Diminishing democracy in Brent - an update

At the time of the local elections the Brent Green Party called for an independent investigation into the following issues in Brent Council:

1. Corporate Management Team officers being paid through their private companies rather than normal pay roll
2. The contractual arrangements for CMT officers and interim appointments
3. Previous employment and business connections between senior offices appointed by Brent Council on an interim basis
4. The working culture of the Human Resources department 
5. Brent Council's Whistle Blowing Policy to ensure that it adequately protects whistle-blowers from harassment and retribution

To which a reader added:
6. Instances of council policies, procedures, standing orders, scheme of delegation etc being circumvented.

Secondly, there is the important issue of the appointment of Chief Executive.  Christine Gilbert's acting role was extended by the Brent Executive  until after the local elections on the recommendation of Fiona Ledden, Head of Legal and Procurement. The report stated:

The recruitment process for a new permanent  Chief Executive should be delayed because the current recruitment process for  three other CEs in London boroughs would limit the quality of candidates, to allow the restructuring of council senior management to go ahead smoothly, and  to ensure continuity and reputation management over the move to the Civic Centre and the 2014 local elections.

No independent investigation has been launched by the new Labour administration and no open recruitment process has started for a permanent Chief Executive.

Green Party speaks out on Gaza and opposes Israeli ground attack

 There was a huge protest last night last night against Israel's actions in Gaza

GREEN Party MP, Caroline Lucas, has today written to the Foreign Secretary to urge him to step up action to secure an end to the latest escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine, and to oppose any attempt by the Israel military to launch a ground attack in Gaza. Lucas has also called on the Government to do more to work towards securing a lasting and just peace in the region, based on a two state solution, and to urgently address ongoing human rights violations. 

Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: 

"This latest surge in violence was triggered by the horrific murders of four teenage boys. Unless the international community speaks with one voice to demand a cease fire, yet more parents will lose their sons, more children will lose their parents and more families will be torn apart by grief. 

"The Palestinian death toll is rising rapidly and Israel needs be held fully to account for its use of missiles in densely populated neighbourhoods, a policy which breaches international human rights standards. The collective punishment of the Palestinian people is unacceptable, and so too is the firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas fighters. I condemn the use of violence on both sides." 

Greens support the Public Sector strike in Brent and Central London

Shahrar Ali (Green party) with pickets

Brent Green Party backs today's public sector strike

A message to all the public sector unions striking today

On behalf of the Green Party of England and Wales, we would like to express our solidarity with you in your struggle for decent, secure work and fair pay and working conditions.

We believe that public sector workers provide excellent and vital service to our country, and that our public services represent a very significant part of the true wealth of this nation.

The public sector in the UK has, for decades, been systematically attacked. Workers are bearing the brunt of this, and are being expected to pay the price for an economic crisis not of their making.

We recognise that going on strike is the option of last resort, and that the decisions to do so have not been taken lightly. We sincerely hope that this co-ordinated action succeeds in defending your jobs, pay, and working conditions.

With very best wishes,

Brent Green Party

Greens stand alongside unions in million strong public sector strike on Thursday

On July 10 the Green Party will stand alongside unions in the largest one-day strike over pay by public sector employees since 2010.

The Green Party have pledged to support the employees’ right to strike and to picket peacefully in order to assert their right to fair wages and proper treatment. Public sector employees are facing unprecedented financial hardship with part-time and female employees the most affected under the Government’s ideological austerity agenda.

The strike will see more than one million workers protesting the Government policy of frozen and restricted pay and will include workers from the PCS, The National Union of Teachers, Unison, and others.

Thousands of people around the country are forgoing a day’s pay to express their unhappiness with the Coalition Government’s economic attack on public sector employees.

Greens across the country will show their support:

Green MP, Caroline Lucas said:

"It is very clear that austerity isn't working. It's cruel and counterproductive. It should not be the most vulnerable who are paying the price of an economic crisis that was not of their making. People are struggling, the cost of living is rising and it's time the Government recognised the value of workers who provide us with crucial services every day.

"People have had enough, it is time for plan B and it's time for the Government to listen. On July 10, people from all over the country will stand together to make their voices heard loud and clear."

Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett said: 

 "This government's austerity agenda is making public sector employees, joined with benefit recipients, the increasing numbers of poorly paid, and insecure private sector employees, pay for the financial crisis that was not of their making.

“George Osborne is cutting the tax rate for multinational companies and inviting them to dodge even that reduced rate of taxes, and at the same time has slashed the real pay of the dinner ladies, the cleaners, and the local officers who keep our communities running. I'll be showing my support on Thursday by visiting picket lines around my local area of Camden before joining the march and rally in central London.

