Wet and dangerous welcome to 'Destination Wembley'

Leader of Brent Council, Muhamed Butt, told fellow members of the Labour Councillors' Business Network this morning about his plans for 'Destination Wembley'.

I hope councillors and business people from other parts of the country did not arrive via the Wembley Central station 'gateway'. The photograph above was taken at the foot of the steps on the southbound Bakerloo/Overground platform on Saturday.

Visitors to Wembley, already confused and bewildered by the closure of Wembley Park station and the lack of Jubilee and Metropolitan line trains, found themselves splashing through pools of water, avoiding mops and buckets and dodging drips as they squeezed on to the over-crowded platform.

Not a great advertisement for 'Destination Wembley' I am afraid.

Act Now to Keep Climate Change in the geography curriculum

The announcement that Michael Gove wants to remove teaching about climate change from the curriculum of under 14 year olds has been met with equal amounts of disbelief and anger from many quarters.  A national campaign got Mary Seacole and Ouladah Equianno retained in the history curriculum - we must now act on geography.

People and Planet has set up an on-line e-action page HERE and I reproduce their statement below:

In 2011, in response to a proposal to drop climate change from the national science curriculum, People & Planet's petition to the Department for Education was the largest email campaign received by the department that year. But new proposals now threaten to remove climate change from the geography curriculum.

At People & Planet, our experience working in schools and colleges has shown us that teaching about climate change is crucial to ensuring a new generation of young people who understand and are able to be leaders on climate change, taking action to protect the environment and human life.
Prof. Sir David King, the government’s former science adviser, says:

“It would be absurd if the issues around environmental pollution weren’t core to the curriculum. I think we would be abdicating our duty to future generations if we didn’t teach these things in the curriculum.”

Adapt the letter to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, and Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, which is HERE and say what you think of these new guidelines removing climate change from the national geography curriculum.

Please adapt the suggested text and subject line below, and remember to:

• let them know if you are a student, teacher, parent - or just concerned
• tell them how important your own knowledge and understanding of climate change has been to you
• be polite!

Fellow Lib Dem MPs show Teather the way on forced academies

Although Sarah Teather MP cancelled her meeting with Gladstone Primary School parents last week two of her Lib Dem colleagues in the House of Commons, John Pugh and David Ward, made their opposition to the DfE's bullying tactics clear in the Westminster Hall debate on forced academies.

I hope she will take time to read what was said in the debate LINK and to read John Pugh's post-debate press release below:

In Westminster today, John Pugh MP led a debate about schools which are forced to become academies. Many other MPs supported John with similar concerns about ‘aggressive’ and ‘threatening’ representatives of the Department of Education. 

Under Ofsted’s new inspection framework, 123 primary schools across the country have been identified as ‘unsatisfactory’ under new Ofsted performance measures. 

Highly paid brokers are employed by the Department to manage the transition to academy status. The Department for health considers this to be the right way to tackle failing schools. Often, school governors and parents are not given a voice in the transition process.

The decision to remove the school from local authority management seems to be taken with little regard to the quality of the local authorities’ track record in education. Sefton, for example, has a strong track record in education. Further, it is the Department for Education, not the school, are also the ones to decide which academy group is best for a school to join.

Some schools have been offered money to change status. ‘£40,000 per school and an additional £25,000 for legal fees’ were offered to a cluster of Lancashire schools if they became independent from the local authorities, according to Lancashire Branch of the National Union of Headteachers. Many school governors have not felt able to give their names but have reported ‘bullying tactics’ by officials.

The Minister responded to John Pugh’s debate today by repeating the statement that the academies program had a track record of success. Previously, the Department for Education has said that is has no targets for converting schools to academies. 

John Pugh remains concerned that creating new academies has become the Government’s aim, instead of working with school governors to improve the quality of teaching for children and parents.

He said today:   

It is unacceptable that the Department for Education is employing aggressive tactics to push through unpopular changes on schools in this way. There remain many unanswered questions around the success rate and value for money of the academies program. Further, I have serious concerns about the removal of assets funded by the tax payer from local authority control. 

