It's official - there IS an alternative

Last week, the Local Authority’s Education Service published its plan for expanding Secondary Schools in Waltham Forest and, exactly as we have always predicted, it proves that there is NO NEED for the proposed Free Schools.

It also shows that the Council have very serious concerns about the Free School proposals and want to be able to implement their plan without them.

The document is comprehensive and deserves reading in full, which you can do here. But here we will draw out the key points made in the document.

1. There’s no need for the Free Schools

Contrary to the slightly hysterical fear-mongering propaganda that was put out by Oasis in particular around the time that they were gathering support for their proposal, it is possible to address the demand for places without building their, or Tauheedul’s proposed Free Schools.

The Council’s plan is complex and detailed but in essence it proposes two phases of expansion. In the first phase, covering the projected rise in demand up to 2015/16, the plan proposes working in partnership with interested existing secondary schools to provide additional classes, initially at least, on a temporary basis. This is partly because funding for capital developments is only available on an annual basis and partly because until a final decision on the Free Schools is made, no one will know what the real demand in the next few years will be.

In the second phase, from 2016/17, the Council plan proposes building a new secondary school. The Council’s appears to propose that this will be a new academy, with the preferred bidder for a sponsor being an existing Waltham Forest secondary school. The criteria for the bidders to meet emphasise things like demonstrating their familiarity with the community, ability to work in partnership with the Local Authority, a demonstrable record in carrying out meaningful consultations and a range of other objectives that sponsors like Oasis and Tauheedul will, frankly, find it hard to meet.

The Council plan is quite clear, this is the most cost effective and rational way of planning expansion to meet the demand for places as it grows. While an academy school will not be welcome for many, this represents a better option than the Free Schools and if it is indeed sponsored by a local secondary school and required to match the criteria for partnership working and high standards as laid out in the document, that arguably makes it as close to being a new community school as the Coalition government’s legislation allows.

2. The proposed Free Schools will actually make things worse:

It is clear from the plan that the Council views the Free Schools as causing more problems than they promise to solve. Here’s why:

The proposals are not worked out in partnership with the Council. They don’t cater for the demand for places as it really emerges on the projections in the document. In fact, if they open when they propose to open, the Free Schools will create a temporary surplus of places. As evidence from around the country shows, and we always insisted, this will lead them to compete directly with our local community schools, damaging them in the process by taking pupils and resources away.

Secondly, even when demand for places grows, the Free Schools don’t provide enough. Worse still, they are making it harder for the Council to plan to meet that demand. Until the final decision is taken about whether the Free Schools will be part of the mix, no one knows what will be needed and the Council can’t plan to meet it. Not that Michael Gove and the mandarins at the Department for Education care about that, of course, because it’s all part of the glorious rationality of destructive markets, before which our communities must bow, but let’s remember that the Free Schools were sold to local parents as a solution to growing demand. It’s clear now that they aren’t.

The Council has concerns about the quality of the educational provision offered by the Free Schools and their impact on our community:

Interestingly, the Council contrasts the improving Ofsted results in Waltham Forest’s secondary schools and contrasts them with the results of the Oasis chain of schools. Oasis’s schools perform consistently below the national secondary school average and they underperform against Waltham Forest’s schools. As for Tauheedul, the document echoes our own concerns about the impact of another single-sex school, especially another girl’s school, on the gender mix in the borough’s other schools. Something that is supposed to be about choice will in fact reduce choice for those parents who want their children to attend co-educational schools.

3. Democracy and accountability:

It is interesting to note throughout how the open and democratic this process has been and will be, in contrast to the proposed Free Schools. The whole plan is transparent and based on consultation and partnership. It will be open to questioning and scrutiny. The appendices detail how community consultation has taken place in previously approved school expansions.

This all contrasts sharply with the obscure processes of pseudo-consultation used to evidence local demand for the Free Schools. The consultations held by Oasis and Tauheedul to date and the farcical consultation being held by Tauheedul now, are a disgrace and should offend anyone who like to think that we live in a democratic society.
 

4. And finally…The Secretary of State reserves the right to ignore the Local Authority and the people of Waltham Forest:

The final key point, made in the plan, is that the Council’s position is not an easy one. No matter how sensible its plan, how rationally it caters to real demand projections and no matter what its reservations about the Free Schools, the Secretary of State can simply ignore it.

If we let him.

The plan notes that the Local Authority will make an assessment of its preferred bidder for the new secondary school, but that the Secretary of State ‘will reserve the right to put in place a proposer of his own choice’.

