Forest Hill School Strike

What follows is based on a letter I sent to all Lewisham Councillors and the three local MPs

I'm writing to update you as there has been a great deal of social media traffic regarding the situation at Forest Hill School (FHS). I know that Steve wrote to you last month but I thought it would be helpful to emphasise some of the same messages that he put across in his letter:

• In line with national legislation that has been in place for decades, it is the responsibility of schools in Lewisham to manage their budgets and spending. It is not Lewisham council's fault that Forest Hill School’s budget was mismanaged. The school has to live within its means and there is no option to bail out the school or write off its deficit.

• The new head teacher and new chair of governors of Forest Hill school are tackling the school’s budget deficit by reducing staff numbers (responsibly, fairly and reasonably) and making efficiency savings.

• We are doing everything within our power to support the new head teacher and new chair of governors to raise standards and bring the school’s budget back onto a secure financial footing by helping them follow best practice in HR and in maintaining their work to improve standards at the school during this period of change.

Unfortunately the NUT is going ahead with its threatened strike action. It is currently scheduled for 21st March, 29th March, 30th March. The school will be aiming to mitigate the impact for students. I'm also pasting in below a message from the FHS website from the Headteacher, Mike Sullivan as well as some FAQs from the school since some of the blogging etc on this subject has been very misleading and alarmist. In these FAQs the 'we' is the head and the governing body of the school. 

Message from the Headteacher of Forest Hill School:

I understand that as a parent or carer you want your child to receive the very best education possible at Forest Hill School and any risk to this will cause you great concern. We want to assure you that securing the highest quality of education for all our students is the single most important priority for the school – particularly as we go through this financially challenging period.

As headteacher, I am confident that the proposed reorganisations will safeguard the quality of provision our students receive. Albeit that our current situation is one that I inherited, I remain fully committed to leading the school through this change, so that it emerges stronger and fitter to face significant short and medium term challenges. I would also like to reassure you that the school and Governing Body is working closely with London Borough of Lewisham to jointly address our financial situation. 

We have kept parents and carers informed as we move through this reorganisation process, to ensure that accurate and appropriate information is communicated. However, there is now information in the public domain, some of which has been unhelpfully and inaccurately shared from confidential consultation documents, that is, understandably, causing concern among pupils and parents. I would like to address these and sincerely hope that you are reassured about the actual situation. If you have questions or require further clarification, I am more than happy for you to get in touch with me.

Forest Hill School FAQs

Will there be staff redundancies?

In any reorganisation designed to cut costs, there will inevitably be staff reductions and this is the case for Forest Hill School. As part of our extensive and meticulous planning we have strived to minimise these as far as we can and to ensure there is no adverse impact of students’ education.

There have been no compulsory redundancies for midday meals supervisors. Duty hours were aligned to the 45 minute lunch break. A number decided not to continue working the reduced hours. Currently the school employs four midday meals supervisors working alongside other school staff to provide supervision for pupils at lunchtime.

The number of teaching assistant posts remains unchanged and their working hours have been increased.

The school administration team was reorganised in November 2016. The number of posts remains at 12, with changes in the roles and responsibilities of some staff.

Will there be a reduced curriculum for students?

No subjects are being cut from the curriculum. We are, however, proposing to remodel the KS4 offer by moving from four to three options and this was already under consideration for reasons other than financial savings. We were considering this following last summer’s exam results and the resulting need to address the particularly poor performance of students in the middle ability range.

Will there be less support for students with English as an additional language (EAL) and students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)?

Support for students with EAL and SEN needs will continue to ensure that they can effectively access our high quality curriculum. To ensure support is provided for pupils for whom English is an additional language, there will be dedicated curriculum periods for EAL pupils of different competencies delivered by MFL specialists with support from Higher Level Teaching Assistants. Where appropriate, EAL students will continue to be prepared and entered for the English as a Second Language (ESOL) qualifications.

Will teacher workload increase?

All classroom teachers with no other responsibilities will be timetabled to teach 22 out of 25 lessons per week. This constitutes a loading of 88% which is below the statutory maximum of 90%. We are, of course, exploring changes to our systems which will allow us to reduce teacher workload as far as we can.

Will there be reduced resources for students?

While we are dealing with a significant budget challenge, we can assure you that nothing we do to put the school back on secure financial footing will impact students’ education in terms of textbooks, ICT provision and specialist equipment available. To suggest this is the case has absolutely no basis in fact.

Will extra-curricular activities be affected?

Activities outside the classroom are a key part of our students’ learning. While there will inevitably be some changes, our approach will seek ensure continuation of a balanced, varied and appropriate range of extra-curricular activities reflecting the needs of our students.

