Poor Parental Turnout at Holland Park Meeting

Only 20-25 parents attended the consultation meeting at Holland Park School last night - a very low attendance for a school of more than 1,000 students.  We were able to speak to the parents outside the school because the gates were locked until just before the meeting.  Some of the parents who initially felt there was 'no problem' about conversion recognised that the consultation period was short and that there was the need for an informed debate before they expressed a view.

The senior management team, dressed in what appeared to be identical charcoal-grey suits and white shirts descended on the gate like a flock of crows just before the starting time, seemingly prepared to repel demonstrators. We assured them that we were not seeking to disrupt the meeting.  Nonetheless they refused admission to an 18 year old student because he was not accompanied by his parents.  However they did accept the open letter from students.

During the meeting the school management undertook to have a second consultation meeting for students and other interested parties.  I hope to carry a report on the meeting later today.

Meanwhile a Facebook site 'Campaign to Prevent Holland Park Becoming an Academy'   LINK
and a website supporting the campaign LINK have been set up.

It is perhaps significant that a Google search for the Holland Park letter to parents produces a PDF of the letter linked to ARK, the hedge fund backed organisation that runs the Wembley ARK Academy.

The leaflet is printed below - CLICK ON IMAGE to enlarge

Student letter to Holland Park and Council Bosses on Academy

OPEN LETTER TO THE ADMINISTRATION AT HOLLAND PARK SCHOOL AND KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA COUNCIL (posted on Education Activist Network)

Dear all,

We have recently become aware that plans are afoot to transform Holland Park School into an ‘academy’, in conjunction with widespread changes occur across the education sector. We are aware a consultation process is required for such a sweeping change to the way the institution is run, and assert that as students, we are the primary stakeholders in the education service and therefore deserve not only a voice but an influence over anything likely to affect the delivery of our service.


We maintain confidence that your central objective is to provide a healthy, happy, and focused academic environment for students and staff to thrive in both inside and outside the classroom. This taken into account, we urge you to therefore reconsider this proposal sharply. It is not hyperbole or exaggeration to suggest that academy status could drive a wrecking ball through the positive place that is Holland Park, as it has done in so many other schools across the United Kingdom.

Bear in mind that academies are taking place against a backdrop of a fundamental reorganization of the education sector. On 30th June, four teaching unions are set to strike against an unfair and regressive assault on their pension schemes. Last winter, Parliament voted to raise tuition fees to £9,000. Since then, it has become clear that this will decrease student participation in higher education, will cost the state far more than it saves, and will ‘price out’ many smaller and less prestigious universities. Some universities are announcing course cuts of up to 70%. The scrapping of Education Maintenance Allowance, meanwhile, has been slammed by the very thinktank who wrote the report that the government used to justify their decision to remove it! We have seen schools left in temporary accommodation indefinitely since the Building Schools for the Future scheme was summarily axed. We move, therefore, to say that the Coalition Government based on their current record cannot be trusted with school reform, and are committing untold damage to an education sector built up on talent, academia, and public money over generations.

Yet there are far more specific reasons to oppose the introduction of academies. Listed below are a small number of issues, by no means complete or comprehensive, of the drawbacks of academies.
-       Much of the government’s marketisation of schools strategy originates from a similar system in Sweden. Per Thulberg, director general of the Swedish National Agency for Education, says “This competition between schools that was one of the reasons for introducing the new schools has not led to better results.”
-       Academy providers cannot be trusted with schools. The biggest Academy chain in England is ULT. The government told them they could have no more Academies after Ofsted failed their 2 Academies in Sheffield. In 2002 Edison USA was caught in the stock market meltdown, with its shares plummeting from over $21 to under $1. The company solved this by selling off its books, computers, lab equipment and musical instruments! Edison are already running schools in England.
-       Of the 74 Academies which have entered pupils for GCSE’s for 2 or more years, a third have seenThe National Governors Association, National Association of Head Teachers, National Grammar Schools Association, the Catholic Church, the Church of England have all raised major concerns with the Academies proposals. their results fall.
-       The Academies Bill proposes that schools can become Academies simply by a vote of the governors – no consultation with parents, teachers, support staff or the local community. They are not accountable to the Local Authority, so they are not accountable to the public. Their governors are appointed, not elected. Academies are not covered by Freedom of Information legislation. In short, they are unaccountable and undemocratic.
-       Every Academy can set their own terms and conditions. This proposal will see the end of national negotiations, with headteachers and governors setting pay and conditions school by school.
-       The only extra money available for schools that opt to become academies will be taken from money the local authority holds centrally for support services.