So there we have it. Michael Gove knows who should run a school in Waltham Forest better than the Local Authority, better than the other schools and better than any of us.

5. What we can do:

We now know that there is a viable alternative, as indeed, we always argued there was.

But, as we noted recently, this is a system designed not to listen to the concerns of lcol communities. There is only one way to make sure that the Secretary of State knows that if he imposes his own choice, there will be an outcry in Waltham Forest.

Sign our petition and help make it impossible to ignore.

If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to make your voice heard. Sign online here: http://tiny.cc/supportwfschools

Say no to Michael Gove’s experimental religious schools and yes to a planned, democratic alternative based on partnership and our own community schools. 

So, who are Tauheedul and why are we worried about their Free School?

Who are Tauheedul Free Schools?

Tauheedul Free Schools is one of a number of related organisations under the Tauheedul Islam Faith, Education and Community Trust (TIFECT) umbrella.

TIFECT set up the Tauheedul Islam Girls' High School in Blackburn as an independent secondary school in 1984. It was financially supported by the Tauheedul Islam Mosque. It became a voluntary aided school within Blackburn with Darwen in 2005. Its current admissions policy gives preference to children with a connection to the Tauheedul Islam Mosque and three other named Mosques. These share Deobandi Hanafi values, one of the most common denominations of Mosque in the UK, with establishments in Walthamstow, Leyton and Leytonstone.

The much newer Tauheedul Islam Boys School in Blackburn opened last September, and is a faith-based Free School operated by the Tauheedul Free Schools Trust. This proposal was not supported by the Local Authority.

The boys and girls schools are over-subscribed. According to an article in the Guardian from earlier this year, there is only one non Muslim pupil at the boys school. 

The Tauheedul Free Schools Trust also plans to open two faith-based primary schools in September 2013: The Olive School Blackburn and the Olive School Hackney.

These have been given approval by the Department for Education.

There is also an organisation called TS Academies or TSA. Although it has the same address and visual branding, TSA has dropped the name Tauheedul. TSA plans to run non-selective, non-denominational academies. Their governing council includes a set of people who work as education consultants and a set of names associated with the existing Tauheedul schools.

Witton Park High School in Blackburn will be the first academy sponsored by TSA – their governors voted for this in March.

TSA is already a partner in the National Challenge Trust that operates Blackburn Central High School (formerly Blakewater College). Mufti Hamid Patel, the principal of the girls’ school, is Chair of Governors at Blackburn Central.

Tauheedul now propose to open a Muslim secondary school for girls in central Walthamstow. This will be called Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls.

Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls: A lack of transparency and
meaningful consultation:

From the start, Tauheedul’s proposed Free School has been characterised by a lack of transparency.

Details of their proposals are still not on their website.

Our Community, Our Schools wrote to Tauheedul asking them what consultation they had undertaken to date and what plans they had for consulting in the future.

Their reply said:

“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.”

No details of any meetings, discussions or of any way in which the comments, aspirations and concerns had been registered or addressed have been given. 

The Tauheedul consultation document says that: The Tauheedul Free Schools’ Trust has consulted widely with the local community to arrive at a curriculum that reflects the aspirations of young people and their parents’ They have as yet provided no evidence of any specific activities that formed this consultation.

Tauheedul’s consultation states that they want to work with local schools to deliver vocational training.

Yet they have not been in contact with any of the local schools to even see if this is possible.

The consultation period for the Hackney school was just 6 weeks from press release to close, and had a single public meeting 4 days after the press release:
http://www.tauheedulschools.com/press-releases-consultation-the-olive-school-hackney.html

The consultation period for Waltham Forest’s proposed Free School is 10 June – 19 July, yet there was no public announcement. As of 5th July, well over half way through the consultation, it’s not even on their website.http://www.tauheedulschools.com/press-releases.html This does not constitute a genuine consultation.


Impact on other schools:

In addition to concerns about the impact of competitive Free Schools on our local community, we have concerns that are particular to Tauheedul’s proposed Muslim Girl’s school.

We are concerned at the possible impact on the gender balance of other community schools.
Tauheedul’s consultation states there is parental demand for a girls' school. Yet Walthamstow already has one girl’s school (the borough of Waltham Forest has two).

Another girl’s school in Walthamstow will further skew the gender mix of the surrounding co-educational schools in favour of boys and they risk becoming de facto boys’ schools.

