“It’s consultation Jim, but not as we know it” – the inverted world of Free Schools

WFDSS has now received letters from both Oasis and Tauheedul Free Schools in response to our ‘democratic challenge’. Our letter to both organisations did three things:

• It sought details of what consultation had taken place with the community prior to both organisations submitting their proposals to the DfE
• It set out what we expected both organisations to do to show that they were consulting in a meaningful way with all the stakeholders in our community.
• It called on them to confirm how they were going to meet this expectation.

The basic point is that the minimum that citizens in a democratic society should be able to expect of anyone who intends to set up a school is that the people doing it can demonstrate that they have taken into account the impact their proposal on the community, on the other schools in the borough and the local area.

The responses are very revealing about the strange, inverted world of Free Schools.

Oasis’s reply asks us to post the letter in full for all our supporters to see, so here it is. It contains no details either of past or future intentions over consultation. Instead, the letter says,

“I am writing to advise you that a full response will be made after we have heard whether our application for the proposed new school has been approved by the Department for Education. We are expecting this announcement to be made in the next few weeks; it may be after the 10 May 2013 deadline stipulated in your letter.”

Tauheedul’s response, which you can read at the bottom, is similarly unenlightening. Vague claims are made about the past consultation and about intentions to consult in the future but without concrete details. Tauheedul claim they have been

“actively working with members of the local community for over 18 months. During this time, we have engaged in a regular dialogue and consultation with a whole range of individual and community stakeholders, including the Local Authority and local residents. We have taken on board their comments, aspirations and concerns in developing our proposal for the 'Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls' that is currently being considered by the Department for Education. We are aware of our obligations regarding statutory consultation. Should we receive initial approval from the DfE, the current plans are to engage in a comprehensive consultation between June and July 2013. The detailed plans will be on our website www.tauheedulschools.com.”

In sum, both organisations are distinctly vague and evasive about their past consultation. Tauheedul’s statement, for example, talks about ‘a whole range of individual and community stakeholders’ but provides no details, nor does it mention schools. Neither organisation makes any effort to commit to meet our expectations. We will be pursuing the claims made in Tauheedul’s statement, in particular. This is not as easy as it might sound. Interestingly, a google search on Tauheedul's proposed 'Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls' produces only the document at the DfE that lists applications received. There is no other information about the proposal available via the internet.

But the crux of the issue would appear to be this. The Department for Education is going to make a judgment about whether these school proposals should be approved without any publicly available evidence of any meaningful consultation or impact assessment.

If full details of the two applications are not made public until after the DfE gives approval, in what meaningful sense can the DfE decision be said to take account of informed local concerns? How can the DfE show that it is aware of any concerns raised by the community in deciding whether to approve the school or not?

Secondly, if comprehensive and consultation follows DfE approval, can any consultation launched fulfil the statutory obligation to consult on the question of ‘whether’ there will be a free school or not, or will it in effect be about how an already approved free school is set-up? How can consultation be said to be at a formative stage when the proposal has been approved by the DfE?

The government seems to have designed a profoundly anti-democratic system for setting up new schools. A government department makes decisions that will have a deep impact on our local schools without any evidence of any democratic process, either formal or informal and we cannot hold them accountable. Organisations wishing to set up a new school appear to feel under no obligation to hold any meaningful consultation, take account of the impact of their proposals or uphold the basic standards of transparency and accountability required of other public bodies.

If or when the Department sees fit to pronounce on the proposals they have in front of them from Oasis and Tauheedul, people in Waltham Forest who have concerns about Free Schools, academies, government education policies, increasing segregation or even just basic democracy will have to make their voices heard, because the system appears to have been designed not to listen.

***

 
Tauheedul’s response, dated 12 May 2013:

Dear Jonathan,

 

Thank you for your e-mail.

 

 

We appreciate the time that you have taken out in learning about our project.

As you may be aware we have been actively working with members of the local community for over 18 months. During this time, we have engaged in a regular dialogue and consultation with a whole range of individual and community stakeholders, including the Local Authority and local residents.

