Backdoor Selection

A conversation I had this summer with a fellow parent was brought to mind when I read this article about Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s concerns that Academies will exclude the pupils they don’t want and refuse to accept pupils excluded from other schools, creating ‘ghettos’ of excluded pupils in other schools. The parent I was chatting to happened to work for school admissions at Birmingham Local Authority. When I told her about my campaign against Bournville School, she described to me the impossibility of dealing with the city’s Academies when seeking to place excluded pupils. She explained that the Academies simply fail to respond and refuse to be available to take her calls. Similar frustrations are echoed in the article, which quotes Councillor Terry Crowe as saying “I’ve seen how academies can be a law unto themselves. We have to live with that, but we also have to protect the interests of all students in Stoke-on-Trent.”

The article  also makes the worrying suggestion that under-performing pupils may be at risk of being unfairly excluded by academies;

”Former Blurton High governor and city councillor Brian Ward has also raised concerns that academies have a motive to exclude under-performing pupils to prove the new system is working.”

If you accept this, it follows that Academies also have a motive not to give places to less able pupils in the first place – that Academies have a motive to discriminate against those children least likely to get the school up the league tables. This would impact on various groups of pupils including children from socially and economically deprived backgrounds and children with special educational needs, and in fact this is exactly what the government-commissioned National Audit Office report into Academies found. It found that Academies increased their league table results by a combination of changes to intake and changes to examination courses (ie. GCSE’s switched for courses with higher pass rates such as BTECS and other vocational qualifications).

This all adds up to selection by the backdoor, and anyone who values comprehensive state education should be very concerned. There is little doubt in my mind that this explains eamples such as Skegness Academy which has seen a remarkable reduction in the number of children with special educational needs in the space of just 18 months  – see post Dramatic reduction in SEN rates following Academy conversion for school in Skegness.

But how can this be happening when the DfE says that all academies must comply with the admissions code of practice because their funding agreement requires them to do so, and that “Academies must have regard to the SEN code of practice and statutory guidance on inclusion.”? The lawyer David Wolfe answers this question on his blog ‘A Can of Worms’;

”The short answer is that what the Department says, including in legal documents, often glosses over many of the distinctions between maintained schools and academies/free schools and/or between different academies/free school in a way which can be quite misleading.”

David Wolfe goes on to explain that not all Academy funding agreements say that they must comply with the admissions code of practice, and if it’s not in the funding agreement, they don’t have to do it.

With regard to children with special educational needs, David Wolfe says;

‘The obligation to have regard to the SEN Code of Practice and the statutory guidance on inclusion does not apply to all academies – indeed it was not notably even applied to some of the Academies set up immediately following the Ministerial commitments to ensure that Academies would be required to comply with the law relating to special educational needs as it applies to maintained schools.’

At Bounville School the argument for Academy conversion that Governors made most strongly to staff was that the school would be its own admissions authority. Perhaps unsurprisingly this argument did not feature quite so strongly in the case made to parents. Teachers at Bournville school rejected this argument, however. One teacher explained to me ‘The Governors are saying there are some children they don’t want us to teach. We are not saying that. There are plenty of children who are not going to get us up the league tables who are an absolute joy to teach.’

What does the future hold for those children I wonder, in Michael Gove’s vision of every school being an Academy, each one being its own admissions authority?

Kingswinford School to convert to Academy after a period of non-consultation featuring no meeting for parents

Governors of The Kingswinford School are intent on pushing through their Academy plans and have announced a date for conversion of 1st January 2012. The decision has been taken despite overwhelming opposition from staff who held a one-day strike on 18^th October, and despite serious concerns raised by parents at a public meeting on 27^th September about the lack of information and consultation.

I attended and spoke at the public meeting on 27^th September. I had been asked to present a parents’ perspective on Academy status. The meeting had been called, not by the school leadership, as might be expected as part of a consultation process, but by staff and parents concerned about the lack of communication, information and opportunity for discussion. It was chaired by local Councillor Tim Crumpton. Incredibly not one single meeting for parents had been held by the school as part of the consultation.

There was an uneasy atmosphere ahead of the meeting, which was being held at a nearby Primary school. There had been pressure in school the previous day from Governors unhappy about the public meeting, and the staff I encountered were nervous about repercussions back in school. There was apprehension that some staff might be too fearful to attend.