Two-way consultation must be undertaken by the Department for Education with governors and parents, before decisions are made. 

We don’t accept bullying in schools so why would we accept bullying from the Department for Education?

Labour must get behind the Gladstone Parents' campaign to defend our schools

Turmoil in the school system is increasing to such an extent that soon the word 'system' will not apply. This was one of the underlying themes at this weekend's AGM of the Anti-Academies Alliance.

The meeting coincided with news that Kensal Rise Primary as a result of its difficulties is now beginning a consultation on the possibility of having ARK Schools, which run the ARK Academy in Wembley and 17 others academies, as its sponsor. Meanwhile Copland High School, the only remaining local authority secondary school in Brent, is anxiously awaiting the outcome of its recent Ofsted inspection. Its performance table LINK position makes it vulnerable to be putting into a category leading to forced academisation. It is worth noting that Crest Boys' Academy is below Copland on several of the outcomes. The staff at Copland  are likely to put up a strong fight agaionst any attempt at forced academisation.

Hearing reports from around the country it became clear that one of the most important elements in the resistance of forced academisation was the role of the local authority. Where they strongly supported their local school AND showed that they had the capacity to support its improvement, the possibility of resisting forced academisation was strengthened.

I share the view of many parents and teachers involved at Salusbury Primary and Gladstone Park that Labour councillors and  Brent Council officers  have been pretty supine in the face of Gove's bullying policy. Promised letters to the DfE stating the local authority's confidence in Gladstone Park Primary's ability to improve with the support of the local authority have failed to materialise.

 The School Improvement Service is being cut back to its core functions and many of its non statutory, but important, functions are to be taken over by the untested Brent Schools Partnership. This is a consortium of schools that will be both a clearing house for bought-in services and a means of providing mutual support between schools. Headteachers point to the success of a similar grouping in Harrow.

There is now some doubt whether the core School Improvement Service retained by the Council will be fit for purpose with staff leaving ahead of the restructuring and some schools deciding not to buy into the additional services offered. It seems that Haringey Council was unable to guarantee that it had the resources to support Downhills Primary which led to its forced academisation - we don't want Brent schools to have the same experience.

One of the most powerful contributions on Saturday was from teaching staff at an academy who gave a vivid account of the bullying by management that had begun after a honeymoon period. They now feared so much for their jobs that they asked not to be named at the meeting. They told us that in the primary department of the all-through academy 75% of the teacher had left and half of those had done so without another job to go to.

Bullying now appears to run right through the system from the top with Michael Gove, down to individual staff rooms. Parents say it reaches their children in the classroom with the example of Year 5 children (9 and 10 year olds) threatened with being kept in at every break with additional work at home because their mock SAT test results did not meet school targets.

Bullying is clearly evident in the behaviour of DfE 'brokers' , usually private providers, who are employed by the DfE to 'manage' the conversion of primary schools into academies. This has been a key focus for campaigners and has won sympathetic coverage in the press.

One parent summed it up saying:

How can Harris (academy sponsor) come into our school and educate our children when they have so much contempt for the children's parents and families.

 Over and above the bullying theme and the telling personal anecdotes we must continue to emphasise issues of democracy, local accountability and back door privatisation.

The formation of a Parents Against Forced Academies was welcomed and there was a strong call for a nationwide campaign for education to save it from Gove's wrecking strategies along the lines of the  Save Our NHS campaign.

Here in Brent it would be good to see Muhammed Butt and councillors stop shilly-shallying and get behind Gladstone Park parents who have been left to fight for democracy and accountability all on their own.

Climate Change: Education, Employment and Engagement

This 2008 film warned of the perils ahead. Have we done enough in the last 5 years?
 
The Mayor of Brent and Council Leader Muhammed Butt will present prizes to the winners of the Brent Climate Change Competition at 1.30pm on Wednesday March 20th at the Climate Change Conference being held at College of North West London, Dudden Hill.