Forest Hill School's PFI Contract

Finally, some of you have asked me about the PFI contract which FHS is part of. On the one hand, this is what it is - a contract which the local authority entered into many years ago in order to get the schools rebuilt and some schools find the annual payments a strain. Indeed we have identified the pressures that the annual payments cause for school budgets and have (with the agreement of all schools) introduced a new factor into the school budget formula which caps any school's annual payment to 10% of the school's budget. Non-PFI schools spend about 10% of their budget on facilities management, repairs and maintenance and the other functions which the PFI contractor fulfils. So the PFI contract is not the cause of FHS's budget overspend. The school is more or less full and has not had the problems experienced by schools which are not able to attract full cohorts. 

If you hear other rumours or concerns circulating, do let me know and we will help the school address these in their communication with parents as well as circulating information to you all as is helpful.

#schoolsjustwannahavefunds

Many thanks to everyone who came to Edmund Waller School last night for the Fair Funding For All Schools Campaign meeting. I am sure that everyone would like to thank all those who were involved in making the event happen, especially Cassie Raine. Matt Dykes, Co-Founder of the Campaign, was outstanding in his grasp of the subject, passion for the issue and insight into what would make the campaign successful. For more details of the campaign, how to get involved and what you can do, go to their website here (#schoolsjustwannahavefunds). Of the many good points Matt made I would highlight the following:

• Everyone needs to come together to fight the Tory proposals. That means schools, parents, teachers and their unions, politicians and local Councils. We shouldn’t allow the focus to be taken off the government by fighting each other.

• It is Tory backbenchers that are the power in the land, as a government with a majority of 17 is very weak and vulnerable to the threat of a revolt from their own side. The way to use this weakness as leverage is to constantly remind the government that they fought the 2014 General Election on a manifesto that promised to maintain per pupil funding for education not cut it, which is what their Fair Funding proposals are all about. Assertions that education funding is being protected are false, just as the claims that the NHS is being protected from Austerity is false, as witnessed by the current crisis in A&E departments and rising hospital waiting lists.

I would like to reiterate a point I made last night. It’s true to say that there are differences across the country in per pupil funding. But these are not the result of a desire on the part of previous governments to perpetrate an injustice on certain parts of the country. Rather, it is the result of local democracy. For many, many years Labour politicians fought local and city elections on manifestos that prioritised education and pledged to raise the taxes to fund it. Their local communities backed them at the ballot box. As a result places run by Labour, largely urban areas, invested more in education than their Tory counterparts, largely in rural areas. No wonder that Tory run areas are deliverying some of the worse educational outcomes for children, while London, a broadly Labour city, has seen massive improvement and is now a ‘stand-out’ national performer. So instead of being an exercise in righting the wrongs of inequality in funding for education, ‘Fair Funding’ is about robbing money from communities who voted consistently over the years for more resources for education and the taxes to pay for it, and giving it to places who didn’t.

Thanks again to everyone who came and took part. Be assured that despite debilitating cuts with more to come, Lewisham Council is on your side. The Council is led by elected members who are Lewisham residents and in may cases parents of children who are at or have been to Lewisham schools. Many are school governors. We are all determined to defend our schools and to do all be can to ensure that our children get the best education they can.

Defending Our Schools Against Government Funding Cuts

I and my councillor colleagues are being asked a lot of questions about school budgets at the moment. It's not my favourite part of being a Cabinet Member as I would want our schools to remain among the highest funded in the country as of course it's easier for schools to deliver great outcomes for pupils when they are well funded. But there's been national control of the schools funding regime for many years now and this is set to be taken one step further with a national funding formula. As a result schools up and down the country (but especially in London) are facing a huge financial challenge.

Before I address the new funding regime, I want to say something about the very few schools in Lewisham who have already got big financial problems which they are working their way out of. The most high profile one of these is Forest Hill School (FHS). The school is more or less full of pupils so it doesn't have the gaps in the school roll which have led to financial problems for other schools. The school ended 2015/16 with a budget deficit which the governing body had not predicted. Following that, a new headteacher, new chair of governors and new bursar have uncovered an extremely challenging budget situation which is being addressed by reducing the staff structure across the school, with support from officers at the local authority. Some voices out there are saying that the council's to blame for the school mismanaging its budget. But the financial relationship between schools and the local authority changed 30 years ago. The analogy I like to use is that as the local authority, we paint the lines on the road and give the schools a copy of the Highway Code as well as a few driving lessons - but it's for the governing body and headteacher to drive the car. Could we have spotted FHS's problems a few months earlier? Possibly - and we've improved our systems to learn from what's gone wrong in that school. But the outcome would have been the same - the school has to work within its budget. We've extended the payback period for the deficit to the maximum but we can't write off the school's debt - it wouldn't be legal or financially feasible to do so. We don't want to use our intervention powers as this would start the school on the road to becoming an academy. 