This information is taken from the Anti Academies Alliance, an admittedly non-neutral source, but one corroborated by a range of external and neutral sources.

Holland Park School has a uniquely cosmopolitan tradition. It was the first state comprehensive in London, and remains the only state comprehensive in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; meaning it accepts students from all social and economic backgrounds. It has educated great minds and public personalities from historians and princes to writers and actors. It has improved its examination results year on year consecutively, to well above the national average, and was listed last year in the Good Schools Guide. It has sent a significant number of students to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as other prestigious higher education institutions. To be clear, we are performing very well as an institution, thanks to committed staff and students. We see no reason to jeopardise this success with a structural change that the best evidence suggests will do way more harm than good.

In addition, we resent that this decision-making process is in progress during the pivotal examination period. Speculation it may be, but many feel that this move is intentional, to marginalise participation in the debate around school reform as staff, parents and students are busy preparing for national qualifications. We move to delay the decision process until September, when a more far-reaching and inclusive debate can be had around the subject.

To summarise, we are afraid of the impact academy status will have upon our cosmopolitan tradition, our learning environment, and our staff and students. We see the change as part of a wider ideological assault against public, collectively-accountable education at school, FE, and HE level. If one of the state comprehensive model’s greatest beacons in the country is suborned before the Academy juggernaut, there is little hope left for any other school or institution to resist Gove’s reforms, which are currently popular with no-one but those who would profit from the breakdown of the education sector.

We, the undersigned, implore you to reconsider the decision, and add that it is of the highest urgency that any decision at all is postponed until the coming academic year.

Sincerely,
Nathan Akehurst
VI Form Student

Find out more about Free Schools

Since my post about resisting the seductive elements of free schools there has been widespread interest amongst Green Party activists and others. Here are some links that will be of interest and I publish the NUT's FAQs below.

Parents Alliance for Community Schools LINK which arose out of a campaign against a free school in Hammermith and Fulham
A community campaign in Lambeth ' No to Free Schools'  LINK
The NUT pamphlet on Free Schools LINK
The Local Schools Network supporting a good local community school for every child LINK
The ATL have done some revealing research into the groups behind bids to run academies and free schools. PDF available free LINK

Q: What are free schools?

A: Free schools are a new type of school which the Coalition Government is promoting. The Government’s aim is for the first free schools to open in September 2011.

Free schools will receive state funding but:

·                     are not part of the local authority family of schools and not subject to oversight or inspection by the local authority;

·                     do not have to employ qualified teachers;

·                     do not have to follow the National Curriculum;

·                     can determine their own admissions criteria;

·                     are unlikely to provide the same facilities as other state schools, such as halls, IT suites and outdoor play space because they will be set up in disused buildings such as shops and offices.

·                     can determine their own school day and length of the term and school year;

·                     can set their own pay and conditions for teachers, outside of nationally negotiated agreements.

Q: Who can set up Free Schools?

A: An application to set up a free school can be made by any group of parents, teachers, a not for profit organisation, a charity, faith group, private company or partnership of these.

Q: How are free schools funded?

A: Free schools will be funded directly by central government. Their funding will be based on a per pupil funding level and a pupil premium for disadvantaged pupils. It is obvious that free schools will compete with existing schools for government funding.

Q: How will admissions be organised?

A: Free schools will have to abide by the Admissions Code.  However, research from Sweden shows that more educated parents are most likely to use the free schools as they are based in rich, urban areas.  The West London Free School intends to make Latin compulsory and every child to sit at least eight academic GCSEs or IGCSEs, ensuring there will be a certain amount of self selection. The Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Union Council expressed concern that the free school being set up in Battersea would exclude pupils from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’.  It seems clear that when schools are free from local authority control, admission arrangements can be tweaked to favour more affluent pupils.                                                  

Q: What premises will free schools use?

A: Free schools can set up in any type of building such as disused shops and offices.  The Government has ordered a relaxation of planning laws and building regulations and local planning authorities have been asked to adopt a “positive and constructive” approach towards applications to create new schools. Partnership for Schools, the quango that used to administer the Building Schools for the Future funds to refurbish or rebuild existing state schools, which has been abolished by the coalition Government,  is now helping free school groups identify and buy premises using state funds.

