Village School strike intensifies as NEU complains about Butt's 'hypocrisy'

From the National Education Union in Brent
 

-->

Teachers and support staff at The Village School in Kingsbury, North West London, are increasing their action to prevent the academisation of their special school. Following their two days of strike action on 16^th and 17^th January members of the NEU* have upped their level of opposition to three days of strikes as management refuses to pause the consultation. 
 

They will be on strike on Tuesday 30^th, Wednesday 31^st and Thursday 1^st. Picket lines outside the school will be in operation each strike day from 7.30 till 9.00.

On Tuesday members and supporters will then take placards and songs to the civic centre for a visible protest from 10.30-11.30.

After Wednesday's picket 35 members will travel to Parliament for a scheduled meeting with Barry Gardiner, MP for Brent North. 

At Thursday's picket, members will be joined by Louise Regan, NUT NEU section National President, who is bringing prizes for best contributions to the protest. This will be followed by a big breakfast in the local cafe.

Further, members also voted at a very well attended union meeting on Friday 26^th to strike again on the mornings of February 20th, 21st and 22nd.

Brent Labour Councillor Jumbo Chan said, “I give my full, wholehearted support to the outstanding hardworking and passionate teachers and support staff at The Village School, who work tirelessly every day to nurture the school’s young students and maximise their potential. Like them and many other members of the local Labour Party and trade unions, I strongly oppose the wholly unnecessary, unhelpful and misguided proposed plans to academise such a valuable local asset, and urge others to do the same”.

Members have signed letters of complaint to the Chair of Governors and Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council. In a letter to all staff Muhammed Butt has attacked the staff of The Village and the Union Reps saying that their action is ‘to punish these children’ and of being irresponsible by taking strike action when the truth is staff are seeking to protect it. He recognises the fact that is it the work of the overwhelming majority of staff who oppose academisation who have raised the school to outstanding. Yet he discounts the fact that, as at Copland, if its staff are forced against their will into academisation very large numbers will leave. Thus, as occurred at Copland when it became an ARK academy with experienced and able staff leaving, education will be adversely hit for these very vulnerable children. ARK Elvin is yet again at the bottom of the league for Brent secondary schools, this year well below the others with only 31% A to Cs.

His own constituency Labour Party have unanimously opposed his stance of supporting the move for the school to be turned into an academy. The London Regional Labour Party also oppose academisation. Barry Gardiner, MP opposes the academisation of The Village. Muhammed Butt’s own Union the GMB opposes the move to academisation. The Headteacher and Chair of Governors, shamefully the Brent Council Labour Whip, are arguing that the school has to become a privatised academy despite the huge opposition to this of the staff and increasingly parents. 

Muhammed Butt wrote to all LA schools in December 2015 saying, “The only way to ensure that our schools remain communities, and do not become businesses, is for them to remain under the control of Brent Council. On behalf of Brent Labour’s leadership, I urge you to do all you can to ensure that they do.”

The only clear tangible outcome of academisation has been shown to be vastly increased salaries to those at the top and a wider pay gap between those at the top and the overwhelming number of staff. Muhammed Butt has said that it is his aim to seek to ‘reverse the outsourcing of services’ that Brent has done previously and bring them back in house as a way of providing a better and more economical service which we applaud. But at the same time, in complete contradiction, he is proposing support for the running of yet another Local Authority school to be outsourced. Utter hypocrisy.

A week ago, many members at the school dressed in black symbolising the death of local authority schools. On Friday, they again dressed in black and added red to show their anger. They will continue to wear black on Fridays and the NEU would encourage anyone to join in wearing black too as a show of solidarity. Please send us your photos and we will pass them on to the NEU Reps at The Village

Butt and Brent Momentum at loggerheads over HDV & academisation

Cllr Butt has co-signed the letter criticising the Labour NEC over their intervention on the Haringey Development Vehicle LINK. That, combined with his letter to Village School staff criticising union members over their strike action LINK, has intensified criticism from Brent Labour Party members and Brent Momentum who took to Facebook and Twitter over the weekend to express their views.