Forest Hill's situation - along with all the schools in Lewisham - will be made far worse by real terms cuts of more than 10% which come through the proposed national funding formula. With London Councils we fought off the first iteration of the proposals which would have left our schools 18% worse off - but a 10% cut will have a serious impact on our schools. Even those who are financially healthy now will feel the pain. Many of our schools are looking at how they can share staff and other resources between them to mitigate the effects since even if the government was forced to scrap the national funding formula, schools would still face almost 8% of real terms cuts because of extra costs such as the Apprenticeship Levy and higher national insurance and pension contributions.

So the issue of future funding for schools is one for us all – headteachers, governing bodies, parents, communities and councillors. It’s vital that we all work collectively to make our voices heard by the government so they know how much we value our schools and so that they are left in no doubt about our concerns here in Lewisham. 

Over years of campaigning I've found that the government listens to parents when most of what local councils say gets ignored. So it's fantastic that local parents' groups such as the Campaign for State Education (CASE) are campaigning and organising events and stalls to mobilise parent power. Heidi Alexander MP and CASE are organising a meeting on Saturday 11th March at The Barn @ The Green Man, 355 Bromley Road, SE6 2RP, which I will be attending. I'll also be attending a meeting organised by local parents on Thursday 16th March from 7.30-9pm at Edmund Waller Primary School. This will be a public forum for parents, teachers and concerned members of the community in Lewisham to raise concerns about the proposed cuts to schools’ budgets and lobby central Government to revise the formula. Vicky Foxcroft MP will be attending. I hope to see you there. 

 

For the national parents' campaign and petition see: http://www.fairfundingforallschools.org/act-now.html. 

To reply to the DfE consultation: https://consult.education.gov.uk/funding-policy-unit/schools-national-funding-formula2/

@A_M_S_Group Q&A Supplement

The Guardian diagram shows a chart of connection in an attempt to convey a web of corruption. Connection does not automatically mean that a conflict of interest exists. If I believed that any connections that I have, have caused a conflict of interest, then I would have made the necessary formal declaration when I was scheduled to make a decision.

My professional relationship to former Councillors Long and Sullivan are a matter of record. Both of them had been Councillors of long standing when I was first elected to the Council in 1998. I supported Sullivan in his attempt to secure the selection as the Labour candidate for Lewisham Mayor, for the 2002 election which he lost to Steve Bullock. Sullivan resigned from the Council in 2002. Long was one of my co-Councillors in New Cross ward for 8 years until she stood down in 2014. I try to be on friendly terms with everyone I work with and have dealings with through work. I am still in contact with many former Councillors and Officers of the Council as anyone would expect. I don't believe that the contact I have had with Long and Sullivan since they left the Council would convince an objective, impartial person that we are 'very close friends'.

Going back to the Guardian diagram, I think it is impossible for anyone to prove their innocence. That's why I believe that it was wrong for them to publish it and not something that you would expect from a reputable, broadsheet, national newspaper. People should be judged on the evidence. Where there is none, no one should resort to rumour mongering and innuendo.

Is Canvassing To Campaigning What VHS Is To Home Entertainment?

Many thanks to everyone who came to Edmund Waller School last night for the Fair Funding For All Schools Campaign meeting. I am sure that everyone would like to thank all those who were involved in making the event happen, especially Cassie Raine. Matt Dykes, Co-Founder of the Campaign, was outstanding in his grasp of the subject, passion for the issue and insight into what would make the campaign successful. For more details of the campaign, how to get involved and what you can do, go to their website here (#schoolsjustwannahavefunds). Of the many good points Matt made I would highlight the following:

• Everyone needs to come together to fight the Tory proposals. That means schools, parents, teachers and their unions, politicians and local Councils. We shouldn’t allow the focus to be taken off the government by fighting each other.

• It is Tory backbenchers that are the power in the land, as a government with a majority of 17 is very weak and vulnerable to the threat of a revolt from their own side. The way to use this weakness as leverage is to constantly remind the government that they fought the 2014 General Election on a manifesto that promised to maintain per pupil funding for education not cut it, which is what their Fair Funding proposals are all about. Assertions that education funding is being protected are false, just as the claims that the NHS is being protected from Austerity is false, as witnessed by the current crisis in A&E departments and rising hospital waiting lists.

I would like to reiterate a point I made last night. It’s true to say that there are differences across the country in per pupil funding. But these are not the result of a desire on the part of previous governments to perpetrate an injustice on certain parts of the country. Rather, it is the result of local democracy. For many, many years Labour politicians fought local and city elections on manifestos that prioritised education and pledged to raise the taxes to fund it. Their local communities backed them at the ballot box. As a result places run by Labour, largely urban areas, invested more in education than their Tory counterparts, largely in rural areas. No wonder that Tory run areas are deliverying some of the worse educational outcomes for children, while London, a broadly Labour city, has seen massive improvement and is now a ‘stand-out’ national performer. So instead of being an exercise in righting the wrongs of inequality in funding for education, ‘Fair Funding’ is about robbing money from communities who voted consistently over the years for more resources for education and the taxes to pay for it, and giving it to places who didn’t.

