Never mind climate change, let's save some money....

Environmental groups across Brent angered at Brent Council’s decision to cut key Environment posts will be holding a protest outside Brent Town Hall on Monday 12^th July.   They have requested speaking rights at the Council Executive meeting to voice their concerns.

 

Brent Campaign against Climate Change, made up of environmental, trade union, political and community groups across the Borough are infuriated that Brent Council have cut two posts in Environment and Culture, including a new Climate Change Officer post.  The campaigners believe the post, which would have would oversee and deliver the Borough’s Climate Change strategy, should be exempt from the cuts which will otherwise seriously impede the Council’s work to deliver a sustainable agenda.

 

Brent’s Climate Change strategy was launched at an event in Wembley in December last year.  A strategy steering group was due to be set up comprising public services, businesses, voluntary sector and community group representatives, but this new post was the only paid one on the committee.  The other places are entirely voluntary, non-expert and do not carry any authority.  The steering group is yet to be set up and the officer post, due to be recruited last year, was put on hold due to a recruitment freeze across the Council this Spring, and has now been axed.  This work is instead being designated to existing staff, which campaigners believe will compromise what can be achieved.

 

Ken Montague, Chair of Brent Campaign against Climate Change said:

Brent Council really need to get their heads round the seriousness and urgency of the problem facing us. Climate change is happening now and it won't wait till they've balanced their budgets.  This is a short sighted decision which shows that Brent is not planning for the future.

 

We should save the planet not the bankers.  Brent Council must lead the way and not give way to Con Dem budget cuts.

Brent Councillors don't have to answer to us. They will have to answer to their grandchildren.

Steffi Gray, of Brent Friends of the Earth (FoE), who is hoping to address the Council meeting said:

This is outrageous.  Brent have spent forty thousand pounds of our council tax hiring consultants to come up with this strategy, but have now pulled the plug on any further money to actually deliver the scheme.  What’s more they have made a big deal of signing up to the 10:10 campaign to reduce emissions by 10% in 2010, but this target is actually LESS than the amount they agreed to previously.

We want Brent Council to get serious about climate change, but we fear these cuts will put a sustainable agenda at risk.  Given the urgency of climate change, this post should be a priority and be made exempt from the cuts.

 

Shahrar Ali, Brent Green party spokesperson for planning and environment added:

We need to take urgent action on climate change mitigation locally. The Brent climate change strategy called for a full-time officer to work with other agencies and the public - today, not the day after tomorrow. Failure to recruit the post is environmentally irresponsible. We are calling for all newly elected councillors to see sense, for the sake of current and future generations.

 

Brent Council faces two hundred staff cuts in September, whilst Council tax has been frozen for the coming year.  The decision was made without consultation with community groups who had previously been involved in shaping the Borough’s climate change strategy.

 

Members of Brent FoE, Brent Green Party, Brent Red-Green Forum, Brent and Harrow Socialist Workers Party, Brent Socialist Resistance, and  Transition Kensal to Kilburn will be outside Brent Town Hall in Wembley from 6.30pm on Monday 12^th July.  The Council executive meeting starts at 7.15pm.

 

Church speaks out against English Defence League

John Root, vicar of St James's Church, Alperton has written the following letter to the Wembley Observer:

We, the people of St James's Church, Alperton are committed to strengthening the bonds of peace and understanding between Islam and our own faith, Christianity.


We were concerned to read your report 'Protest Planned at Muslim Rally', about the demonstration planned in Wembley on June 26th.

We believe that the aim  of the Engl;ish Defence League is to stir up anti-Islamic feeling and to pull Brent's different communities apart.  We oppose this.


Also, although members of our church come from many different nationalities, those of us who are English reject the right of the English Defence League to speak on our behalf.


We assure your Muslim readers of our continued prayers and support. We believe that God is dishonoured when the seeds of hatred are sown and we refuse to share in the English Defence League's agenda of hatred.

Claremont Takes a Step Back on Academy Status

The Governing Body of Claremont High School has acted after contradictory statements from the headteacher over applying for academy status. Terry Malloy's statements to the press had ranged from the tentative to the gung-ho and resulted in an anti-academy demonstration outside the school. Reading between the lines it appears that there might have been a good old-fashioned row on the governing body.

A statement published in the Harrow Times said:

"The discussion was full and frank. At this point in time, the governing body has concluded that no expression of interest in pursuing academy status will be made and the school will continue to explore the specific and wider implications of academy status to be better informed."

As Brent Green Party spokesperson on Children, Families and Schools I welcome the governing body's statement which indicates that they have recognised their democratic responsibilities and the need to be accountable to the wider community. I hope that after due deliberation they will reject the academy option on the grounds that it would undermine central services provided by the local authority, take money from other schools, and remove democratic accountability.

Coalition Academies: The Battle Begins

The demonstration outside Claremont High School on Tuesday

There was a swift and determined response to Claremont High School headteacher's announcement that he wanted Claremont High School to apply for academy status, when demonstrators gathered outside the school yesterday. They gave out leaflets setting out the issues to the 1500 pupils to take home to their parents.

The protesters said that the headteacher, Terry Malloy,  had made the announcement before he had consulted the staff, parents or even the governors. They added that if the school does not consult parents and teachers further action will be taken.

Hank Roberts, Brent ATL and NUT Secretary said, “Democracy is non negotiable”. Shane Johnschwager, Brent NASUWT Secretary said, “The teachers and education unions are totally united on this. As soon as these headteachers attempt to undermine accepted democratic values we have to hit them hard and fast and we make no apology for it”.