Q: Will free schools have qualified teachers?

A: The Government has said that free schools do not have to employ teachers with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), apart from the school’s Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator and the member of staff responsible for looked after children (these two positions could be filled by the same person). Even the Head Teacher in a free school does not need to be qualified!  How will free schools raise standards if they do not have to employ teachers who have been properly trained and qualified?

Q: Will ‘Free Schools’ have to follow Teacher’s National Pay and Conditions?

A: No.  Free schools, like academies, can set their own pay and conditions for staff.  It is clear that the Government wants flexibility on staff pay and are encouraging free school heads to pay what they want.  If free schools don’t provide nationally agreed pay and conditions for teachers they won’t be able to attract the best staff.

Q: Will free schools have the same school day and school terms?

A: Free schools can decide on the length of their terms and the school day. So parents with children in different schools may find their school hours and school terms are different. Teachers will be expected to work flexibly. The Chair of the Stour Valley Educational Trust, the first community-led group in England to get formal approval for plans to open a new free school, has said: “People are going to have to teach two subjects and bring something else as well, whether it’s the Duke of Edinburgh award or playing the piano. We’re pushing the boundaries in terms of what teachers are asked to do.”  So not only will free schools be unlikely to have qualified teachers some will also not have subject specialists. This is hardly a recipe for good teaching and learning.

Q: What accountability measures are there?

A: The Government says that all free schools will be accountable via inspections and tests and will be inspected by Ofsted.

However, it is not entirely clear what would happen if a free school was “failing” despite the Government stating that they will not “prop up” failing schools, even free schools.

Free schools are an untried and untested experiment. Do you want the government experimenting on our children?

Q: Are free schools part of the local family of schools?

A: No. free schools are stand alone independent schools. They are not accountable to the local authority even though they receive public money.  Free schools can be set up without the involvement or support of the local authority which makes their role in planning school provision locally more difficult.

Q: Will free schools damage other local schools?

A: Unless free schools are in an area of growing demographic demand they could lead to the closure of existing maintained schools. Even if a local school only loses a small percentage of its students, that could have a damaging effect on its ability to provide a quality education. The ability for local authorities to plan for school places becomes impossible and it is possible that schools may have to close.

   

Funds for free schools are available because other schemes such as BSF (Building Schools for the Future) and the Harnessing Technology Fund (intended to upgrade classroom technology) have been severely cut or scrapped.  Free schools will also be given a share of the funding the local authority retains to spend on all schools.

Therefore, many services to schools will suffer or no longer be available.

Q: The government says more choice and competition will raise standards – isn’t this true?

A: England already has a diverse schools system. There is no evidence that introducing further choice and diversity will raise standards. It is now almost universally agreed that Finland has the best education in Europe. Its school system reaches the ideal by producing both the highest standards and the best equity. There is no competition at all within the Finnish school system.  Research shows that the priority for policy makers should be improving the quality of teaching. Research also shows that that the choice and diversity agenda exacerbates already existing educational inequalities.

Q: Why do some people say Free Schools could lead to privatisation of education?

A: Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, has said that he has “no ideological objection” to private companies seeking profits from running academies and free schools.  In Sweden, three quarters of free schools are run by profit-making companies. Chains are bidding to run free schools and are lobbying the government to allow them to do so on a profit making basis.

     

The NUT, the largest teachers’ union, believes the free school policy could mark the end of locally planned and democratically accountable comprehensive education, undermining all the gains made since the 1944 Education Act in widening access for all children to high-quality education.

Q: What does the international evidence on free schools show?

A: The idea of free schools has been borrowed from Sweden which first introduced free schools in the 1990s and the USA which has similar charter schools.

According to the 2009 international education survey, PISA: “Countries that create a more competitive environment in which many schools compete for students do not systematically produce better results.”

The latest edition of Research in Public Policy reviews the evidence on free schools in Sweden and concludes that, “it has not transformed the academic achievement of the country’s pupils.”

Sweden’s decline in educational attainment has been well documented since the educational reforms which introduced free schools.

The Swedish National Agency for Education (equivalent to Ofsted) found that educational attainment showed increasing differences in children’s grades linked to their parents’ educational background.