'This won't enhance Cricklewood' Drop-in about aggregate super-hub January 31st

From NW2 Residents' Association

Barnet Council are inviting everyone to come to the Crown on January 31st, to see their plans for a road/rail aggregates+waste superhub and a waste transfer facility. We can even discuss the plans. Here's the invite:

Drop-in event  Wednesday 31 January 4pm to 8.30pm Clayton Crown Hotel, Cricklewood, NW2 3ED ____________________________________________ The Brent Cross Cricklewood development is Barnet Council’s most significant growth and regeneration programme. There will be an opportunity to hear about the scheme in more detail and to view the plans for the replacement waste transfer station and the modernised rail freight facility. It will be an open drop-in session between 4pm and 8.30pm with opportunities to hear a short presentation with more detail at 5pm and 7pm. The invite is extended to interested residents who wish to hear more about what the scheme will bring and to discuss issues and concerns they may have with members of the delivery team. BACKGROUND: The Brent Cross Cricklewood development is Barnet Council’s most significant growth and regeneration programme. The £4.5 billion regeneration scheme is one of the biggest in Europe with a vision to create a thriving town centre with attractive, high quality homes and green spaces. It will deliver a modernised and expanded Brent Cross shopping centre, new high street with local shops, restaurants and offices, 7,500 new homes and up to 27,000 jobs. The Thameslink station quarter will be delivered by Barnet Council in partnership with Network Rail. It will bring a number of major transport infrastructure improvements for the area. The new Brent Cross West station will link to Kings Cross St Pancras in under 15 minutes. Other infrastructure works will enable the new station’s construction including an enhanced and modernised rail freight facility, a replacement state of the art waste transfer station, new rail sidings and a new bridge for vehicles and pedestrians across the Midland Mainline train line.

They call it an “enhanced and modernised rail freight facility” as if they’re just replacing an existing rail freight facility on the site and making it better. They’re not. They’ve evicted about 50 small businesses, which weren’t handling rail freight at all. They want to build a road/rail facility there instead. Most of the freight will be carried away by road and the rest will be brought in by road, totalling 452 HGV movements every weekday. They’ll bring aggregates – gravel, sand, crushed stone and so forth – by rail, stockpile it and load it into trucks and they’ll bring construction waste in by truck, pile it up and load it onto trains. This proposal will not “enhance” Cricklewood. We're going.

Butt backs out of Village School consultation meeting and asks for strike action to be called off

There was disappointment and anger last night at The Village School when Brent Council leader did not show up for the consultation meeting about proposals that the school academise in order to become a Multi Academy Trust with Woodfield School.

At the lobby earlier this year Cllr Butt and lead member for children and families, Cllr Mili Patel, had been asked to make a strong and clear statement of opposition to the proposal. Both Brent Central and Brent North CLPs have passed unananimous motions against academisation.

Instead of appearing at the meeting and taking questions, Cllr Butt instead chose to write today to all members of staff about the issue. The position he takes on academisation is weaker than that requested by his own Labour Party members.  He expresses a preference for local authority oversight of schools but appears to believe that The Village has no choice. He also takes a traditional right-wing position on teacher strikes claiming that they 'punish' families and children for government policies and calling for next week's three day strike to be called off.

The letter requires close textual analysis to establish Butt's exact position and even then...

-->

POTENTIAL TO ESTABLISH A MULTI ACADEMY TRUST

I know there’s some concern and uncertainty about what’s going on so I thought it might help if I set out my position . First of all, I am opposed to the forced academisation of schools and find it deeply regrettable that TVS has been put in a situation with such limited options. 

Responsibility for this rests with government and government alone. That said, circumstances being what they are, I recognise why a formal relationship with Woodfield is a positive thing . I see why, in the present legislative context and financial climate, both schools feel that an official partnership would be in their best interests. And, while forming a MAT may well produce tangible education al benefits, as well as economies of scale, its main purpose will be increasing the likelihood of sustaining both schools’ outstanding status. 

TVS is a fantastic school, there’s no doubt about that – in fact, I’m not sure ‘outstanding’ does it justice. As I see it, its success is a product of all involved being so dedicated to what they do and so determined to ensure every student has every opportunity to realise their fullest potential. My belief is that the school’s greatest asset is this collective strength and I have no reason to suspect this will change as a result of formalising the partnership. 

As Leader of the Council in a time of austerity I know only too well the essential nature of closer collaboration. As a proud trade unionist , I will always champion the enormous value of collective bargaining . Being able to speak with a single, unified voice is a powerful thing and one of the many reasons I welcomed the NUT and ATL teachers ’ unions’ decision to join forces and create the NEU. And, as a member of the Labour Party, I hold on to the central tenet that , by the strength of our common endeavour , we achieve more than we achieve alone. On that basis, I cannot in good conscience seek to deny TVS and Woodfield the same opportunity for sustainable partnership. 

 Of course, I’d much prefer that responsibility for overseeing our schools remain devolved to local government. I think local people are best placed to understand local needs. Equally , I’m not sure that the Secretary of State , the Department for Education , or the Regional School Commissioner have the capacity for nuanced management of what, as a result of this government’s actions , is an unhelpfully centralised and drastically underfunded education system. 

