Response to Consultation – Walthamstow Leadership Academy for Girls, Tauheedul Free School:
Tauheedul sets out a compelling vision for its new school in
Waltham Forest but despite that I do not
feel that it will serve the best interests of the community. I have a number of reasons for my views on
this matter.
Firstly, I believe that opening a girls’ school will have a
negative impact on the education offered to girls and boys in the borough. There are already two popular girls’ schools
in Waltham Forest, between them admitting 1,500 girls. I recognise that more parents would like
their daughters to attend a girls’ school but unfortunately they would also like
their sons to attend a mixed school.
Originally the borough planned to offer exactly the same number of
places to boys as to girls but the 6fe boys’ school first became a 4fe school
because of lack of demand and then closed altogether leaving only a 4fe boys’
school which has been very undersubscribed for many years despite being
academically successful in recent years.
Until 2011, I was the headteacher of Willowfield Humanities
College. Willowfield is a popular and
respected school but nevertheless, because of its proximity to Walthamstow
Girls’ School, it had a gender imbalance in favour of boys which was rarely
less than 60:40 and occasionally as imbalanced as 70:30. This resulted in a number of challenges for
us in both pedagogical and practical terms, both inside the classroom and in
social areas in order to ensure all our students made excellent progress academically
and were happy, confident members of our community. For example, our teachers became proficient
at planning to ensure that girls and boys received equal attention inside the
classroom but it was more difficult to manage the pressure on boys’ changing
room space during PE lessons because of the excess numbers of boys. This situation would be greatly exacerbated
were there to be additional school places for girls that were fully subscribed
and it seems very unfair on the many families wishing to choose mixed education
for their sons and daughters that genuine mixed education would effectively
disappear from Waltham Forest. Your
proposal would, I believe, increase choice for a minority of parents while
reducing choice for the majority.
My second concern is the impact on community cohesion. I recognise that it is Tauheedul’s ambition
to attract students of all faiths or none and welcome this. In practice, however, it has failed to
achieve this aim in its schools in Blackburn despite their undoubted academic success. Currently the quality of social cohesion is an
exceptional strength of schools in Walthamstow and indeed in Waltham Forest
generally. There is ample evidence of
this in OfSTED reports. You will, I am
sure, agree that there has never been a time when this
was more important. I have no doubt that
this is a result of the very diverse communities in schools (currently there is
only one faith school in Waltham Forest) and if you speak to young people at
school in the borough you will find that this is one of the things they most
value about their schools. They describe
how much they value being able to learn from each other about their different
cultures and religions. We often said
that at Willowfield we could have taught the people of the world how to live
together – the atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance and rejection of any
form of stereotyping was something that could, I am certain, be achieved only
through students learning and playing together.
Finally, I should like to point out that the Walthamstow
schools have a long established partnership which brings significant benefits
for students and for staff development through collaboration rather than
competition. They operate with openness
and trust and understand they have a responsibility for all the children in
Waltham Forest schools as well as the particular one they have for the students
enrolled at their own schools. It is
disappointing that Tauheedul, despite its stated wish to work in partnership
with other local schools, has made no effort as far as I am aware to discuss
its proposals with existing schools.
Indeed, in the consultation document, the only indication of how this
partnership might work is where Tauheedul suggests that it will look to other
schools and colleges to provide the curriculum for students unsuited to the one
it offers. This is worrying since it
does not resemble the way in which the existing partnership operates.
In short then, because of local circumstances, I believe
that despite its track record as an excellent provider of education in other
parts of the country, if the Tauheedul free school opens in Waltham Forest, it
will disrupt and undermine educational provision across the borough. I have no doubt that as an organisation of
integrity and repute this is not its intention and hope that achieving a
greater understanding of the needs of Waltham Forest will cause it to
reconsider its proposal.
Eve Wilson
July 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment