Tag Archives: haringey-schools

Decision made on new school

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Well thank goodness! The Schools Adjudicator has decided that the new school in Haringey will be run by the LEA (Local Education Authority). At the three public meetings I personally went to, it was clear that the LEA with their bid for a community school won the support of politicians from both parties (there are only Lib Dems and Labour councillors and MPs in Haringey – no Tories); the entire schools and education community; and also the local parents and residents.

It would have been a travesty of unprecedented scale had the decision gone the other way.

So – the Labour Government’s plot to foist unwanted school business franchises on Haringey with the first of its kind bidding competition has failed. Hoorah!

Fortismere School's future

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Tonight is the meeting on the way forward for Fortismere School, to which my colleague Cllr Gail Engert is going on behalf of the Lib Dems (as I can’t go) and putting forward our proposals.

There is a great deal of angst and bad feeling grown up in response to the school’s seeming desire to move to foundation status. The concerns are around moves to selection; reduction in intake of statemented children; and changing the criteria to enter the sixth form to only those students attaining A or B grades. People are worried that it will cause disharmony in our community of schools. However, the Government’s policy is to allow such applications.

There are, as I said, very strong views against the proposals – and yet a seeming determination from Head and Governors to go forward. The consultation is coming to a close. I asked the school to at least hold an all-parent ballot – but they have refused at this point in time.

So, what is to be done? What the Liberal Democrats have proposed is a five-point plan:

1) The closing date for the consultation should be extended and the consultation should be widely publicised in order to gather the views of the whole local community.

2) The Head and the Director of Education should meet urgently to try to resolve the conflict between the school and the Council. I’ve offered to facilitate the meeting in the hope that a way forward can be found that avoids the school pushing for foundation status.

3) The school should hold a proper public meeting to allow all points of view to be presented to parents and local community.

4) The school should be transparent and undertake to publish all the results of its informal consultation.

5) The Head and Governors should make their intentions on selection clear – and guarantee Fortismere remains a school for the whole community.

Gail’s comment for the press on this issue was, “Our five point plan ensures that all groups are properly consulted on the future of this successful school and that the results of the consultation are fully transparent. This school is a fundamental part of the local community and decisions on its future direction should take their concerns fully into account.”

Whilst I said, “It is clear that there has been a breakdown in communications between the school and Haringey Council, which has resulted in Fortismere pushing for foundation status. I want Fortismere and Haringey to resolve their differences and start working together for the benefit of parents and the local community. I have offered to broker a meeting between the two sides so we can resolve this dispute. I am hopeful that this issue can be resolved if all sides focus on what is important – the future of the school and the children.”

School links with South Africa

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One Lynne Featherstone MP with Jacob Riba, Ros Hudson (head teachers of Ephes Memkeli and Alexandra Park schools)more event from yesterday to mention: had rushed back from Parliament for a celebration at Alexandra Park School. They have formed a partnership with Ephes Memkeli Secondary School in South Africa. A group of Alexandra Park students had been out to the school and together with students from there had toured South Africa to make a film about science. The Head Teacher, Jacob Riba, was visiting here and the school was screening the documentary for the first time and celebrating this partnership.

It was clear to me that the gain from this project was and will be enormous – in a whole host of ways – for both the schools. The picture shows myself with Jacob Riba and Ros Hudson (the two head teachers).

The further link – between these two disparate areas is that Oliver Tambo (a major figure in the ANC) used to live in Alexandra Park Road!

The latest on the new secondary school

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Yesterday we – finally – had the Schools Adjudicator Panel was sitting in judgement as to who (of four bidders) will get to run the new secondary school in Haringey. With £28 million being ploughed in – and this school a vital addition in a vital part of the borough – this is critical.

Ironically, we (Liberal Democrats and Labour) are united in terms of a) believing that a community school is what is needed and indeed represents the vast bulk of local opinion and b) believing that the Government had no business imposing a competition process and then moving legislation to allow them to appoint an adjudicator to assess the bids – rather than leaving it to the Independent Schools Organisation Panel.