"We cannot continue to see soaring poverty and dependence on foodbanks in Britain; we need to make the minimum wage a living wage, and ensure local government employees have a chance of decent progression beyond that."

Green Party Trade Union Liaison Officer of GPEW national executive, Romayne Phoenix:

"The economic crisis was caused by the banks; how could it ever be fair - or effective - to fix it by cutting workers' pay? Our public services benefit the majority. This is about not letting those at the top blame the rest of us for problems we didn't cause."

Green MEP for South East, Keith Taylor:

“When the government decides to stop spending their time dismantling public services and oppressing the low paid and unemployed, and instead focusses on reigning in the power and wealth of the top 1%, then I'll have a shred of sympathy for them.

“Until then I am 100% behind the strikers and their efforts to defend our services, and seek decent terms and conditions for public sector workers.”

Kirklees Green Party Councillor, Andrew Cooper commented:

"I'll be joining staff on the Picket line in Huddersfield. Kirklees Jobs and services for local people have suffered greatly due to Coalition targeting of local government for cuts.”
 
 Dudley Councillor and Deputy Leader, Will Duckworth said:
 “I will be on the picket lines early in the morning and then going on the planned demonstration in Birmingham with Dudley Trades Union Council.  We need to fight the Government's attempts to destroy decent pay and pensions for normal working people.”

 The Group of London Green Party Councillors said:

“It can’t go on like this. We can't continue with rapacious cuts to the NHS, the closure of local children's centres, and mounting queues at foodbanks. The government must hear the public's message that cuts are hurting the people of Britain. An alternative economic strategy and an alternative future is possible and together with communities up and down the country we will be out promoting that message on Thursday.”

North West Green Party Representative, Laura Bannister commented:

“In the North West, members will be visiting and taking part in picket lines and supporting the mass rally in Manchester. We are also sending letters of solidarity to regional TU branches on behalf of the regional party"

As a member of the Green Party and the Green Party Trade Union Group, I will be supporting the picket of Brent Civic Centre and the Central London march.

Student protest over technician and teacher cuts at College of North West London

As students were registering for courses on Saturday at the College of North West London in Dudden Hill, Willesden there was a demonstration outside by mature student Zo Flamma-Hill of Women in Construction.  She was opposing cuts in technicians, teachers and librarians at the college and the failure of the college to inform students about the cuts. She was also concerned that the Students; Union had taken no action and that the redundancies had taken place in an atmospere of bullying.

She called for investment in education and an end to discrimination in terms of age and gender. Zo pointed out that women represent only 11% of the construction workforce. Most of these jobs are office based and only 2% work in the manual sector. CNWL has been attractiong women into manual trades, graduate construction professions and engineering.

She claimed that courses were being reduced to less technical ones geared to the provision of cheap labour with some apprentices paid only £2 an hour

Caroline Lucas supports July 10th public sector strike

Copland: Did Premature Ejaculation Rule Out Final Ofsted Visit?

Guest blog by ‘Pamela Stephenson-Connolly’

For those who like closure in their stories these are frustrating times. With only 2 weeks of the school year left it has been announced that, due to illness, Copland’s final Ofsted inspection visit will not now take place. This will mean that the HMI’s  written report of the visit may have to be put back on the shelf for a while. This is quite unnecessary, however, as the 3 reports published after earlier visits this year indicated that the actual inspections had little influence on the final reports,  the content and assertions of which were overwhelmingly determined by the DfE/Ofsted’s pre-written narrative of which the reports simply formed a  part. LINK to http://wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/copland-is-getting-goves-reverse-trojan_11.html 

The nature of the narrative arc was set in the first Ofsted report this year (‘the interim headteacher and associate headteacher and very strong governance of the IEB are driving change well’) and it soon became clear that the reports’ principle purpose was to portray  the ‘saving’ of a school by Gove, his ‘useful idiots’ Pavey, Marshall, John, Price and the rest of the IEB, through  forced academisation, ‘tough’ but necessary action, (60 staff and half the curriculum axed), and finally the salvation that would be The Ark Rescue (and thence onward ultimately to privatisation). The report on the final inspection, now postponed, would have provided the climactic instalment.

There are some, however, who are sceptical about the official reasons given for the cancellation of the inspection and support their case by reference to the tone of fevered over-excitement in the last report in March  ( ‘We can see hope now.’ This new-found optimism is palpable!’ etc). These sceptics contend that this March report in fact read more like the climax (‘richer quality of learning…yes!…rigour…yes!…challenge…yes!…more this, more that…...yes yes!…  more rigour still….   yes yes!….best practice…yes yes yes!………..cutting edge……more more more! …….yes yes yes! …ooooohhh ……’ etc)   and that the inspectors reached this climax too early. In a kind of Ofsted premature ejaculation they came too soon to what they should have delayed until later, ie the final triumphant inspection report written to justify the whole year’s evisceration of the school, its curriculum, its staff and its soul. The inability to defer gratification left Ofsted with nothing left in the tank for the final report, hence the cancellation.

