Save our Gardens

Destruction in Salmon Street

Something that really upsets me is when I see yet another front garden being ripped out and paved over. There's something really brutal about it and it is  regular occurrence in Brent.  Even worse is when there is no attempt to retain even a border or a little container planting:

Car park with house attached, Queen's Drive

 The London Wildlife Trust published a report last week  'London - Garden City?'which recorded the loss of gardens in London. You can download the report HERE .

'As established by this report, London’s gardens cover a vast area. But the speed and scale of their loss is alarming,’ says Mathew Frith, Deputy Chief Executive of London Wildlife Trust. ‘Collectively these losses detrimentally affect London’s wildlife and impact on our ability to cope with climate change. It’s never been more important that Londoners understand the value of our capital’s gardens. A well managed network of the city’s 3.8 million gardens support essential wildlife habitat and offer important environmental benefits in response to climate change including sustainable urban drainage.'


The loss is a combination of hard surfacing to provide car parking space - what the estate agents love to call 'off-road parking'; erection of sheds, garages, glasshouses and bottom of the garden studies etc; and the development of back gardens for new housing. Brent suffers from all these and the transformation would bewilder anyone transported to the present from the 1950's: 'What have we done with our cherished front gardens?'


It isn't just front gardens either. A parent I visited recently proudly told me she had converted the back garden into a playground for her children and took me into her back room to show me the garden,  paved completely from house to back fence,  with nothing growing in it at all. As I stared I remembered our back garden in Kingsbury when I was a kid.  We played hide and seek amongst the shrubs, picked the figs and threw them at each other,  built little camp fires to cook sausages and baked beans, searched in the irises to find snails and have snail races - and even planted seeds and nurtured the young plants. What a loss.


All is not completely lost though.  I have already reported on the Chalkhill allotments which are proving very popular but many of the very small gardens on the estate are something to wonder at. When I have leafleted on the estate I have stopped to admire the ingenious ways people have managed to grow flowers, tomatoes, corn, aubergines, runner beans and courgettes in a tiny space, often in their front gardens. Some conservation areas, such as St Andrew's in Kingsbury have managed to retain grass verges and the ban on drop kerbs. The difference is striking:

Well's Drive in the St Andrew's Conservation area

Even on the busy Church Lane it is possible to have a lovely front garden:

Front garden in Church Lane, Kingsbury

The Report says that on average the equivalent of two and a half Hyde Parks has been lost each year between 1998-99 and 2006-8. In the same period the amount of hard surfacing increased by 26% and the amount of lawn decreased by 16%. Overall vegetation in gardens decreased by 12%. On average 500 gardens, or part gardens, were lost to development each year.

Action needs to be taken at a London-wide as well as a borough level. This not only requires stricter planning controls but also weaning people away from cars by providing better public transport.  It could be that the price of oil will do the trick in the longer term. There is also an issue with people's lack of time in this era of long working hours and multiple jobs and also with lack of knowledge about gardening. The former is obviously a wider social issue but it has been encouraging to see the latter addressed. Metropolitan Housing is running gardening workshops on Chalkhill, the Transition movement has been doing some educative work, and Brent Elders' Voice has introduced a scheme for cross-generational support to keep gardens under cultivation.


I do my bit to encourage wildlife in my very small back garden but is is often hard to persuade visitors that I have planted the jungle deliberately! However they are soon entranced by the many visiting birds, including woodpeckers and the busy pond life.

Council Executive delays festival decision but approves everything else in record time

There was a large delegation from Brent's Hindu community at the Council Executive last night to back up their 5,000 signature petition opposing the cutting of funding for Navratri celebrations and calling for the funding to be restored. There was also a petition to save the St Patrick's Day Parade which emphasised that the celebratiuons were for the 'benefit of the whole community'. See my earlier BLOG.

The Executive deferred the item until July.

There were also representations by carers and users over the 'Day Opportunities Strategy'  which involves the closure of the Crawford Avenue Centre and the reduction of adult social care opportunities for mental health.Some of those who attended told me they had little faith in the Council listening and changing its mind but nonetheless were determined to put up a fight.

The strategy was  voted through unanimously  as was everything else on the 16 item agenda and the meeting was completed in 35 minutes.

Teachers Vote Overwhelmingly for a Campaign of Strikes on Pensions

Teachers in England and Wales have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action against government plans to cut their pensions.

Ballot results released this afternoon for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the National Union of Teachers reflect a high level of anger and resistance.

83% of the ATL voted for a campaign of strikes and the NUT was even higher at 92%/

This is especially significant for the ATL as this is its first ever national strike ballot.

Together with the NUT this result represents the majority of school teachers in England and Wales, in both the state maintained and independent sectors.

Both organisations will now consider these results at meetings in the next two days.

NUT National Executive Member Nick Grant said:

Unless the government makes an immediate and fundamental reversal of its plans to make us pay more, and work longer to get less pension in retirement, strike action will start with one day's stoppage on 30 June.

We also expect colleagues in the University and College Union and the PCS civil servants to join us on strike that day."

We call on everyone who is angry about the unjustified attacks on public services and its workforce to join us on the day at a march and rally from Lincolns Inn Fields, Holborn at 11.30am to go via Whitehall to Westminster for a rally.

This is a fight for the future of properly funded and accountable public services. And it is a fight which is only just beginning

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