At the meeting I listened as parents spoke of having been totally unaware that consultation had even been taking place. They were stunned to discover that the consultation period was due to end the very next day. Parents spoke of having received a letter in January informing them that the school would be looking into Academy status, and that ‘further details and opportunities for full consultation with all stakeholders will be provided in due course.’  One parent explained that they had been waiting for more information, but no further letter had been received.

Before the meeting I had trawled through the school website looking for any references I could find to the Academy proposals. Tucked away towards the bottom right of the school website is a notice about Academy status. To find it, you actually have to be looking for it (as I was). Academy status – the biggest proposed change in The Kingswinford School’s history, a decision that will affect generations of children to come – appears 6 news items down in small font. You actually have to scroll down to find it.  When you click on the link you reach the following cheery message;

The Governing Body have decided to proceed with an application for us to become an Academy School. This is a very exciting moment in The Kingswinford School’s history!

The Governors have taken their decision in the best interests of the students, families and staff of The Kingswinford School.’

As more information becomes available, the Governing Body and I will keep you informed as to the progress we are making with this.

Would you like to give us your views about The Kingswinford School becoming an Academy?

(Followed by a downloadable PDF form and some glib and insubstantial information about Academy status).

Incredibly parents are actually invited to comment on a decision that has already been made. To do so they must have internet access and a printer and a habit of regularly scouring the school website. You could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that governors don’t actually want to hear parents’ views, and presumably, since the decision has already been made, wouldn’t be taking them into consideration in any case. Unsurprisingly we heard at the meeting that only one parental response had been submitted during the whole of the consultation up until that point.

Governors would not agree following the meeting to extend the consultation period, but one parent did succeed in persuading the school to hold a meeting for parents. This meeting took place on the 18^th October, but it was labelled as an ‘information’ meeting and was not part of the consultation process as that had officially ended on 28th September. Weirdly the meeting was ‘ticket only’. Could it be that Governors didn’t actually want parents to attend?

A letter has recently been sent by post to every parent promoting the virtues of conversion. I understand that this is the first letter parents have had from the school about Academy status since the initial letter in January informing them that further details of consultation would be provided. No letter was sent out to parents informing them of the start or duration of the consultation, or of how they could contribute. No information was distributed to parents on which to base a consultation. The ‘consultation’ for parents consisted of a hard-to-find notice on the school website inviting them to comment on a decision that had already been made.

The lawyer David Wolfe on his excellent blog ‘A can of worms’ makes the following points about the legal requirements of consultation;

The law lays down some important requirements whenever a public body consults (i.e. they do not just apply to academy consultations). As for what they might mean in the context of consultation about an academy conversion:

• it is hard to see how an academy could lawfully not consult parents (and potentially pupils) at the school already; also at feeder schools; and indeed those feeder schools themselves; also other, potentially affected, schools in the area
• those consultees need to be given enough information about what is being proposed to understand why it is being proposed – why do the governors want the school to become an academy?
• they need to be honest about their reasons; and provide proper explanations for them
• those explanations need to withstand scrutiny – they cannot be nonsense
• the information needs to be in a form which people can understand – not technical gibberish
• people need to be given enough time to digest it; and the opportunity to ask questions and for more information
• if something changes in the course of the consultation, then the consultation may need to be extended for the fresh information to be provided to everyone
• the governors need to be open minded on the question of whether to go ahead when they consider consultation responses.

David Wolfe goes on to list the information that should as a legal minimum be provided to consultees;

• the benefits of converting
• the disadvantages of converting
• the extra money, if any, the school would get, and on what basis
• the extra responsibilities and costs the school would take on
• the risks
• the ‘freedoms’ (but asking themselves whether the things they might actually want to do with those freedoms are things they cannot do already)
• the impact on pupils
• the impact on teachers
• the impact on other staff
• the impact on the community
• the impact on other schools

I am not a lawyer, but there must be very little doubt that the consultation at The Kingswinford School has fallen far short of this and would be very unlikely to withstand a legal challenge.

