Faith Schools

A Tory government with a slim majority is not going to allow that to get in the way of an active and controversial education agenda. Grammar schools are not the only issue, so is allowing faith schools to recruit 100% by faith! It seems we in the UK will not learn good sense. I am not a fan of faith schools, however I can live with them in a way I cannot live with fee paying private schools. But I cannot live with faith schools who create a corral. The only purpose of religion today is that of expansive goodness, of offering hope and understanding. Even as far as teaching people how to be decent with no certainty of an afterlife. I am sure Jesus would teach that if on earth today. I am sure Jesus would applaud meritocracy and not the choice money can allow. It would not surprise me if Jesus could understand streaming in schools so long as merit was the only criterion. I doubt Jesus would endorse any faith school founded on exclusion. I doubt Jesus would look kindly on any religion that continues to practice child abuse (think of all the examples of this of old and new - Castrati, Circumcision, priestly abuse, it is not one religion in the firing line, it is many ( I think that perhaps the Sikhs and the Buddhists may be safe?)). So religions including the Christian Church have a terrible history to be ashamed of and then they want to campaign to create exclusive faith schools. This is madness, the folly of it is writ all over Ireland, it is a road that creates ghettos. It is a folly that enslaves children in the name of God, creating either conformity or the immense pain of defiance. Sensible progressive people of any faith or none would not want to structuralise this in future British society and I find my willingness to be positive about our new prime minister very strained. Brexit is a very important matter one might think absorbing of all the efforts for the foreseeable? http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2730420-It-gets-worse-faith-schools-also-set-to-become-MORE-selective

16-18 Travel in Northumberland: the Teenage Tax on 6th form & College students

Time to blog about about the Northumberland issue of the moment. 16-18 student travel costs and something I thought did not impact on me (yet), but I was wrong. I shall try for some history. Some way back under the last Liberal led admin, Northumberland enacted a new policy which said we will provide free travel to education for 16-18 year olds, both to locations in the county, and (subject to some constraints I suspect) without (that is important because Carlisle College, Newcastle College and others come into this). This presumably coupled into the idea that the norm that you go out to work at 16 has been well hammered:

Society has said
you stay in education
until you are eighteen.
Society then
had better help
pay for you
to get there!

Northumberland:
Large rural
underpopulated
county?
Shrugs them off.

The Labour party who with independent support now run Northumberland determined to undo this. They ran a consultation earlier in 2014 about making students pay up to £450 a head per year. When the finished proposals were published, this figure had become £600 p/a. Instant outrage because this was perceived as targetting rural parents. It being supposed that if you live in Guide Post and attend a high school in Ashington, the cost being nothing like four students from Berwick who want to go to the county's only agricultural college at Kirkley Hall. Somewhere into this was also injected the idea that no arrangements at all would be made if you chose 16-18 education outside the county. Additional to this is the idea that the county has conveyed that schools now have to arrange all of this through monies they have. The county in effect is totally ditching the organisation of 16-18 scholar travel.

I hope I have that right. Months of god almighty row have followed.  Try https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=740301396015406&set=o.526242160820688&type=3&theater and https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=google+northumberland+teenage+tax&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb&gfe_rd=cr&ei=2H_BU8PmN-HX8gfusIDYDA  .

After the July county council meeting was cancelled for lack of business which does seem pretty odd bearing in mind how much non Teenage stuff came first in the meeting when it did take place, the Tory group demanded a meeting. With very bad grace, the Labour/Indy admin allowed this and the meeting took place on Friday past. The Tory motion was defeated 30/34. Along the way the two Independent councillors for Ovingham and Stocksfield (both I sense to be rather Tory places) enabled this to happen by voting with the administration. The Stocksfield councillor argues, along with the administration, that the motion as tabled by the Tories was in fact unlawful.

You can sense the difficulties in all of this. Some would say Labour were trying to score a political point by saying look what happens when we have to make all the cuts the government forces on us. Others (and the parents seem central to this) feel the south east Northumberland centred administration was trying to penalise what they perceive as the Liberal and Tory voting fringes. If so I find that quite appalling. And as this example taken from the Parents against website shows I suspect it is totally counter productive: " I live in the South east of the county in Ellington and my children travel to Ashington high. The school are informing parents to go to the NCC website to find the guidelines. I can't afford the £25 a week that it will cost for my son to go to the sixth form and I don't want him going to Northumberland college so not sure what he is going to do".