The CREDO report (Center for Research on Educational Outcomes) published by Stanford University in June 2009 is the first detailed national assessment of US charter school impacts. It covered 16 States and more than 70 per cent of the nation’s students attending charter schools. The research gauged whether students who attended charter schools fared better than if they would have attended a traditional public (state) school.

One of the conclusions was that “there is a wide variance in the quality of the nation’s several thousand charter schools, with, in aggregate, students in charter schools not faring as well as students in traditional public schools.”

Over a third of charter schools (37%) showed academic gains that were worse than their traditional public schools counterparts.  Forty-six per cent of charter schools showed no significant difference.

There are also cases of charter schools operating fraudulently.  A member of the Ohio General Assembly said “As lawmakers we were told that these charter schools would rescue central city children.  Instead these scams diverted scarce public school dollars while leaving almost all urban children behind.”

So what would a Green led Council do?

This speech by the new leader of Brighton and Hove Council gives a taste. It will be no easy task in the present conditions but I wish him and his team well.

Brighton & Hove will become the UK’s greenest city, the city council’s new leader Bill Randall has said.

In his first major speech since taking control, Mr Randall set out three key aims for the next four years. Apart from the ambitious eco-drive, they also comprise tackling inequality and involving residents, community and voluntary organisations in the council’s work.

He set out a plan to reduce the city’s eco footprint and set up a ‘biosphere reserve’ with neighbouring authorities – both plans backed by the business community and other public bodies.

Initiatives also include adopting local carbon budgets, which run alongside financial budgets, as well as plans to fit solar panels on schools and other public buildings to take advantage of feed-in tariffs and increase the use of renewable energy.

While admitting that tackling inequality will not be easy because of the public spending cuts, he said the first priority will be to protect services for children, vulnerable adults and those on low incomes.

Other initiatives include introducing a ‘living wage’ and ensuring that the highest paid council officer earns no more than 10 times the lowest paid officer.

Involving communities is a high priority with plans being piloted to introduce neighbourhood councils with their own budgets and working closely with the city’s vibrant third sector and trade unions.

Mr Randall said the administration takes over in hard times but that there is a new spirit in the city.

“We believe we have captured that spirit to offer the city a fresh start through policies fuelled by fairness and driven by a desire to produce the UK's Greenest city and narrow the gap between rich and poor. We look forward to working with residents, public and private sector partners to achieve our aims."

Headteacher's Letter to Holland Park Parents

Here is the evidence of the Holland Park headteacher's rush to academy status. Note the lack of any attempt to acknowledge that there may be a case against conversion.

Click image to enlarge

Holland Park academy conversion to be rushed through

I heard today at the SERTUC Conference on Academies and Free Schools that parents at Holland Park School in Kensington and Chelsea got a letter on Thursday about a meeting on academy conversion that will take place  on Monday. Governors will make a decicion on Thursday. What a breathtaking contempt for parents, pupils and the community!

Holland Park, where Tony Benn sent his children, is the only community secondary school in Kensington and Chelsea - so where does that leave parental choice?

The parents' meeting is at 6.30pm and leafleting will begin from 6pm or thereabouts.  If you have time please come and join us.

Don't be Seduced by Free Schools

I must start with a confession:  I worked as a volunteer a 'free school' back in the early 70s. The school was an ordinary terraced house in Friendly Street, Deptford and we taught about 14 11-16 year olds, mainly boys. Many were from old Romany families who were in the scrap iron businesses operating from under the railway arches. The other teachers included a dance teacher and a rock musician. The work was tough but fun with a mixed focus on basic skills and more creative pursuits. A highpoint was when they appeared in an improvised BBC TV play based on their lives.

Most of the children were school refusers or regular truants but they also included what were known at the time as school phobics. Similar projects mushroomed across London at the time, often started by community organisations and settlements who found out of school kids hanging around their doors during the day. The workers in the projects often started from a libertarian critique of the state school system and formed an organisation called LEAP (London Education Alternative Projects).

At the same time other students were actively rebelling in the state schools and some schools began to set up Units for Disruptive Children. These were often off-site and sometimes in poor accommodation. Troublesome children were sent to them and the staff tried to offer an alternative curriculum. Although the Units were funded by the Inner London Education Authority, and therefore part of the 'system', their teachers joined LEAP as they saw themselves as providing an alternative to the 'system'.