The rumour surrounding this theory now joins a litany of other half-believed stories which have circulated in recent months at the school. Here’s a sample.

Rumour 1.    Subject: No Ofsted Inspection (Alternative explanation 1)

According to this one, after the Trojan Horse fiasco, nobody believes Ofsted anymore and Copland’s new owners, Ark,  didn’t want their new property tainted by association. Ark wide-boy and Tory party contributor Lord Fink had a word with Cameron who told Gove, ‘No inspection or I’ll unleash Theresa May on you and you stay on the naughty step for another month’.   ‘Sorted, Dave’, was apparently Gove’s reply.

Rumour 2.     Subject: New School House Names

Apparently, the Ark functionary who decided to impose the name Harold M.Elvin Academy on the new school is determined to continue this theme in other areas. Accordingly, the new school house names are to be similarly influenced by stars of 1970s Philly Soul and will be called

Delphonics, Stylistics, O’Jays, Spinners, Trammps, Sweet Sensations

Plans to change the boys’ school uniform to wide-lapelled velvet jackets, flares and platform shoes with contrast laces and to adopt ‘Betcha By Golly Wow’ as the school motto were considered a step too far, however.  

 (The proposal for ‘Backstabbers’ to be the Leadership Team Motivational Song for the new Ark era was nevertheless accepted unanimously).

Rumour 3.   Subject: No Ofsted Inspection (Alternative Explanation 2) 

 

This rumour claimed that the final Ofsted inspection would, in fact, still take place and it would be on Thursday 10^th July when almost all the staff would be on strike and the school would be closed to students. An inspection of an empty school would achieve 2 objectives. Firstly, the incidence of pupil misbehaviour would be substantially less. (The March Ofsted report’s claims that ‘behaviour is much improved and the school is a more respectful place…’  were laughed at by staff who know the reality. ‘The worst it’s ever been’ was what I was told by one experienced teacher in a position to know and with no axe to grind. Hardly surprising when support staff, student supervisors and an entire mentoring department have been scrapped this year and the remaining hard-pressed staff regularly receive messages asking them to help out ‘as we are rather understaffed today’. No kidding!).

The second reason to visit on a strike day would be so that the HMI could see at first hand one great growth area at Copland which is a direct result of the IEB/Marshall regime. Up until last September Copland’s annual loss of teaching days through strike action averaged less than 1 day per year. This year, since the imposition of IEB/Marshall, that figure has improved by about 800% year on year. Having shot their bolt over teaching and learning standards in the March report, Ofsted could have at last begun to retumesce on this one great sign of progress. ( ‘We can see solidarity now. The new-found disillusionment and militancy is palpable!’). It would have made enjoyable reading.

Copland will close next Wednesday and that’s not a rumour. None of the staff forced out over the last year have received any kind of recognition from IEB/Marshall: no leaving ceremonies, no presentations, no collections, no leaving speeches, no spoken thanks, no written communications of gratitude for their contribution. Nothing. Instead, those taking ‘voluntary’ redundancy have received a letter which begins with the sensitive formulation: ‘I write to confirm your dismissal from the services of the school on the grounds of redundancy’.

In a way this is a fitting end to a decline which began with Ofsted failing Alan Davies’s Copland on Safeguarding. (Failing to safeguard the students, that is, not the public funds in the school budget. Ofsted had been quite happy with Davies/Evans/Patel’s financial management of the school, as had Brent Council. It was the staff who blew the whistle on the £2.7 million scam and the staff who suffered the consequences: a series of clueless appointments at senior management level (with new managers primed by Brent to regard the staff as ‘the problem’), and a refusal by Brent either to pursue the missing money or to balance this refusal by acknowledging its responsibility for the resulting budget deficit).

So it goes. For the moment, the city boys, the privatisers, the self-seeking ‘non-political’ careerists and the bullshitters are in the ascendancy. Schools as exam-grade factories will dominate for a while. But they’re only a manifestation of a particular point on the greater narrative arc of our society. If Copland’s teachers have achieved anything in the school’s varied and mostly honourable history it will have been to have helped produce kids who will grow into adults who will appreciate the limitations of this essentially sterile ‘vision’ and  come together to do something positive to change it. 

I wonder where that would feature in an Ofsted inspector’s checklist of teacher achievements.