I feel the whole issue shows the funding double whammy Northumberland faces. One of England's most rural counties gets one of the worst per head inputs from government. A rural county spends more to deliver a service, this transport being a case in point. When that rural county then focusses its attention onto its urban South East core, there is a double whammy.

We got dragged into all this when just over a week before the vote, we learnt very accidentally that our 416 bus our fourteen year old uses, was being cancelled. There was an outcry and the decision has been deferred for two terms. Along that way, this categorically showed me that whatever the policy rights and wrongs, the implementation was in chaos. Downloading the implementation to the educational establishment was leaving those ill prepared, lacking in personnel and briefing.

I very much suspect the county has not done the investigations into the application of the policy prior to applying it. Instead a sense of a proxy war between providers like Northumberland College and Newcastle College is suggested. The former has announced free travel for all 16-18 year olds including those in Tyne & Wear. That will be an interesting bill to sustain. At a meeting in Prudhoe last Tuesday, I heard Councillor Paul Kelly from Ovingham explicitly say that this was all about preventing students leaving the county in order to drive up provision in the county. That is virtually Stalinist and in relation to Northumberland's geography and resource profoundly unrealistic.

In Tynedale it is almost impossible for many students to reach the Ashington campus of Northumberland college. Scores travel in by train to Newcastle College. Look at this bus timetable for the Carlisle College service. How do you think the teenagers of Halton Lea Gate are going to feel about this abandonment by the county?

I think that come the autumn the issue will be far from silent. I also prophesy that many more than just the 16-18 years olds are affected. Where-ever a bus (like our 416) had younger children sharing a service with 16-18 there is likely to be a knock on effect. At the West Area Committee Meeting last Tuesday, I raised this question. I could see eyebrows raise as people pondered it. The county senior officer could do no more than promise me that an answer would be forthcoming. Not so far, although the question was minuted.

It is really really sad and divisive that it has come to this. Northumberland faces many challenges and a them/us urban/rural split is not helpful. I really do sense an aggression and a refusal to work to productive solutions from Grant Davey, the council leader. You can make your own judgements by studying his words. One of the examples the council cited as a bad result of the existing policy leaves me open handed. It is those students in Berwick wanting to get to Kirkley Hall in the same county. What are we to do? Don't we want farmers in Northumberland from Northumberland. Have we gone completely crazy?

If you read this and can tweak my details, correcting any blatant error of fact or providing some amplication, I shall be pleased to consider same and make alterations.

SCUTINY: In various places there has been debate about why the decision was not "called in". From my perspective I found this an interesting read  https://www.facebook.com/groups/526242160820688/permalink/545022835609287/?comment_id=545028108942093&offset=0&total_comments=17

This says "Hi Pamela - any one of the councillors could have called-in - not just the conservatives. There was a very good reason it was not called in though and I repeat why it was not here: Allison,

"Calling In" is when the relevant Scrutiny Committee formally ask the Policy Board to reconsider a decision. Some people have been given the misleading impression that had the decision been called in it would have been debated on and decided by Full Council this is not the case.

This decision went to the Scrutiny Committee before the Policy Board made the decision. The Conservatives voted against the Policy, Labour for and Anne Dale abstained.

We won that round and the Scrutiny advice was for them not to make the decision they did. Such a decision however is not binding upon the Policy Board and was therefore ignored.

We have lost faith with the current Scrutiny process as it is dominated by Labour (where in most councils as part of good practice the Chairmen of the Scrutiny Functions are usually opposition Councillors).

If we had called in the decision (something that can only be done by members from the Scrutiny committees) then it would have just gone back to the Policy Board and been ignored again.

It was always our intention to raise this at full Council at 2nd July as the only way to bring the opposition maximum publicity and publicly hold the Policy Board accountable for its decision.

One of the members of the Scrutiny Committee Councillor Dale could have called in the decision or voted against it at pre-scrutiny- she did neither.

Kind Regards

David Bawn County Councillor Morpeth North"

Prudhoe Community High School

Last autumn Prudhoe Community High School failed an Ofsted and was placed in Special Measures. You can read the Ofsted report here. Also subsequent correspondence. In particular the report of 14th January 2014 which appears to have precipated Dr Iain Shaw's departure as Head from 31st January 2014.

