press to run stories saying that teachers are lazy and that there are thousands of bad ones.
2. Get the head of Ofsted to say the same.
3. Keep this up for decades. (both main parties)
4. Bring in hundreds of measuring and assessment systems, levels, targets, tests, exams, which then breed more 'rehearsal' tests and exams.
5. Bring in a punitive, rapid, unsupportive inspection system which ignores the fact that scores are attached to children so that if you're in a school where there has been turnover the inspectorate say that has nothing to do with us.
6. Run a new kind of school where the salaries of management are not open to public scrutiny.
7. Allow interest groups to open schools which take on proportionally fewer SEN, EAL and FSM pupils than nearby LA schools.
8 Allow covert selection and exclusion process to take place around these new kinds of schools because the LA schools have to pick up the pieces.
9. Use international data as if it is holy writ and ignore evidence that suggests that comparing countries does not compare like with like, that some countries which are 'top' are selecting. Obscure the differences between the countries by only talking about 'places' in the table, without ever making clear whether these differences are 'significant' or not.
10. Use China as an example of utopia in education without making a comparison between the two societies - as if education exists separately from the societies that produce the respective education systems.
11. Make sure that very nearly all the people running the state education system from government have no, or very little, state education experience themselves.

Yesterday, Kevin Courtney (who also retweeted the letter as @cyclingkev ) Deputy General Secretary of the NUT spoke at the London Green Party Annual General Meeting on 'Fighting for the Education our young people deserve.' This is an extract from his speech that was delivered with as much passion as demonstrated by Colin Harris and Michael Rosen.

Things have got to change if our education system is to survice as fit for purpose.

Vulnerable children may be shipped out of Brent for schooling as Council closes Primary PRU at 3 week's notice

As the Scrutiny Committee discussed setting up a Task Group to investigate how the Pupil Premium, ear-marked funds for disadvantaged children, are used in Brent schools last night, they were leafleted by staff who care passionately for an arguably even more disadvantaged group who are about to be shipped out of the borough.

The Primary Pupil Referral Unit currently housed at Ashley Gardens is for children excluded from mainstream school.  The classrooms were previously used as temporary accommodation for the primary unit of Preston Manor All-through School.

The Primary Unit came about after the Key Stage 2 (7-11 year olds)  PRU in Stonebridge was closed down at the end of Spring Term 2014 as no longer necessary. Within weeks, there were already 6 excluded children at Key Stage 1 (5-7 year olds) and Key Stage 2 in need of education. The Ashley Gardens facility was set up for them and high quality, experienced staff were recruited on the understanding that the unit would continue through the current academic year.

Brent's Primary EBD(Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties) school, Vernon House, closed some time ago and a new school opened in its place for chidlren on the autistic spectrum.

The authority has said that the classrooms are needed for children without a school place, despite Preston Park Primary having expanded, the new primary school at Preston Manor and a four form entry primary school being built at Wembley High.

Most of the Ashley Gardens children will be placed at the Family School London, in Kings Cross. This is a free school being opened by the Anna Freud Centre, with home to school transport provided for each child.

On Thursday of last week Ashley Gardens staff were told that the Unit would close by the end of this month.

Staff have major concerns about the closure decision and the way it is being implemented. This is what they said:

1. The time scale for closure is extremely rushed and risks causing unnecessary distress to children and their families.

These are amongst the most vulnerable and emotionally challenged children within our education system. Three weeks does not give us proper time to prepare them for this major change. we have an excellent team who have worked very hard to build up relationships of trust with the children and their families and the children are now settled and beginning to thrive in the unit.

We are concerned that this hasty decision, driven it seems more by the borough's need for our accommodation than by the needs of the children, will cause unnecessary emotional trauma to children who have already had more than their fair share.

2. There has been no consultation on this decision with the staff of the unit, including the Teacher-In-Charge, nor more senior staff within the Inclusion Service, and no individual case-by-case review to assess whether the provision at the Anna Freud Family School is appropriate for all the children who will be placed there.

3. We understand the longer term policy is to provide support for chidlren at risk of exclusion with the Brent School's Partnership, with the aim of preventing exclusions. This provision is still not in place. Where will any excluded chidlren be taught and supported in the meantime? This is exactly the situation that led to the formation of the unit at Ashley Gardens.

4. What about children who are excluded in spite of all the best efforts of the new provision? The Family School has only 4 places available this year in each key stage, and 4 more available next year and demand could come from anywhere across London.

The Ashley Gardens staff make a strong and professional case which clearly has the interests of vulnerable chidlren at its heart.

Brent Council's commitment to social inclusion means that there should be proper consultation with teachers, parents and professional agencies in such a situation, and at the very least a thorough Equalities Impact Assessment should be carried out.

None of this has happened and until it does, and the resulting report has been discussed and adopted by Cabinet, the closure should be suspended.

I would add a further concern about children being bussed out of the borough. They are already excluded from mainstream schools and will be further excluded by being educated far away from their home community.

Will Brent Council continue to leave the public out in the cold?

It will be interesting to see what happens at tonight's Full Council Meeting regarding the admittance of the public.

The November 2012 Council Meeting passed the following Procedural Motion:

Councillor Butt moved a procedural motion stating that it was with considerable regret and sadness that following advice received from the Director of Legal and Procurement, in order to enable the proper democratic meeting of the Full Council  to take place, he had felt it necessary to exclude a number of members of the public who had previously caused such disruption to Council meetings and meetings of the Executive to the extent those meetings had not been able to continue without moving to another room and thereby restricting the rights of the public to observe the proceedings. Councillor Butt added that he would continue to require officers to work to find a better solution than excluding members of the public from the Town Hall.
RESOLVED:
that the exclusion from this Full Council meeting of members of the public who have caused disruption to the previous Full Council meeting and/or to the previous  meeting of the Executive and/or the Budget and Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee be endorsed.

 It seems that the democratic right to make a protest is in conflict with the Council's need to meet undisturbed to pass policies with which members of the public profoundly disagree. Recent there have been demonstrations, including occupations at Liverpool, Sheffield and Birmingham councils as they approve more cuts. Other Councils seem to manage dissent better and as I pointed out in a recent blog Barnet Council provided an over-flow room with a TV link to the council chamber when the public gallery was full during a very heated confidence debate.. I wonder if the Civic Centre has been designed so as to maximise public access to meetings?

The present policy does pose a s number of questions:

• What does the Council constitution say about the right of the public to attend meetings or the Council's right to exclude them?
• How does the Council define disruption?
• How have they identified those they wish to exclude?
• Have they provided their private security guards with photographs of the excluded?
• If so have those who have had their photographs taken been informed?
• Does the Council have a database of the persons concerned?
• Is the Council or their hired security guards entitled to ask for proof of identity/proof of address from members of the public wishing to attend a Council meeting as they did at one such meeting last year?

A wider consideration is the need to consider why the public feel excluded from, and frustrated with, the 'democratic process'.  This has not only been been anti-cuts protesters that the Council probably see as the 'usual suspects' but solid middle of the road citizens concerned about the closure of libraries, sports centres, day centres and regeneration projects. The disaffection stems from consultations that turn out to be done deals, Executive meetings that rubber stamp decisions already made in pre-meetings, an Opposition that seems ill-prepared and flying by the seat of its pants, and full Council meetings with no real power but reduced to an arena for political jesting and grandstanding. As with the House of Commons it sometimes appears to be a cosy club despite political differences. 'Us against them' becomes councillors against their active citizens.