So, I – and many, many others – spoke in favour of the Local Authority bid. This isn’t because I love Haringey LEA (Local Education Authority) – but it was and has been clear all the way through that this bid knows the territory and fits the community and the outside bidders really didn’t. And Head after Head, individuals, politicians and all gave thoughtful and balanced reasons for supporting the Local Authority bid.

What I want to know now – is how can the Panel turn this down? The criteria were filled and the local voice rang loud and clearly in a united view that only the Haringey bid would deliver. It would be a travesty if the Panel were to go against this. But hold the front page – it’s two weeks or more until the final curtain!

Bafflement and anger over school places

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Nearly all the morning was surgery (i.e. meeting succession of constituents who have individual cases they want to raise with me face-to-face). This is the time of year when a trail of virtually suicidal parents come to see me because their children have not got not only their first or second choice schools – but as of today – not even their sixth choice.

It is a woeful process and totally baffling at times. Whilst not every child can get in exactly where their parents want, there are some examples that are quite extraordinary when several children from different families all living close to each other get into a school – but another child also living right next to them all doesn’t (and none of them have siblings at the school, so it’s not the siblings rule at work). So how can parents believe it is fair? Perhaps it is time that Haringey was forced to publish who gets in from where and why!

Do parents have choice over Haringey schools?

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Met with Labour Council Leader George Meehan first thing. George says there shouldn’t be a problem for the 200 children without secondary school places as they will start to diminish as the choices get made and the places get filled. But only one in five children in Haringey got their first or second choice – and I remain concerned that not getting those choices mean that the Government’s ‘choice’ agenda is meaningless. Instead of getting the schools they have chosen, children and parents end up with schools that are far away across multiple bus journeys and which were put at or near the bottom of their list of choices. That’s not choice.

I remember one particular woman who came to see me at my surgery whose daughter had gone to a local primary school in Highgate. All the other kids from her block of flats had been accepted to one particular secondary school – and only this child had not. The girl instead had to go to a school that was near the bottom of the list of her choices and a difficult journey away; the girl was then (as the mother had feared) bullied and was now at home refusing to go to school through fear.

Perhaps if the schools published a map with dots on showing where all the children who get in come from (with an asterisk for special needs as they come from outside catchments) then we could all see for ourselves how ‘fair’ the system is and how far children are having to go if they don’t get their first or second choices. At the moment, there remains the suspicion that despite efforts to get it right, miscarriages of justice occur. The system needs to be fair and seen to be fair. Transparency and publication might help our confidence in the system.

Other topics I covered with George were on the use of the voluntary sector, the ‘restructuring’ of the library service; what Haringey Council is proposing to do following my discovery that both HIV infection and alcohol-related deaths in the borough are up substantially and also why my surgery poster is not allowed in schools!

Liz Santry and Haringey Council's website

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You may have seen in the local papers how Haringey Labour councillor Liz Santry (Haringey Council Executive Member for Young People) has had a go about a supposed mistake on this blog.

In brief – I said Haringey had failed to properly publicise an important public meeting through its website, and even now – as I write this and after she wrote to all and sundry saying I was wrong – the relevant web page doesn’t mention the meeting at all.

In more detail – I wrote on 6th February:

So – the second meeting of the ‘New School Bidders’ for the competition to take control and author a new secondary school in Haringey. If you remember, we kicked up at the first meeting because there were only six were members of the public.

This time it was a packed meeting – maybe a hundred people. I had put out an email to my lists as I am never convinced that a notice in a local paper – which is the standard Council approach – really reaches everyone. It’s a good thing that other people did promote this meeting as Haringey Council did not even get round to updating their website pages about the new school to mention the second meeting. But this time we didn’t leave it to just the Council – and got a far, far better attendance.

Haringey Council’s website pages about the new school is here and is found if you take the obvious (albeit long!) course through the menus from the council website front page: Home >> Children and Families >> Schools and Education >> Consultations >> New Secondary School

It only mentioned (and still mentions) the 16th January (poorly attended) meeting and not the one on 6th February. In fact, even as I write this now that meeting is still not mentioned – even though the page is noted as having been updated on 13th February.