By this time I was working in mainstream primary education in North Westminster and involved in anti-racist work in the local community. A group of parents, teachers, school students and community activists met regularly at the 510 Centre in Harrow Road to discussion educational and other issues. One of the attenders was Paul Boateng, then a young lawyer at the Paddington Law Centre, concerned particular with the 'sus' laws.  It soon became clear that racism in schools was a big problem and that one institutional response in particular was a great concern to parents. Many black children, mainly boys, were being labelled 'disruptive' and sent to these units. The curriculum varied between units but often seemed to involve keeping the children occupied with sports and adventure playground  type activities rather than educating them in either basic skills or academic subjects. Few of the units were able to enter the children for public examinations and the claim that the children could return to mainstream school, after a spell in the unit, was seldom achieved in reality.

Local community campaigns were launched against the units as parents began to see them as similar to the ESN schools (old terminology: Educationally Subnormal) exposed by Bernard Coard (1) earlier where children were labelled on the basis of racist stereotypes. There were disproportionate numbers of black boys in Disruptive Units just as there had been in ESN schools. In our campaigning we began to call the Units 'Sin Bins'.  I wrote and spoke on the issue widely at the time and a key issue that arose was the concept of 'disruptive'. This label was a negative one attached to the child and took what he was 'disrupting' as the norm - his behaviour was the problem rather than the institution he was disrupting. We sought to replace 'disruptive' with 'disaffected' so that we could examine what the children were disaffected from: the school. Our focus soon revealed the problem of racist attitudes on the part of some teachers, low expectations and an inappropriate curriculum.

Thirty years later in 2005, I was asked to be a member of a panel discussing a new book: 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS: how our schools fail Black children' (2).  The meeting at Harlesden Library was crowded with angry and frustrated parents who still felt that their children were being treated unfairly in the system with the disproportionate number of black boys excluded a big issue. The historical development seemed to be: ESN>Disruptive>Excluded. In addition there were other issues about the curriculum and setting for examinations. What emerged during the discussion was that after the closure of Sladebrook (now the independent Swaminarayan School) the Harlesden area lacked its own high school. Queens Park was some distance away and then there was the City Academy in Willesden and faith schools. People felt that  having no school of its own impacted on the community with no central, unifying focus of a school 'of and for' the local community, a beacon reflecting its positive aspects in terms of culture, ethos and aspiration. Several parents said they wanted to campaign for a new high school for Harlesden.

I have written on this blog before about the imbalance between the north and south of Brent (roughly divided by the North Circular Road) in terms of secondary school provision. During the debate over the ARK Academy in Wembley campaigners made the argument that what was required was a new high school in the south of the borough, not yet another one in the north of the borough. The Council denied this was the case but ear-marked 50% of the ARK places for children from the south of the borough who had to travel some distance across the North Circular to school.

The campaign for the new school to be in the south of the borough was lost but  now a group have come forward with a Free School proposal for  secondary school in the Harlesden/Willesden area. The suggestion is for a Ma'at school. U.S. exponents call it 'Afrikan Centred' education:

As used by the Ancient Africans, Ma'at was a concept that stood for "universal order." Ma'at represents reality in all its manifestations both spiritual and material. It is the divine force that encompasses and embraces everything that is alive and exists. As an ethical system, Ma'at is often discussed as seven cardinal virtues (truth, justice, righteousness, harmony, balance, reciprocity, and order).

Further information about what the Harlesden group stand for can be found on their website, including their policy of 'no exclusions'. LINK Although I respect the reasons for their Free School application and deplore the fact that they have been let down by successive Brent administrations, I have strong reservations about using the Coalition's free school policy to set up a new school. I think free schools will be divisive in several ways. They are paid for by the government and the money for them will be taken away from the local council funds, reducing money available to other schools. They are not democratically accountable in the same way as local authority schools are via the council and local elections. They do not have to employ qualified teachers and their buildings do not have to meet the quality standards of normal schools. Most importantly they will make planning for school places across the borough extremely difficult.