Boys' schools are rarely popular. The danger is that those who can afford to move away will do so at an even greater rate than they do now, and those left behind, and that includes Muslim boys, will find themselves in more challenging schools.

We are also concerned that a Muslim faith school will produce division and segregation.

While Tauheedul’s consultation document says that they intend to take in a proportion of non-Muslim pupils, there are indications that their schools in Blackburn have failed in this aim.

The  Girl’s school Principal Mufti Hamid Patel was quoted in 2010 saying: “Come back in five years and I guarantee [we] will have white families”. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/muslim-school-helps-out-secular-neighbour-2129777.html

A year later he said: “Come back here in 10 years and ask me if we have non-Muslim pupils - the answer will be yes."http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6081589

There is also some indication that Tauheedul schools in Blackburn have generated concerns about their inclusiveness within the Blackburn Muslim Community, favouring a particular religious and ethnic also ethnic group:
http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/education/8631904.print/

We think that if Tauheedul genuinely want to contribute to the Big Society as an aim, it would be better to open a mixed secular school, where everyone is genuinely welcome.If we and our children are going to learn to respect, appreciate and understand one another, we need to educate our children together.

Waltham Forest already has many faith schools and single sex schools. We believe that more single sex faith schools will be extremely divisive in Waltham Forest.

Make your voice heard by responding to Tauheedul’s consultation document by 19th July here: http://www.walthamforestlag.co.uk/downloads.html

300 signatures in a week!

A massive thank you to everyone who has signed our new petition. It took us just over a week to reach 300. When you think that our last petition took a month to reach 200, that is a testament to the growing profile that this issue has in the borough.

We're getting good coverage in the local press too, with recent reports in the Walthamstow Guardian, which you can read here and also, more recently, here.

We need to keep on pushing now to make this petition as big as it can be before the end of term.
We have a real chance to stop the proposed Free Schools and to win support for an alternative solution to the demand for secondary school places that allows our community schools to expand.

How you can help us build the petition:

We have been out petitioning and leafleting around the schools this week and we're out again next week. This is our known petitioning schedule over the next week:

Fri 5 July: 8:30am @Henry Maynard Juniors (Mel and Mickey)

Mon 8 July: 8:30am @ Barncroft (Mark - 07881 586667)

Mon 8 July: 8.45am @Winn’s (Jonathan)

Tues 9 July: 8.30am @Henry Maynard Juniors (Mel an Jonathan)

 Fri 12 July: 3:30pm @ Thomas Gamuel (Mark - 07881 586667)

If you can join us and help us, please do!

If you can do your school and want some support, email us at wfdefendstateschools@gmail.com and we will try to get someone to come and help you.

If there is anything you can do to help get our petition circulating on networks or email lists in the borough that you may be part of please do so. Every signature counts.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/support-waltham-forests-local-community-schools.html

Follow our campaign:

Sign up for blog updates on our homepage.

Also, follow us on Twitter at @OurSchoolsE17

And we're on Facebook here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/577376562284827/

And here are just a few of your comments so far:

This is just a few of the comments left on our petition, giving a flavour of the kind of response we're getting and the concerns being raised by residents of Waltham Forest:

“We need resources putting into our excellent existing schools, not fringe groups trying to set up non-accountable schools that are not wanted by the majority.”

“I would like the goverment to focus on improving existing community schools rather than giving money to free schools - often faith-led - who will not be held accountable to the local community.”

“I think I can say that what most of us want is good quality state schools that have democratic oversight by local authorities. I think people locally should have the right to decide what sort of system they want, what works for them as a community in other words.”

“Free schools built in the wrong place without local consultation are a scandalous waste of money during times of austerity, taking much needed funding away from the majority of children in an area, to fund a privileged few. Free schools are blighting our communities and turning parents against each other! Proponents of Free Schools do not consult the local community and their impact statements are laughable. Problems are appearing all over the country, from Bideford to Stoke Poges, London to Suffolk and beyond. It is a disgrace and our kids deserve better from this government!”

“Please save us from Free Schools. There are some highly dubious groups involved in them in Waltham Forest, including an organisation that is proud of its Christian ethos on its website, but does not mention it at all in literature aimed at parents in LBWF.”

“I am against Free Schools, the main reason being that we have done decades of work to integrate our various faiths within one community and I am proud of our country's efforts to do this. If something as important as education is to be conducted seperately this sends us back decades at a time when extremists would love to promote exclusivity. This can only be bad for the community and more importantly bad for the children.”