We have taken on board their comments, aspirations and concerns in developing our proposal for the 'Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls' that is currently being considered by the Department for Education.

We are aware of our obligations regarding statutory consultation. Should we receive initial approval from the DfE, the current plans are to engage in a comprehensive consultation between June and July 2013. The detailed plans will be on our websitewww.tauheedulschools.com.

We have looked at your website and do share your aspirations for greater choice and a better standard of education in Waltham Forest. We hope that all members of the community can work together to address these challenges in the coming years.

Fiona McGrath

Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls

London’s school places crisis (and how academies and free schools are not helping)

Last week saw the publication of a very interesting and hard-hitting report from London Councils, the body that lobbies central government and the Mayor of London on behalf of the capital’s Local Authorities.

The message of ‘Do the Maths’, which made it to the front page of the Evening Standard, was stark enough. London is facing a shortfall of 118,000 primary and secondary school places up until 2016/7. It accounts for 42% of the total shortfall in England, yet it is only receiving 36% of the capital allocation it needs for 2013 and 2014.

The report says, ‘schools need to be expanded and new ones built’. Yet London’s funding settlement for schools is only for one year, making effective planning of provision very difficult, especially as it takes at least 18 months to build a new school.

The report makes an impassioned plea for an improved capital funding formula that fully recognises London’s unique pressure and for longer funding cycles to enable proper investment and planning.

The document needs to be seen for what it is, a lobbying document designed to put pressure on central government to relax the funding environment. But the problems are real enough.

It might be thought that this was meat and drink to the advocates of new Free Schools in Waltham Forest, for example. But things aren’t quite so straightforward.

In an interesting passage near the end of the document, the report notes that ‘there are currently 229 secondary academies within London – this represents over half of all secondary schools in the capital. This affects where local authorities can expand capacity as academies are under no obligation to expand as they are outside local authority control. In the case of free schools [effectively the same as academies in this case – outside local authority control, ed.] the challenge will be to ensure that their location best supports areas where there is a particular pressure on places’ (p. 9)

There are two interesting things here:

1. Academies are making things worse. Operating outside of local authority control, they can act independently in what they see as their own interest, regardless of the wider social need. There’s nothing the Local Authorities can do about this. And as noted above, building more free schools will simply aggravate this.

2. The local authorities identify it as a challenge to ensure that free schools are built in the right places. That decision is not made by the local authority but by the sponsors and the Department of Education.

And the evidence suggests that free schools are not being built in the right places. Indeed the Local Schools Network has revealed many instances of free schools being built in places where there are surplus places. In addition to which these schools are getting favourable treatment in terms of capital funding, while the capital’s established community schools are starved.

In the same week that the London Councils report was published, the Public Accounts Committee published its own report into the Department of Education’s spending on the academies programme and it was scathing.

The PAC found that a £1 billion overspend on the academies programme was caused by the ‘excessively complex and inefficient academy funding system’. £400 million had been taken out of funds earmarked for intervention in underperforming schools and spent instead on funding academy conversion, even where the schools in question were already Good or Outstanding (Thomas Gamuel, anyone?). The committee was also deeply concerned about the lack of accountability of academies. Even Tory MP Richard Bacon said that the lack of transparency in spending, especially in chains like Oasis, was ‘mind-blowing’.

So, to summarise. We have a genuine shortage of places that could be tackled by an expansion of existing local authority schools and the building of new schools. This would be most efficiently done by building local authority schools which could be expanded or contracted according to need and which could be allocated to the areas where need is greatest (as argued on this site, here).

Instead, government policy means that money will be wasted on converting schools to academies and building free schools wherever people shout the loudest, increasing the number of schools competing against one another and entirely outside of local authority control.

It looks as though the government is more intent on smashing up the democratically accountable comprehensive system than tackling the very real issues of provision in London and our children are to pay the price.

A democratic challenge to Oasis and Tauheedul

WFDSS has today written to both Oasis Community Learning and Tauheedul Free Schools asking them to set out for the local community what steps they will be taking to hold a meaningful public consultation in the borough.