I am worried that in order to keep classes small the schools will have to make other sacrifices such as employ more unqualified staff and operate from unsuitable premises. The 'no exclusions' policy is laudable but hard to implement. The socialist educationalist Chris Searle, who worked for Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard in Grenada,and contributed to 'Tell it Like it Is', tried to operate such a policy in Sheffield. Teachers tried to work with the policy but eventually the teacher unions took action against him as members found it hard to teach in those circumstance. There is a possibility that in some ways the free schools will end up with some of the deficiencies of the 'sin bins' - not  in educational philosophy but in teaching and building resources. Just as the Disruptive Units let the local authority off the hook in terms of making changes in the mainstream, there is a possibility that such a free school would do the same for existing secondary schools. Dissatisfied parents may be told, 'Why don't you apply for the Ma'at if your are not happy?'  I am torn because I am well aware that after more than 30 years of trying black parents and teachers will be asking, 'How much longer must we wait?'

I see academies and free schools as part of an attempt to break up and privatise the state system. I have plenty of criticisms of the state system myself and the Green Party has firm ideas on how it should change. LINK However, I don't think we should be seduced by the free school project. There are plenty of groups who want to put their own educational ideas into practice, and that includes some close to the Green Party LINK but there is a debate to be had about using spaces created by reactionary policies for progressive causes.  I will be urging proponents of this approach  to fight for changes in the state system to achieve their aims - not follow the free school route.

(1)  How the West Indian child is made educationally subnormal in the British school system: the scandal of the Black child in schools in Britain, Bernard Coard  (New Beacon Books 1971) [Reprinted in (2) below]
(2) Tell It Like It Is: How our schools fail Black children, Ed Brian Richardson (Bookmarks and Trentham Books 2005, reprinted 2007)

ACT NOW ON NHS - 38 Degrees

Things are moving fast. The press are reporting that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are trying to finalise changes to their NHS plans - at least two weeks earlier than expected. [1] The next few days are critical - we need to move quickly to influence their decisions.

It looks like Clegg and Cameron may try to push ahead with at least two of the more worrying parts of Andrew Lansley's original plans. They're still toying with imposing more competition from private health companies. And they're still looking to scrap their legal duty to provide the same level of healthcare to everyone wherever they live.

Together, we can persuade them to drop these dangerous bits of the plans. MPs don't get a lot of phone calls from their voters. If thousands of us call them today, it will send shockwaves through parliament as MPs, Clegg and Cameron realise how determined we are to protect our NHS!

Can you phone your MP today? It's quick and easy. Find their name, number, and tips for what to say, here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-your-mp

Yesterday, in the 38 Degrees office, team members Johnny and Becky contacted key allies and experts at health organisations, charities and in Parliament to try find out what's going on behind the scenes. [2] It's a bit murky. But reliable sources are saying that, right now, Clegg and Cameron are plotting out which parts of Lansley's plans they need to drop to win public support.

Everyone seems to expect that whatever decision is reached will be a lot better than Lansley's original plans - thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of 38 Degrees members! But they're telling us that we need to pile on more pressure in two key areas:

- Competition in the NHS - an argument is still raging: will the future of the NHS be about health professionals working together to ensure patients get the best possible treatment? Or will Andrew Lansley get his way and shift the NHS towards a US-style system, with a growing role for competition, private companies, and "market forces"? [3]

- The government’s duty to provide a "comprehensive health service" - the government still wants to water down their legal duty to provide a decent health service to everyone, regardless of where they live. This legal duty has been enshrined in law ever since the NHS was created in 1948! Scrapping it would pave the way for a more patchy service, and mean in the future we could all face more problems with "postcode lotteries". [4]

There's still time to push these decisions in the right direction. But we need to move fast. Can you call your MP right now?
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-your-mp

Together we can make sure that as senior politicians sit down round the negotiating table, they're hearing reports of record numbers of voters on the phone calling on them to stand up for the NHS. That could just tip key decisions the right way.

The very fact that Clegg and Cameron are having to negotiate which parts of Lansley's plans they have to drop proves that, by working together, we can play a key role in protecting our NHS. [5 ]Sky News reported in April that the government had started backtracking on the NHS as "the result of a lobbying campaign by a pressure group called 38 Degrees". [6] That's us!

Whatever deal is announced next week, it's unlikely to be the end of our campaign. Any changes to the NHS will still need to pass through Parliament to become law, which means we will have fresh chances to improve them. But decisions made in the next few days definitely matter - so let's take our chance to stand up for the NHS.

Please give your MP a ring. Find their name and number, and some tips for what to say to them, here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-your-mp