Yet Liz Santry claimed in her letter that my blog entry was “Completely untrue. The appropriate web pages were updated on 17 January and will remain active at least until the consultation period closes.” All rather undermined by the absence of a mention about the second public meeting to go with the mentions of the first meeting – you’d have thought someone would at least have hurriedly added the information after she sent off her letter of complaint!

New Secondary School: how the meeting went

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So – the second meeting of the ‘New School Bidders’ for the competition to take control and author a new secondary school in in Haringey. If you remember, we kicked up at the first meeting because there were only six were members of the public.

This time it was a packed meeting – maybe a hundred people. I had put out an email to my lists as I am never convinced that a notice in a local paper – which is the standard Council approach – really reaches everyone. It’s a good thing that other people did promote this meeting as Haringey Council did not even get round to updating their website pages about the new school to mention the second meeting. But this time we didn’t leave it to just the Council – and got a far, far better attendance. And as a result the bidders did better and the questions were more testing.

Without going into the minutiae of the presentations – there are three outside bodies bidding and one from Haringey itself for a community school. What is so hard for everyone (outside of the fact we shouldn’t be having a competition at all) is how do you decide? They all say they will be part of the community. They all say they will abide by the code of admission and so on.

Of the bidders I thought the Haberdashers gave the best presentation – but that may be because their Chief Exec was the best presenter. She certainly gave it life and talking to a parent afterwards who has a child who may well attend the new school he certainly felt that out of the four this would be the best.

Amongst my concerns is that whilst I can understand inviting outside management in when schools are failing and they need someone to come in and take it on – this is a brand new school to be built. But regardless of what people locally might decide they want – power really still rests with Labour in Whitehall. Labour dictates that its rules and its preferences have to be followed and its hoops jumped through to have a chance of new money.

In fact, the Government laid a statutory instrument (an amendment to legislation) on 19th January which means that instead of our local Schools Organisation Committee taking the decision on who wins the bid – the decision is being taken out of local hands and will be given to the Schools Adjudicator appointed by the Secretary of State for Education. So even less local say courtesy of centralising Labour, again.

So – my offer to the meeting was to lay down some Parliamentary Questions to find out how transparent the process with the adjudicator will be. What are the criteria? Will we see the reasons for the final choice? Can there be access to the consultation submissions? And Cllr Gail Engert, my Lib Dem colleague, also got agreement (subject to confirmation) that the Schools Organisation Committee which will meet to decide its view will be open to the public. There may also now be the opportunity for a further public meeting with the Schools Adjudicator so that the local people can directly voice there opinions.

It is important that everyone submits there views to this process (it’s all we have). You can email your views to the council at bsd@haringey.gov.uk – though please also copy me in as it’s useful to get a wide spread of feedback. You can use my contact form or post comments on this blog.

Important meeting about our new secondary school

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Consultation is not Haringey Council’s strong suit and I was disappointed to say the least when I attended a (poorly publicised) public meeting to discuss the bids to run Haringey’s new secondary school and there were only six members of the public present.

Thankfully Councillor Engert, our local Lib Dem Education Spokesperson, with support from myself scored a mini victory and the Council have bowed to our pressure to organise a second meeting. This is to be held at 18:00 on Tuesday, February 6, at Alexandra Primary School in Western Road, N22 6UH. (For a map click here).

This bid process is a vital decision for our community. The new school will the biggest education investment in Haringey for a generation – so the local community must be right at the heart of the decision making process when it comes to the choice of who runs it. Obviously, I hope the Council will do a better job in letting local people know about this meeting, but I’m also publicising it too – such as with this blog entry! So please do pass the news on to other people – particularly anyone with primary school age kids.

If you won’t be able to make it there are more details online about the process, the bidders and how you can have your say on Haringey Council’s website.

Please feel free to copy me in on your comments – or make comments here on this blog – as I am interested to hear people’s opinions on the proposal.