 

The questions we ask below relate to the normal expectations on any body that is expected to hold a consultation and are particularly relevant to those who are applying to run a public service in return for public funding.

 

This is even more important given the fact that as this website has shown, there are significant and substantial concerns about the impact of these proposals on the local community, from parents, teachers , local councillors and from the local MP. 

 

We believe that Oasis and Tauheedul must show that they take these concerns seriously by holding a public, transparent and meaningful consultation along the lines laid out below.

 

OPEN LETTER TO OASIS AND TAUHEEDUL FREE SCHOOLS:

 

We are writing and publishing this open letter to you further to your application to set up an additional ‘Free School’ in Waltham Forest.

We are an organisation of local parents, teachers and other residents of Waltham Forest called Waltham Forest Defend State Schools. We came together to defend and promote our community schools and to promote a better understanding in the borough of the issues around proposals to build new Free Schools and to convert community schools to Academies.

This letter asks you to set out for the people of Waltham Forest the steps you will be taking to undertake a wide and meaningful consultation to ensure that your proposal properly reflects the needs of the people of the borough.

Under section 10 of the Academies Act, you have a duty to consult such persons as you think appropriate. We are sure that you would agree with us that a list of the appropriate persons in the case of a new school in Waltham Forest would contain, as a minimum, the local authority, parents and teachers at all schools which might potentially be affected by your proposal, together with the general public in the borough.

As you will be aware, in order to be lawful, a consultation must comply with the following overarching obligations:

1. Consultation must take place at a time when the proposals are at a formative stage

2. The proposer must give sufficient reasons for its proposals to allow consultees to understand them and respond to them properly.

3. Consulters must give sufficient time for responses to be made and considered.

4. Responses must be conscientiously taken into account in finalising the decision.

In order to ensure that your proposals are subjected to appropriate democratic scrutiny, we are calling on you to set out for us how you intend to do this. Specifically, we are calling on you to provide the following information:

Prior to submitting your initial proposal to the DfE:

• what steps did you take to consult with the Local Authority in Waltham Forest and neighbouring boroughs that might be affected by your proposal?
• What steps did you take to consult the headteachers and teachers representative bodies in schools in Waltham Forest and neighbouring boroughs?
• What steps were taken to consult with parents in the borough?
• When will the results of these consultations be made public?

Subsequent to submitting your initial proposal to the DfE:

· What is your timetable for publishing your full proposal and consulting on it, prior to submitting a final proposal to the DfE?

• What are your plans for consulting with the following: the Local Authority, headteachers and the representative organisations of teachers in schools in Waltham Forest and neighbouring boroughs; parents at schools which might be affected by your proposal and the general public in the borough?
• What will be the timetable for the submission of responses to this consultation?
• What are your plans for publishing the results of the consultation and showing that you have given reasonable consideration of the variety of responses you receive, prior to submitting to the DfE?

We are sure that you would want to demonstrate both to the people of Waltham Forest and the Education Secretary, who must show that he has considered the impact of your proposal, that you have fully and transparently consulted in a manner that is appropriate to an organisation which intends to receive public funding.

We look forward to your response as soon as possible, and in any case not later than 10 May.

Jonathan White

Scarlet Harris

Mark Holding

Tom Davies

Waltham Forest Defend State Schools
Learn more about us here: http://defendwalthamforeststateschools.blogspot.co.uk/

“The only form of new school I would actively support would be a Cooperative Trust school” - Stella Creasy’s position on new schools in Walthamstow

Following a correspondence with supporters of Waltham Forest Defend State Schools, our local MP Stella Creasy has written to us with a statement that clarifies her position. The statement is copied in full and unedited, at her request, below. If you want to read it ahead of our comment, skip to the bottom now.

Here a few immediate observations.

Firstly, her message also makes clear her view that the government will not allow a new local community school to be built in Walthamstow. This is not in itself news. We have acknowledged this all along. However, disappointingly, she doesn’t address the possibility that the shortfall could be addressed by expanding existing schools, nor the fact that there is good evidence that this would be preferable in educational terms to building a new smaller school. In fact, publicly-available data show the forecast shortfall of secondary school places in the Borough as equivalent to 10 classes by 2016/17. This can be solved by expansion of our current Ofsted-rated  'good' or 'outstanding' secondary schools.'