I have shown some reluctance to make comment. For reasons which bear little relationship to this crisis and reflect a decision we wanted our daughter to make, our child is at Queen Elizabeth High School, Hexham. We are not parents, I am not a politician, I may be a commentator but I am not a schools expert although I do slot a PGCE into my CV and my wife has read very many Ofsted reports professionally. She was taught a mantra "prepare for the next Ofsted, the day after the last report arrives".

Over recent days I can honestly say people have taken me aside in the street to air their concerns, so I do feel a need to make some comment. The biggest problem as I see it is the multi-faceted nature of the challenge.

I would identify six issues
The Ofsted
The New Building and Academy
The County Council
Middle Schools
The Fuse
Communications & Governance

The Ofsted: the school has badly failed an Ofsted and whatever one thinks of the process, it is what is there, it is in many respects a tick box formula and the content of both the Ofsted and the 14th January letter cannot be ignored - the tenor of the 14th January letter is that this has happened.

The New Building and Academy. A large area of the challenge is that a new school is desperately needed. Neither of the two major parties have exactly served Prudhoe well over this although the current MP has tried very hard. In the pipeline there is money for a new school but is that imperilled by the current crisis? No imperillment says Councillor Anne Dale.  It has been said often including by the Chair of Governors in the Journal that the usual outcome to Special Measures is a change to an academy or closure. It must be borne in mind that this is not a large secondary school. Closure does not really seem realistic. The nearest secondary Charles Thorpe in Ryton is in  a different authority. Ponteland and Hexham are not straightforward to reach. An academy which became a new school? Open hands? Who would do that? Emmanuel from Gateshead? Is the town ready for a religious foundation? I am a Christian but I would not want my child taught Creationism as anything other than a myth. That has been an issue in the past there.

The prospect of a new school also interacts with the county service which as part of the set of inspections of last autumn was judged badly by Ofsted and then the question arises:  how do Middle Schools fit into all this change? How do you plan to build a new school without knowing the future of Middle Schools? Whether they stay or not directly impacts on what you build into a new High School. Unless you want a load of portakabin classrooms springing up around the new school. I predict that the fate of the local Middle Schools and any new secondary school in Prudhoe is intimately linked.

At the Prudhoe School itself there are two specific areas that cross my radar. The highly innovative Fuse Centre which should be a pride and joy turned out to have a very specific negative role in the Ofsted report. Funnily enough the Fuse is where a sense of unease started several years ago. In turn these stories fuel a debate about how the Hexham Courant reports Prudhoe which neatly links to............

Communications:  It does damage to read  at http://www.pchs.org.uk/?p=3552
"Ofsted Inspectors will be visiting school on Tuesday 22 October 2013, and Wednesday 23 October 2013.
Their report will be published on our Ofsted page when complete". And this is not updated as of 10th February and there is no live link to the Ofsted report. Reflect: completely new people may be thinking of moving into the new housing estates in Prudhoe and they will expect accurate information.

Whatever the rights and wrongs and outcomes of the situation, I will say the following and hold it as pure common sense. We are in the 21st century, people expect websites and facebooks to be accurate and informed from public institutions and we expect open-ness. If action plans are published on a school website there is no need for the Journal or the Courant to be an interface. For my money as a matter of urgency the school website needs to come clean about the Ofsted situation. It also needs to publish a clear and accurate list of governors. I could not find that today. And in the case of the chair of governors, a list of all similar public offices previously held.

(Some reading this will wish to note this parallel story in Cumbria).

UPDATE FRIDAY 14th FEB 2014

Last Monday Deborah Reeman from Morpeth King Edward VI (open Leadership Letter PDF) school arrived as a new headteacher for Prudhoe CHS. Over Thurday /Friday this week a combination of Messrs Gove/Opperman (our MP) announced that the school would be rebuilt. The exact phrase of "within two years" appeared in the Hexham Courant. Other coverage is in The Journal and Guy Opperman's own blog. What strikes me as the important matter of what year's the rebuild is for (and thus how Middle Schools are affected) has not been stated.

UPDATE SATURDAY 15th FEB 2014

Two key local politicians make it clear the new school build is like for like and no changes in the Prudhoe School pyramid for Middle Schools follow.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 2nd JULY 2014.

The school's woes continue and the entire governing body have resigned en masse. OFSTED remain dis-satisfied.  http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/governors-resign-after-prudhoe-community-7361384
The chair of governors Eileen Burt has no comment to make.  The latest Section 8 report (May) which precipitated  this is available here http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/122351 .