This full day conference for 200 older secondary school students and further education students will include film, panel discussions and workshops all aimed at raising awareness of climate change, publicising university courses and training opportunities in the green technology sector, and publicising opportunities to engage in campaigning activities on the issue.

The conference is jointly organised by Brent Council, Brent Campaign Against Climate Change and the College of North West London.

Speaker	Title
Caren Trafford Environmental writer, Presenter, Educator	"One world… one problem"
Carly Walker-Dawson   Deputy Chair of Woodcraft Folk British Youth Council Vice-Chair (Participation & Development) IFM-SEI Rainbow Network Co-ordinator	If Climate Change takes place at the same speed as it does now, what will the UK look like in the year 2113?
Isobel Edwards   YUSU Environment and Ethics Officer and People & Planet society Treasurer	Easy changes to make to the life of a student which can have a big impact on their carbon footprint
Kelly EatonWaste Development Officer - Waste Policy Team - Recycling & WasteBrent Council	Recycling and One Planet Thinking: Reducing your impact on climate change
Thivya Jeyashanker & Edison Lasku Brent youth parliament Chair and Vice Chair	“Encouraging engagement and participation of young people”

Brent housing crisis strategy meeting on Tuesday March 19th

Overcrowding is one response to high rents

A message from Brent Fightback

Everyone is now aware of the deepening crisis in Housing in London.  We are aiming to bring together people from across our community for a more united response: individuals (especially those with housing problems), Tenants and Residents Associations, housing and advice workers, community and council representatives, trade unions and political organisations.

We want to hold an initial strategy meeting so we can begin to: 

• build connections and share ideas/ experiences about the challenges that are hitting residents in Brent,
• discuss what we can do to raise awareness of what all these changes mean,
• help people who find themselves struggling to cope; make their voice heard and develop strategies to meet these attacks
• develop a campaign around policies which would begin to meet real housing needs in the borough

We hope you will be able to attend and publicise this meeting to others who may want to be involved:

6.30pm-8.00pm , Tuesday 19^th March 2013,

Brent Mencap offices 379-381 High Road, Willesden, London, NW10 2JR

Contacts: Robin Sivapalan, robsivapalan@hotmail.com, 07974 331 053 and Ken Montague, kenmontague@msn.com

(some of) what’s happening now: ·         Inflated rents and house prices, huge shortage of social housing, overcrowding… ·         …reduction in the Local Housing Allowance (housing benefit for private accommodation), the Universal Credit benefit cap… Brent will be the worst affected area if the Universal Credit cap is introduced. ·         …’Bedroom Tax’, charging Council Tax on Benefits, “Affordable” rent being defined as 80% of the market rate…. ·         ….Cuts to legal aid, advice, support and language services… ·         …Low pay, rogue landlords and mortgages companies, loan sharks…

Brent Fightback is an alliance of workers and service users campaigning against privatisation and cuts to jobs and services.

Green Council says no tenant to be evicted if they can't afford bedroom tax

Source

A council has declared that none of its social tenants will be evicted if they cannot afford to pay the government's forthcoming bedroom tax.Brighton and  Hove City Council has become the first local authority in the country to take such a stance.
 

Councillor Liz Wakefield said: "The so-called 'spare room subsidy' is yet more immoral and harmful legislation from this morality-free coalition government.

"As Greens, we cannot throw people out onto the streets just because they're unable to pay it. I will therefore be bringing proposals that seek to ensure no household will be evicted from a Brighton and Hove City Council owned home as a result of ‘spare room subsidy’ rent arrears accrued solely from that household's inability to pay this unjust bedroom tax."

She added that steps would be taken to ensure that tenants don't take advantage of the proposals, and that officers would have to be satisfied that those pushed into arrears by the bedroom tax were doing everything they could to pay their rent.

Brighton Pavilion MP, Caroline Lucas, is also backing the proposals. She said: "The so-called bedroom tax legislation is not only morally wrong and a cause of great potential hardship, it is also unworkable in a city with a long waiting list for smaller properties.