Secondly, it is very significant that Stella states clearly that she will only give her active support to a Co-Operative Trust school. This is important because a Co-operative school is a very different model of school to either a Free School or an Academy. Co-op schools are founded on a Trust model that locks in community assets and gives a more democratic say to a school’s many stakeholders. This is very different from a Free School or an Academy in which the private sponsor appoints the majority of each school's governing body, and where academies are often closely supervised from head office. See this article for more details: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/15/cooperative-schools-antidote-academies-independent

A co-operative school has a weaker relationship to local authorities than a community school but it would be markedly superior in protecting the interests of the community, parents and teachers to the kind of top-down, privatised schooling offered by either an Academy or a Free school.

Supporters of our community schools will have a range of views on Co-Operative Trust Schools, but it is apparent from this that our MP is not actively supporting either of the Free School proposals. We thank her for making this clear.

Here is Stella’s statement in full:

“The data regarding school places provided by the local authority creates a compelling case that Walthamstow faces a substantial shortage of school places in our area within the next few years- as those involved in the 1200 places campaign will be aware, Walthamstow residents have sought consistently to make the case to the Government that this need should be addressed as a matter of urgency to ensure that no child who lives in Walthamstow is without the opportunity of education in their local environment.

Since 2010 this case has become stronger, not weaker. The growth of the population not just in Walthamstow but in our city as a whole combined with changes to benefits and housing costs are bringing more people to our area and will continue to do so in the years ahead. If we are to meet the need for school places without compromising standards in existing schools, especially at secondary school level, then Walthamstow will need new schools as well as increased capacity in our existing establishments. Having been on the Education Bill and argued this matter through with the Government ministers as well as lobbied through the 1200 pupils campaign I'm now convinced that the Government will not enable community schools to be built, even to meet such a specific and identified need.

Given the restrictions that this Government has put on the options available to communities to address this need for places, Walthamstow faces some critical choices about the future needs of our children. Under the current legislation as the local MP I have no authority to promote or prevent any new schools, as approval for such provision will be the decision of the Department for Education alone. However, given how important this issue is for the future of provision and educational standards in Walthamstow I will continue to seek to meet with, work with and hold to account all those who are active in planning for educational provision in our area. To do otherwise risks failing our local young people who need these places and should be our prime concern as well as wasting vital public resources. I will also continue to seek to work with our existing local schools and the local authority in promoting school standards in our area.

In addition to this, as both a Labour and Co-operative MP I am passionate about the role of all stakeholders in education- pupils, parents, teachers, governors and the wider community. That is why in approaching the debates around the future structures of education in our community and the provision of new schools in our area, I have been clear that the only form of new school I would actively support would be a Cooperative Trust school. I have set out this test to all those who have approached me seeking help- both to create new schools as well as oppose them- and will continue to promote these values.

I recognise there are strong views as to the benefits and shortcomings of various models for school provision. The reality and urgency for all those who care about the future attainment of young people in Walthamstow is that we cannot avoid the question of how best to ensure we have the school places to the standards our children need in our community. I therefore welcome the commitment of all those in our local community to engaging in this question and the passion that they show for the educational attainment of all local children. I hope others will do the same.”

Stella Creasy

Speeches from our public meeting (1)

This is a slightly edited version of the speech given by Jonathan White opening the public meeting on 1 March. We hope to publish the others shortly:

***

We called this meeting 'Education Crisis?' Partly to question what was being said about an education crisis in Waltham Forest – we wanted to question some of the propaganda that was circulated by proponents of the new Free School.

 

But also to start a debate about what was happening to our school system in the borough – perhaps there is an education crisis in Waltham Forest – but if so, what is it?

 

1. Demographic timebomb:

When WFDSS was set up it was response to a proposal to set up a Free School, run by Oasis and WSSI. One of the things that was claimed in their propaganda was the statement ‘there is a demographic timebomb in the borough’ and the familiar refrain – ‘there is no alternative, we must have this new school’.