The NUT and NASUWT are holding a further public meeting on Monday October 31^st at Kingswinford Community Centre, 7.30pm

Midlands Anti Academy Conference

Saturday 12th November, Birmingham & Midlands Institute, Margaret Street, Birmingham, B3 3BS (behind the Council House)

Registration 9.30am. Conference 10am to 2pm

I will be running a workshop at the conference on building a community campaign. Other workshops will include;

• Free Schools – dispelling the myths
• Building a campaign amongst staff
• What do Academies mean for school governors and head teachers

Speakers include:

• Tim Crumpton, Shadow cabinet member, children’s services, Dudley Council
• Nina Franklin, NUT president
• Hank Roberts, ATL senior vice president
• Richard Hatcher, Professor of Education, Birmingham City University
• Sarah Barton, Hands off Bourneville School (me)
• Alasdair Smith, Anti Academies Alliance

Register online at http://www.antiacademies or send your details to PO Box 14412

View this document on Scribd

 

Hands Off Bournville School campaign success appears in the Birmingham Post and Mail today

In the Birmingham Mail:

View this document on Scribd

And in the Birmingham Post:

Bournville School shelves plans to become an academy

• by Kat Keogh,
• Oct 20 2011

Read More http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2011/10/20/bournville-school-shelves-plans-to-become-an-academy-97319-29626815/#.TqBXlyF0k1U.wordpress#ixzz1bcNNdSGF

A CAMPAIGNING group has claimed victory for parent power after a secondary school abandoned plans to become an academy.

Governors at Bournville School and Sixth Form Centre announced they were no longer looking to convert the 1,200-pupil school into an academy following a three-month consultation on whether to opt out of local authority control.

Head teacher Barbara Easton confirmed in a letter to parents that the school would not become an academy following a majority vote at a meeting of governors to postpone consideration of academy status until after September 2012.

The decision follows a campaign by parents and staff, which saw also teachers from the NASUWT and NUT teaching unions poised for strike action over the matter.

Mrs Easton said in a letter to parents: “Following a governing body meeting on October 12 the decision was made not to proceed with academy status for the time being.

“It was felt that the school is not yet ready for such a significant change. Thank you to everybody who contributed to the consultation.”

A campaign called Hands Off Bournville School was launched in the wake of the consultation, which included a petition calling for the academy conversion to go ahead only if the majority of parents supported the move.

Members of the NASUWT and NUT teaching unions were set to strike on October 11, but called it off at the 11th hour on understanding that governors would review their position at the meeting.

Parent Sarah Barton, from the campaign, hailed the decision as a “victory for pupils, parents staff and the community”.

She said: “This is a huge relief and shows just how much opposition there was to Bournville School becoming an academy.

“Hundreds of people supported our campaign and teachers put themselves in the difficult position of preparing to strike over it, which is not an easy decision to make.”

A total of 17 schools in Birmingham have converted to academy status since the start of this year, including Aston Manor, Holyhead School in Handsworth and Plantsbrook School in Sutton Coldfield.

Freedoms for schools which switch to academy status include the ability to set pay and conditions for staff, changing the lengths of terms and school days, plus freedoms around the delivery of the curriculum.

Bournville School & Sixth Form Centre Abandons Academy Plans

The Governing Body of Bournville School & Sixth Form Centre in Birmingham has abandoned plans for Academy conversion this academic year. Governors voted by an overwhelming majority at a full Governing Body meeting on Wednesday 12^th October to postpone consideration of Academy status until after September 2012. The decision followed months of campaigning by concerned parents and the community. Just days earlier NUT and NASUWT members had suspended imminent strike action on the understanding that Governors would review their position at the meeting.

Bournville School & Sixth Form Centre is a large, successful and happy Community School serving a diverse community in the south-west of Birmingham.

The parent-led campaign group ‘Hands Off Bournville School’ has been fighting Academy conversion since June. Parents’ concerns have centred on a lack of democratic accountability, the lack of demonstrable educational benefits, loss of support from the local authority and unsatisfactory consultation. Things were looking bleak for the campaign when a FOI request over the summer revealed that the application to convert had already been made, despite the consultation being ongoing. Parents were considering making a legal challenge.

Teachers and staff have been overwhelmingly opposed to Academy status for Bournville and saw their opposition as an act of loyalty to the school. NUT and NASUWT members were set to strike on 11^th October, but action was averted at the last minute following an undertaking by Headteacher Barbara Easton to recommend that Governors postpone their consideration of Academy status.

Headteacher Barbara Easton has made the following statement in a letter to parents dated 14^th October;

Following a Governing Body meeting on 12^th October the decision was made not to proceed with Academy Status for the time being. It was felt that the school is not yet ready for such a significant change. Thank you to everybody who contributed to the consultation.

Parents, teachers and the local community have welcomed this as the right decision for Bournville and are over the moon that Governors’ have chosen to heed their concerns.