"The council cannot downsize households on the scale required by the government, nor would we want it to, and we should not be prepared to evict hard-pressed families, the disabled and other vulnerable people purely because they are unable to pay this unjust levy on a home they either cannot or should not have to leave.”

Chair of Brighton and Hove Green Party, Rob Shepherd, said: "This government is willing to see people thrown out onto the streets purely because they can't pay their bedroom tax.

"They can be sentenced to homelessness simply for trying to maintain a normal, liveable family home. The Conservative and LibDem coalition government should be ashamed of itself and, as Greens, we will have no part of it.

"I congratulate the party and councillors who are taking such a principled stand. We call on the other parties to support us in protecting, in this way, some of our most vulnerable residents."

What Michael Gove's outrageous academisation programme is doing to my mother

The daughter of a teacher has asked that her Facebook posting on her mother's plight as a teacher be shared widely LINK I publish it here for you to share with others. 

I'm feeling low and a little bit helpless at the really horrible struggle my mum is currently going through. Hopefully she won't mind me posting about this - but I want to put it out there as it's something I really think people should know about.

My mum is a primary school teacher in a state school in Yorkshire, and has been for 20 years. She is a wonderful teacher: caring, committed, enthusiastic, her pupils love her, she has produced countless concerts, plays and choirs that have won national competitions, and has never received anything but very good / outstanding reports from Ofsted inspectors.

Her school is now, it would appear, in the midst of being systematically forced to become an 'academy school'. Academies have been around for a while - originally the stillborn brainchild of the Blair government, they are now being ruthlessly implemented by the self-important imbecile - sorry, 'moderniser' - Michael Gove; a representative of an even more clueless government obsessed with results tables and change for its own sake. But what is most disturbing about the whole pointless affair is not so much the staggering waste of time and resources, as the shockingly corrupt way it is being implemented.

For the first time in the entire history that my mum has worked at her school (which is 10+ years), the school was judged in an Ofsted report as having 'serious weaknesses' (having only ever been judged as good / outstanding prior to this). The headteacher was let go, and an 'executive head' was drafted in by the local authority, a woman who apparently has a reputation for supposedly 'turning around' failing schools (and by this I mean that she clearly deliberately fails them so that she can be seen to have 'turned them around' six months later).

The teachers were all subject to impromptu lesson inspections, and almost EVERY SINGLE teacher in the school, individuals my mum described as 'some of the best teachers I have ever known' were failed. My mum was failed for the first time in her career (Although on receiving this news she rather wonderfully told the inspectors "I don't give a monkey's"). The school has now been given six weeks to 'improve', before the government will come in to inspect them again. The teachers are doing 16 hour days in an attempt to do an impossible amount of work so that they don't fail this second inspection. My mum hasn't had an evening or a weekend off for weeks. She worked all through her supposed holiday last week. She is getting chest pains. One teacher collapsed from stress.

My mum had been planning to retire at the end of this year - this will be her final year as a teacher - what a way to thank her for 20 years of hard work and dedication to the state school system. She has always been an incredibly strong, cheerful, optimistic person, and whenever I speak to her now she talks of her life being a 'living hell' and 'just making it through the next five months'. I have never in my life heard her talk like this.

And all this in spite of the fact that the teachers at her school have been made perfectly aware that when the government come in to 'inspect' the school, they will be doing so with an agenda. That agenda being to turn the school into an academy - as they have done with several other schools in the area.

Essentially, all the work the teachers are putting in will most likely be for nothing, because the government have every intention to fail the school so that they can be seen to 'turn it around' and make it into an academy. It seems to me to be the most ridiculous scam - a con on a national scale which must be happening in countless more schools and which is abusing the time and resources of already desperately over-stretched, underpaid and under-appreciated teachers.

I feel very frustrated at not being able to make more people aware of what seems to me to be a total outrage. I am going to make this post public - please share, and if anyone I know is interested in the story or has any suggestions about how to increase awareness of this please get in touch. Thanks.