Yet it was quickly apparent to us that there were serious problems with their propaganda.

Firstly, Oasis and WSSI were using different figures to illustrate demand in the borough and not even the most authoritative. We suspected fearmongering.

 

One of the things we wanted to do when we set up the campaign was to have a proper look at that and start a proper debate about whether there is a demographic timebomb – to get beneath their propaganda and get a more nuanced debate in the borough.

So we looked at only figures available and they showed something quite interesting.

They showed a very large bulge in reception age children, peaking in 2014/15 and 2015/16 and then falling year on year. Demand drops substantially and is not projected to be a permanent feature.

These probably aren’t the latest figures and the Council will know better, but the fact is that these figures are more comprehensive and authoritative than any used by Oasis and WSSI, they have never been challenged by Oasis/WSSI nor have they been acknowledged or any other data used. So we think there is more than a bit of fearmongering going on here.

 

These figures are also important for another reason, and I’ll come back to that...

 

2. Second, we wanted to raise the issue of the Free Schools in the borough:

It seemed to us, for example, that not everyone who signed up to Oasis’s consultation knew what they were signing up for, and they certainly weren’t told in the consultation document – the website, for example, only asks you if you want a new school.

 

We wanted to try to make sure that people who signed up for a new school knew what they would be getting.

 

Here are some facts about Free Schools.

 

This is something that is sold as being about local people getting up and doing it for themselves, addressing problems of the demand for school places in deprived areas.

 

But that’s not what’s happening.

What’s happening is that the proposals for Free Schools are disproportionately from religious organisations – 39 out of 102 proposals identified last year, for example. People like Oasis.


Oasis, for example, like to claim that they are not really a religious school and that it’s particular to their ethos that no one will be discriminated against. Yet at the same time the Oasis ethos is described as being Christianity in action, it is said to pervade everything that goes on in their schools, Christian materials are openly promoted amongst the teaching staff and staff are expected to demonstrate their understanding of Oasis’s ethos. Confused?

 

Oasis are also a growing education chain like Ark, E-Act and Harris, the same chains that are dominating private academy sponsorship.

 

Free Schools are disproportionately being set up in more affluent, middle class areas – only 2% of Free school pupils in Tower Hamlets claim Free School meals, compared with a borough average of 48%.

 

Some Free Schools are operating covert selection criteria, like setting their catchment areas around certain more affluent postcodes or application forms that weed out certain kinds of applicants.

The fact is that these schools fuel religious and social segregation.

 

In both Sweden and the US, where large-scale experiments with this kind of school have been conducted, research indicates that there has been little or no educational benefit to these schools, but that segregation has definitely increased.

 

And they are more expensive. It is more expensive to start and maintain a new small school than it is to expand an existing school. The start up costs of new Free schools have used up large amounts of capital carved out for them by the government out of existing schools’ capital budgets. And contrary to the myth that small is best, analysis suggests that results overall are better in larger than in smaller schools.

So these schools increase social and religious segregation and they are inefficient.

 

But they are also the wrong solution to the real problem – which is how do we effectively and fairly cater for growing, and possibly later falling, demand?

 

Because they are outside local authority control, even more than academies, they can set their own catchment areas and operate covert selection criteria, they can avoid paying national pay scales for and qualification requirements for teachers, and most importantly of all, they have to maintain a surplus, regardless of what the level of demand in the local area.

 

If the demand for places does fall in the way shown in the Council projections, then the Free School will start to operate parasitically within the borough, sucking resources from our existing local authority schools.

 

And there is nothing that you or I or our elected representatives in the Local Authority can do about it because the school is outside democratic control.

 

For all the pious guff about being part of a ‘family’ of schools, or a ‘hub’, these are unaccountable schools, operating parasitically in our communities.

 

Local authorities do lots of things wrong and they are desperately under-resourced at the moment. But they can still play a critical role in coordinating school provision. They did this last year, for example, dealing with the bulge in demand for primary school places in London through collaboration and coordination within and across boroughs.