“The lack of accountability for free schools is very worrying. They are undermining the state school sector and are also largely faith based which only encourages segregation and exclusion.”

“I feel that free schools, especially faith schools will deepen the divide in the community. Until recently Waltham Forest, a very diverse cultural community, appears to have little racial discord. I worry that with the recent upturn in religious motivated crimes, that segregating pupils will lead to an inherent lack of cohesion between faiths in my community. My children went to a good local community school, with strong community ethos and clear regulations, set out by the Local Education Authority, that had to be followed. I strongly disagree with this proposal and feel that free schools will undermine the great work done by community schools in this area.”

“We have local schools that are rated very highly by Ofsted and which form the central focus of our tight knit community. The way forward is to support these schools that are used by all members of our community, not to bring in these Free Schools.”

“The Local Authority is best placed to monitor demand and ensure schools have the capacity to cope. What happens to free schools once demand shrinks?”

Stand up for schools

A blog from Our Community, Our Schools supporter and local parent and teacher Kiri Tunks, explaining why teachers in the North-West are taking industrial action on Thursday and why teachers are demonstrating in central London today:

***

On June 27th teachers in the North West of England will be on strike. This strike will be the first of a series of joint NUT & NASUWT strike in defence of education and teachers’ pay and conditions. Strikes will follow in other regions (including the SE in the autumn).

Around the rest of the country, teachers in these unions are organising solidarity actions (demonstrations, parents meetings & stalls) to show support for colleagues taking the lead in the North West but also to try and communicate to people outside education just what this government’s education policy will mean for our young people and our communities.

To hear the Michaels Gove & Wilshaw, it would be easy to think that schools are terrible places where our young people are failed on a daily basis by their teaching and support staff, and where their promise is snuffed out by uncaring and unskilled educators.

To be a teacher means waking every morning to some new alleged horror or failure that must be accounted for. To be a parent, without experience or knowledge of schools, these stories bring fresh fears about the schools they will send their children to.

The government & OFSTED claim that schools are failing our young people yet, claiming that standards are too low, yet their evidence is widely disputed or taken out of context.

Gove & Wilshaw refuse to accept that factors outside the control of schools or teaching staff can impact on the achievement of young people, and yet all the evidence shows that they do. And, whilst berating schools for ‘failing’, they are guilty of removing strategies and structures that, properly supported, have been shown to make a difference.

Instead they have just attacked community schools at every level, moving the goal posts such as the changing of grade boundaries in GCSE exams last year after the exams had been taken or changing the OFSTED lesson criteria so that to be judged a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ teacher requires almost superhuman powers.

There are numerous examples to show that schools do well when working in partnership with their neighbouring schools, pooling resources and sharing expertise; when there are strong links with parents and the community; when teachers are given time and resources to plan, prepare and give feedback; when the obstacles children face in their lives are not ignored but dealt with by society and not just left for schools to sort out.

Despite the relentless rhetoric of this government, it is not teachers or schools who are the enemies of promise but this government.  Since coming to power they have been responsible for:

• Worsening ratios in nurseries; and no longer requiring schools to employ qualified teachers.
• Rushing through a new curriculum, without resources and against the advice of many teachers. Introducing expensive, unnecessary new tests for 5 and 11 year olds.
• Reducing young people's opportunities by trebling tuition fees and abolishing the Education Maintenance Allowance.
• Wasting the Olympic legacy by undermining sport in schools.
• Building free schools for secondary age children in places where they are not needed (instead of primary schools which are needed) and paving the way for private companies to make a profit from running our schools.
• Making it illegal for your Council to build new schools where they are needed.
• Causing chaos in teachers' pay and pensions and making teaching a less attractive prospect for young people

These are some of the reasons that NUT & NASUWT members will begin a campaign of rolling strike action in the North West next week. Teachers know that unless we take a stand then the right to a free and fair education system for all will be severely undermined.

In London on June 25th, there will be a march to, and demonstration outside, the Department of Education under the banner ‘Stand up for Schools – march for education’ which hundreds of teachers, parents and children are expected to attend. This demonstration is a gesture of support for striking teachers in the North West, but also an appeal to the wider community to join our campaign to defend education.

Details of the demo are here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/570147083015703/?fref=ts

 

 

 

Our new campaign launched: Support your local community schools!

We have today launched a new petition in support of our local community schools. The Department for Education has approved four new Free Schools, without any consultation with the community.