The letter to parents included the following points:

• You as parents have not been fully consulted on this significant change.
• Your child's teachers have also not been fully and properly consulted.
• The headteacher has gone to the press before discussing this matter at a full meeting of the Governing Body
• Of the 8 oustanding schools in Brent onlt two have indicated they have any interest at all in even considering this proposal. The clear majority of Brent's oustanding schools value the role of the Local Authority and do not want academy status.
• Statutory provisions and professional services currently provided by the Local Authority, such as Special Educational Needs and School Improvement Services, would need to be provided by private firms and paid for by the school. This would come out of any additional funds.
• Any serious problems encountered by the school would leave them isolated and without council support.

1.

Academies Rule OK- Sarah Teather

On Sunday's blog I asked, "How long can (Sarah Teather) go along with undemocratic, cash grabbing academies and the 'shambles' of free schools?"

It didn't take long for her to respond!  In a written answer published yesterday,  as Minister of State for Children and Families, she said:

We will reform the school system so that children with special educational needs and disabilities get the best possible support. We will halt the unnecessary closure of special schools, improve diagnostic assessment for schoolchildren, and remove the bias towards inclusion. We have introduced legislation to make it possible, for the first time, for special schools to become academies. We are committed to offering special schools the additional freedoms that we are giving mainstream schools.

So it seems that she is going all the way with academies that she opposed back in 2007 and with 'free schools' that she dismissed as a 'shambles' during the General Election campaign. Added to that she appears to be suggesting that children with special needs and disabilities should not be integrated into mainstream schools.Umph!

GREEN GONE WRONG How the Economy is Undermining the Environmental Revolution

Heather Rogers is the author of the book with the above title published on June 14th 2010. An event to discuss the ideas in the book is being held on Wednesday 30th June at the ICA, Carlton House Terrace, SW1 5AH

£12 / £11 Concessions / £10 ICA Members

Heather Rogers and Kirsty Wright explore the rapid expansion of environmental production and consumption worldwide and the way in which we are coming to rely on consumerism as the solution to the very problems it has helped to cause. What are the structural forces that led us to this place, and who is paying the price? Do we have the capacity to find solutions that are not mere palliatives, but ways of engaging with how we live and what kind of world we want to live in? And who is challenging the big business-as-usual approach and proposing social change as a solution to climate change?

Kirsty Wright is the climate justice campaigner at the World Development Movement. She has been involved in the worldwide ‘Climate Justice Now!’ network and recently returned from the People’s Conference on Climate Change in Bolivia, which was organised as a radical response to the failure of the UN talks in Copenhagen.

To book, please call the box office on +44 (0)20 7930 3647, or online here:

In association with the World Development Movement

Claremont headteacher rises to the academy bait

Getting 10% more money (at the expense of other schools and centrally provided services) and more curriculum freedom (which the Green Party argue all schools should have), is the bait provided by the government to entice schools to become academies - and Terry Malloy, headteacher of Claremont High School in Kenton has swallowed it hook, line and sinker. He remarks, 'It enhances your income giving you more money to spend on pupils and that's a good thing.' As someone remarked this is a cash grab that will deprive other schools of income and ruin central services that provide support to all schools.

Malloy was speaking somewhat prematurely as the issue has not yet been discussed by Claremont's governing body. That was another government ploy: they wrote to headteachers rather than governing bodies with the 'academy offer' revealing their disregard for the democratic structures currently in place in schools. Headteachers are in charge of the day to day management of schools, governing bodies are responsible for their strategic direction. Changing status is clearly a strategic matter and governing body as community as well as school representatives should take account of the wider impact on other schools and the community.

Labour having so strongly backed the Trojan horse of academies under Blair and Brown are now backtracking, but lack credibility. Ed Balls, speaking to the Guardian, claims that Labour's academy programme was 'a progressive and comprehensive education policy' and 'What the Tories are proposing is a total perversion of that policy. It will be focused on the schools that are already doing well not those who need extra support. And for all the rhetoric about parent power and decentralisation it will remove the requirement to consult local parents or the local authority and will mean thousands of schools reporting directly to the secretary of state.'

In fact under Labour academy governing bodies appointed governors and the academy sponsor was guaranteed a built in majority. The role of local authorities was only latterly partially restored and academy agreements made subject to agreed admissions criteria. We in Brent know how little consultation there was with local parents and community over the Ark Academy and also remember the council survey (quoted recently by John Christie, Brent's Director of Children and Families against the Coalition policy)that showed the majority of Brent residents wanted schools to be run by the local authority - not by charities, private sponsors or faith groups.Labour had already prepared the ground which the Tories are now  enthusiastically occupying.

Sarah Teather Lib Dem, Brent Central, now Children's Minister, was strongly opposed to Labour's version of academies when she was shadow minister for education, but was demoted when the Lib Dem party leadership changed and their policy softened (just in time for Brent Lib Dems to change their line on the ARK Academy). Now in the Coalition she is having to support an even worse version of the Labour policy she so vigorously criticised. During the General Election campaign she described the Tory free school policy as a 'shambles, unless you give local authorities that power to plan and unless you actually make sure that there is money is available, it's just a gimmick'.

 "Trust in me"

Michael Gove, behind the polite, mild manner and silver tongue,(resembling Kaa in the Jungle Book) is a right-wing Conservative who is implementing potentially devastating, ill-thought out policies at reckless speed. He is Teather's boss - how long can she go along with undemocratic, cash grabbing academies and the 'shambles' of free schools?  The fig leaf of the Lib Dem's pupil premium, on the back burner anyway, will not make up for the cuts and privatising that will wreak havoc in local schools.