With Free Schools that’s impossible. And there are already areas where they are sucking resources from local authority schools. It’s true of academies too, but it’s even more true with Free Schools.

 

All this is hardly a surprise of course.

 

They are the brainchild of a government that believes that competition is a creatively destructive force.

 

It’s not ‘unfortunate’ if a school goes to the wall, for Michael Gove and his cronies. It’s an example of the discipline of the market working.

 

It’s a policy that is part of a plan to roll back all the democratic achievements of the post-war period, at one and the same time, sending us back to the period of church schools, grammar schools and elementary schools for the poor, but with a 21^st century twist of allowing US based education businesses to work them for profit.

 

That’s not scaremongering. It’s happened in the US, where the Charter Schools movement, originally sold as solutions based on parent power, are now  dominated by for-profit Education Management Organisations, companies who are very close to and have had publicly documented discussions with Michael Gove and David Willetts about how they can break into the UK market.

 

3. There is an alternative

 

There’s always an alternative. It’s not easy and the government doesn’t want this but there is a different way of doing this. And it could be done, with sufficient political pressure.

 

Last year, the Local Authorities in London catered to the demand for primary school places through a coordinated response, working collaboratively with their schools to expand capacity. They had support from the Mayor’s office.

 

It could be done again. It would take a lot of work, but it could be done again, if there was sufficient political pressure.

 

One of the reasons we set up our petition was to give people the opportunity to get behind a local authority led solution and create some of that political pressure.

 

We wanted to give support to our Local Authority in making the case that it could cater to expansion without a new Free School, a rogue, parasitic element in the borough.

 

I don’t want to go on much longer, but I want to say a few words about where next.

 

In terms of the specific campaign against Free Schools – at least one, Oasis, have their preapproval and now consultation. We will aim to apply the maximum democratic pressure possible on this consultation and to make sure that the proposal gets as hard a time as possible and as much publicity as possible.

 

But, we have to be hard-nosed and think about what next. And this, I think goes for academies too.

 

We may win, or we may not. At a very practical level, there has to be life after a failed fight. We can’t just become demoralised

 

But that requires people to have a shared common sense of the direction of travel.

 

I think the basis for this exists.

 

Most people don’t want a Free School. Most people don’t want an academy. They DO want a good community school.

Most people believe that everyone has the right to the same level of access they have and only resort to climbing over others’ heads when that feels scarce.

 
Most people understand that local authorities and democratically accountable bodies would be better at coordinating a fair system of provision in the borough than a chaotic struggle among competing schools.

 

Most educationalists agree that the best way to raise the quality of schools is to invest in teaching and teachers, not to attack their pay, terms and conditions and pensions and pitch schools in a race to the bottom.

What’s being done to our education system in Waltham Forest and nationally, raises profound questions about choice – supposedly the heart of the government’s programme – and democracy.

 

Personally, I think the basis exists for those who believe in a broadly progressive, fair and equal education to unite, not just around campaigns to defend schools where they are still under democratic control, but to take the fight to those which are outside it.

 

I think we need to start to build mass democratic local pressure on academies and free schools where they exist.

 

To bring themselves closer into line with democratic ideas of a good quality school,

To work with the local authority,

 

To pay their teachers properly,

 

To be transparent and publicly accountable and to open up their access policies.

 

All this is fair and democratic and it would also send a clear message to those people looking in the near future to making a profit out of our schools that we won’t let them.

To conclude:

I think there is a crisis of Education in Waltham Forest. But it’s not really a crisis of demand or supply – it’s a democratic crisis. It’s a crisis engendered by government and exploited by opportunistic carpet baggers who want to colonise our school system and turn it to their own ends and roll back the seismic achievements of the post-war period.

The only response is for local and national bodies of progressive people to come together around long-sighted campaigns that defend what we still have but which ultimately aim to return education to being a democratic right, a democratic tool and a democratic system.

 

I hope that WFDSS will be part of that process in our borough.