Waltham Forest Council is working on a better solution to the future shortage of secondary school places by expanding our excellent existing schools.

It’s not too late to stop the Free Schools by showing our support for our schools and our Council.

We need everyone who is concerned about these Free Schools and everyone who supports our excellent local schools to sign our petition and circulate it as far and as wide as possible in our borough.

*Please add your name to our petition online here:*

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/support-waltham-forests-local-community-schools.html

Download our new leaflet and hard copy petition here

Read more about this campaign here.

‘Labour will not continue with Michael Gove’s Free School Policy’

On Monday, Labour’s shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg gave a major speech that laid out for the first time the key ideas that will inform the party’s schools policy if it wins the next election.

The speech was, however, of enormous importance to the issue of Free Schools and to what is happening in Waltham Forest, as we will explain below.

It was an odd speech in many ways. For those who believe that state funded comprehensive education remains the best way to provide a broad, balanced and high quality education to all children, there was a disappointing, though perhaps inevitable refusal to disavow Labour’s responsibility for academy schools or to make any commitment to bring them all decisively under a single regulatory framework. There was also a big nod to the ‘freedom’ and ‘choices’ agenda in the proposal to allow all schools some freedom to move away from the National Curriculum in some areas. Quite what this means in practice is not clear.

However, there was a relatively unambiguous statement that the Free Schools policy, as currently conceived, will end under Labour.

There will be much devil in the detail, but there are some important points from the speech that need to be brought out.

1. Twigg was clear – new schools, of whatever sort, will only be built where there is a real need for places. This is a clear break with Gove’s policy. As Raphael Behr wrote in the New Statesman, Gove only uses the idea of demand as a cover for building new schools that can compete with existing ones, based on the idea that they wreak ‘creative destruction’ on the schools around them. Either they improve or they die.

2. Free Schools that exist, and any new schools that are built, will have to employ qualified teachers, avoiding a race to the bottom in standards (and costs). This will limit the freedom for Free Schools to aggressively compete other schools out of existence.

3. New schools will be built and parents will have a role to play in pushing for them. He referred somewhat opaquely to ‘Parent Academies’, which could be either trust schools or maintained schools (the legal model that academies and free schools use).

4. But, as well as having to show a real need (ie where there are not surplus places) they will have to be accountable to local communities. Twigg was vague here, as it is a difficult legal issue. Academies and Free Schools have no legal relationship with local authorities, signing funding agreements directly with the Department for Education. But the intention seems clear: there must be a local accountability framework for all schools and local communities must have a say in where and when new schools are being built. Twigg says he will be asking David Blunkett to lead a review of how this can be best done – a thought that may not warm the hearts of many, but how that review reports will be vitally important.

In general, it’s clear that those committed to a universal, progressive education system will need to build and sustain national and local pressure on the Labour Party and all parties ahead of the election.

What does all this mean for people in Waltham Forest? In short, it means that what has just happened in Waltham Forest in the last few weeks would not be possible under Labour, quite possibly the next government.

While groups like WSSI might be able to apply pressure for a new school, it is likely that they would have to work closely with the Local Authority to make their case.

While they might be permitted, even encouraged in many authorities, to seek a private sponsor, they would also be allowed to consider a trust school as an option.

They would have to demonstrate that they would be employing qualified teachers.

Finally, it is likely there would have to be some demonstrable and transparent public process for consulting and ensuring community support for any proposed school rather than the sick joke that has just been played on the people of Waltham Forest.

All of which ought to give those pushing the four proposed Free Schools pause for thought. Perhaps it’s time they started taking more seriously the need to set out their case, conduct a genuine, meaningful consultation and reflect, in a transparent manner, on what they hear back.

Perhaps it’s time they had a bit more respect for our community, our schools and basic democratic process.

More challenges to the proposed Free Schools – How about a bit of information?

Following on from our earlier democratic challenge to Tauheedul and Oasis, we haven’t given up on the idea that the people proposing the new Free Schools might feel that they should have to tell the people of Waltham Forest something about their new schools.

That’s why we have submitted a raft of questions to them and to the Department for Education (under the Freedom of Information Act) asking for details on a wide range of issues, including their admissions policies, their policies on special educational needs, their employment of teachers and their plans to, you know… consult.

You can read the questions we’ve submitted to each sponsor here and obviously, we’ll let you know if anyone tells us anything.

Oasis's response to our first request for information is here

And here is our response in the form of a new FOI

And here is our FOI to Tauheedul