I have said previously that my priority is the best possible educational outcomes for children and young people . What I should have also said is that those outcomes are best served, and can only be assured, by retaining a happy, motivated, stable workforce. I know that TVS is ordinarily a very happy, very special place to work. I also know there are genuinely held concerns that becoming an academy will mean that’s no longer the case. With that in mind, I think it necessary to challenge the suggestion that these proposals will have a detrimental impact . I also need to address claims that, even if a suitable deal can be agreed, any such agreement cannot be guaranteed in perpetuity 

-->

On the first point, I welcome the school’s pledge to ‘embed core principles’ in a legally binding agreement. This includes an explicit public commitment to abide by national terms and conditions for all existing and future teaching staff and local terms and conditions for all existing and future support staff. This process has the added advantage of being based on an existing Trustees Agreement – drafted in concert with NUT reps – that enabled Manor to convert to academy status and join BSAT without objection last year. On the second, to provide maximum possible certainty, a range of protections will be built into the agreement. This has been described as a ‘triple lock’ but may actually include as many as five provisions designed to make it impossible for fundamental changes to be made in the future by Trustees or Governors without undergoing rigorous public scrutiny or a substantial majority on any relevant vote. 

I’m aware that the NEU have requested a temporary halt to the consultation to try and find an alternative solution . Given how long this matter has been under discussion, and given how closely involved union reps have been throughout , were there another way forward, it surely would have presented itself by now. Again, I wish there was a way for TVS and Woodfield to protect their relationship without having to academise . But , as things stand, there isn’t. With that in mind, the responsible thing to do now is work together and ensure as robust and informed a decision as possible is made.

Furthermore, I think it would be a grave mistake to punish these children and their families for government policies to which we are ideologically opposed. Similarly, I know how hard a personal decision it is to take industrial action, especially when it disrupts the lives of people we care about. And I doubt anyone relishes the prospect of three days’ without pay. I ask then that any further strike action be called off and that those involved instead continue to engage fully in the consultation, ensuring that everyone’s views are made clear. 

As I’ve said, the Labour Party, the Council, and the teachers unions all recognise, value, and benefit from the enormous power of formal partnerships. On that basis , whatever our views on the mechanism, we should all be able to understand and accept the rationale for these outstanding schools doing the same. 

Thank you for taking the time to consider my thoughts – do please get in touch and let me know what you think.

Half-term children's activities at Welsh Harp Centre

'Shunned' Duffy: Labour will be haunted by cemetery asbestos issue

In a comment on this blog LINK last night Cllr John Duffy, said:

I have been, blacklisted, deselected, resigned and shunned by the some Labour Party members. However the issue of the asbestos in Paddington cemetery and how they treated the workforce will not go away and will haunt the Labour Party.

Quintain foresaw Carillion collapse last summer

On January 15th LINK I reported that Quintain had confirmed that Carillion were not active in its Wembley Park development and that the company had decided in September not to go ahead and award them the South West Lands contract which would have been worth £130m.

I remarked that Quintain  

--> appear to have been more canny than the government following Carillion's  profit warnings in July 2017. This has now been confirmed by Quintain's executive director of construction, Max Voyce, in a statement to Construction News LINK:
-->

Quintain take the financial strength of our contractors and wider supply chain very seriously and during negotiations for a build-to-rent development at Wembley Park, Carillion issued their first profit warning.

We were concerned that the level of loss declared, along with the huge pension deficit, would seriously impact Carillion’s ability to continue to trade and garner the support of the supply chain, increasing the likelihood that our cost and programme objectives would not be met.

We therefore took the view that we would not proceed into contract upon the completion of Carillion’s precontract commission and commenced discussions with McAleer & Rushe, whom we have now successfully contracted with.

Patients' Forum (London Ambulance Service) submits formal complaint to Brent CCG over withheld performance data

The Patients' Forum for the London Ambulance Service has submitted a formal complaint to Brent Clinical Commissioning Group over an alleged breach of its statutory duties.

The complaint claims that both the CCG and London Ambulance Service has stopped sending the Patients' Forum performance data since August 2017 and that their excuse that the data is 'unvalidated' and therefore not available is not reasonable and in breach of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The CCG is thus failing in its statutory duty  to ensure public involvement and consultation in commissioning processes and decisions. (NHS Act 2006 S.14Z2)

Further the Patients' Forum claims that it received no documents for the Clinical Quality Review Group (CQRG) meeting in December 2017 and no papers or notification for the CQRG January 2018 meeting.