 

 

First public meeting a big success

More than 50 people gave up part of their valuable Friday night on 1 March to attend the first of our public meetings, titled ‘Education Crisis in Waltham Forest?’ Jonathan White introduced the meeting as the planned first of a possible series of meetings designed to raise the profile of the issue of Free Schools, Academies and the provision of education in the borough. The audience was a mix of parents and teachers with a range of views, including some supporters of WSSI, the parents’ group who secured Oasis’s backing for their proposed Free School.

Kicking off the meeting, Jonathan White charted the origins of Waltham Forest Defend State Schools as a response to the proposal for a Free School in the borough. He explained that the group initially saw itself as combatting some of the propaganda about the demographic crisis in the borough, raising consciousness about what kind of school a Free School is and explaining what its impact on the borough’s other schools is likely to be. He argued that existing evidence showed that Free Schools increase social segregation, increase damaging competition, sucking resources from other schools, and represent a decisive move toward breaking up local community school provision in preparation for privatisation. Most of all, unlike local authority schools they are unaccountable to the democratic public in the borough.

Jonathan finished by suggesting that campaigns coordinate their work better, not just around defensive campaigns to protect local authority schools from new Free Schools or forced academisation, but also around democratic ideas of education which can force schools outside of local authority control to take account of their local communities.

Mark Holding, a governor at Thomas Gamuel school, gave a moving account of how his school had been targeted by Ofsted and the Department of Education for academy conversion, in spite of the fact that it was a good school, initially on the basis of an administrative error. Ofsted and the DFE argued that TGP ought to become an academy sponsored by Barclay Academy, in spite of the fact that Barclay itself had only been converted recently, meaning that any benefits it brought as a sponsor were based on its achievements as a local authority school.

The main thrust of Mark’s talk was to highlight the widening gap between the idea of parental choice and the profoundly anti-democratic nature of academy conversion. At Thomas Gamuel, he explained, the governors, teachers and local parents had built a broad-based campaign which resulted in the governors voting to reject academy status, the parents voting by 95% on a 57% turnout to reject academy status and a mass petition from the community Yet in spite of the clear preferences of the entire school community, academy status is now being forced on Thomas Gamuel by an interim executive board and the DFE.

Mark finished by echoing the first speaker’s view that the real agenda here was about breaking up all structures of local democratic accountability to place community resources and assets in the hands of private companies and echoed the call for the building of broad-based, borough wide campaigns for a more equal, accountable and democratic system.

Kiri Tunks, a local parent, teacher and NUT activist finished the panel speeches by speaking about her veiw of Free Schools and Academies from these three perspectives. She stressed how Free Schools were taking resources from other schools by drawing money from the funds reserved to provide Central services for Local Authority schools, directly financially damaging our community schools. As a parent, she pointed to the experience of academies: academies do not raise standards, they have higher exclusion rates than community schools, they are poorer at providing for special needs pupils and, to echo the first two speakers, she re-emphasised, they are unaccountable. As a parent, she said, you have a democratic avenue for redress of your grievances with local authoriy schools – a right of appeal and a vote. With academies and free schools, there is no democratic route and no such democratic right.

Speaking as a teacher, she recounted how colleagues have experienced conversion to Academy status: attacks on terms and conditions, increased workloads, greater use of unqualified staff, higher staff turnover rates and less experienced headteachers. Kiri finished by stressing that coordination and planning of schools provision works, as shown by the success of London Challenge and the only beneficiaries of a competitive market in schools would be private education chains and companies who will look to profit from the system. She, like the earlier speakers stressed the need for campaigning that emphasised the need for a decent education for all children across all our schools.

In the discussion that followed several teachers gave their experience of academy conversion, echoing points made by Kiri. Speakers from WSSI argued that Oasis had been misrepresented and that there is a problem of schools provision in the borough. Speakers from the Anti-Academies Alliance called for support for the petition for the removal of Michael Gove (which can be found here). The chair finished by noting that the number of people who had wanted to speak was clear evidence of the demand for more meetings of this kind around education in the borough and saying that WFDSS would look to organise more soon.

Watch this space!