Thanks again to everyone who came and took part. Be assured that despite debilitating cuts with more to come, Lewisham Council is on your side. The Council is led by elected members who are Lewisham residents and in may cases parents of children who are at or have been to Lewisham schools. Many are school governors. We are all determined to defend our schools and to do all be can to ensure that our children get the best education they can.

Lewisham's Perspective On School Academisation: An Update

Back in April, Nicky Dixon was kind enough to allow me to use a letter I sent to her as a blog post entitled, ‘School Academisation: A Lewisham Perspective’. This can still be viewed here:

http://themaslinmemo.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/school-academisation-lewisham.html

Following the publication of the Lewisham Education Commission Report, there has been concern expressed about when it says about Academies, and Multi Academy Trusts, or MATs. Rather than try and rebut any view that I think people may have formed, I thought it might be useful if, as the Lead Member for Children & Young People, I laid out my understanding of what the report says and what it means for us.

Firstly, I see nothing in the report that recommends that the Council seeks the mass conversion of schools into academies of one sort or another, at the earliest possible opportunity. The full report can be seen here:

http://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/documents/s44260/Lewisham%20Education%20Commission%20Report.pdf

For ease of reference, here are the 3 recommendations from the report, page 15, that relate to academies and MATs, so you can judge for yourself:

Establishing a new approach to school organisation

1.  School federations in Lewisham should be supported if their governors decide that they wish to convert to academy status, with these ‘home-grown’ MATs being seen as potential academy sponsors for schools experiencing difficulties and as promoters of free schools where these are required across the borough in the next few years.

2.   The local authority, headteachers and governors should work together to ensure that every school in Lewisham is part of a formal and effective school collaborative group – whether as part of a MAT or through developing and deepening the work of a local cluster, collaborative or federation.

3.  The development of MATs and local clusters of schools should be seen alongside – and not as a substitute for – a borough-wide school-improvement partnership.  The borough-wide partnership that we propose should be tasked with identifying those heads that have the potential and interest in moving into executive leadership and providing them with the development and support to take on this role as more schools move to working through federations, MATs or other school groups.

In my view, the Commission doesn't endorse one form of school governance over another. It merely reports to the Mayor the thinking of some schools and suggests a response that is both pragmatic and potentially to our advantage. I say to our advantage because we are going to need new schools in the future and these will need to be free schools as only academies can apply to open free schools.

I don't think that the report represents any kind of 'hand break turn' change in policy. On the contrary, it builds on the work we have been doing over the last year or so as laid out in our School Improvement Plan. What I think is genuinely exciting about the report is the recommendations it makes to drive forward more collaborative working between Lewisham's schools by setting up new bodies like the Partnership Steering Group and the Lewisham Secondary Challenge. The encouraging news is that Heads, both primary and secondary, are right behind the Report, support the recommendations and are committed to getting involved to make a success of the new organisations and to raise standards.

The government is committed to take the School Improvement function, and the funds to support it, away from Local Authorities. Nationally, we will have to transition to a school-led system of improvement. We will continue to work with schools as we make this change in Lewisham. The Education Commission Report is both challenging and insightful and will assist us as we seek to develop our collaborative approach to improving schools and the life chances of our children and young people.

After The Leave Vote, Is It Time For London To Leave The UK?

Like so many people I am terribly disappointed about the EU referendum. It was a shock. It seemed that most people, Nigel Farage included, thought that the UK was going to vote to Remain. When you receive a shock, you can lose your perspective and your sense of reason, albeit briefly. Certainly this seemed to be the case with some of the prominent Tory Brexiteers who seemed genuinely surprised and upset by David Cameron’s decision to resign when it was plain as a pike staff to everyone else that he would have to go. Events may prove that Cameron too may be suffering from the same condition. I find the notion that the country will wait patiently until October to enable the Tory party to choose our next Prime Minister at its convenience optimistic to say the least. I expect Nigel Farage to call for a General Election to be held immediately every time he gets on air. Which will be a lot over the next few weeks. The chances of a General Election taking place this autumn must be high, whatever the Parliament Act may say about fixed terms.

So I hope I am not struggling under the same malady when I say that I wonder whether the decision to Leave the EU will prove to be implementable given that the winning margin was hardly emphatic and opinion across the nation was so divided along geographic and age lines. That the young will accept the right of the retired to adversely affect their life chances, to put it politely, may prove to be a heroic assumption. To believe that Scotland, Northern Ireland and London will accept a result that their citizens rejected by a margin of around 50%, seems naïve in the extreme. Indeed, Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP is already making noises about holding a second referendum on Scottish independence.

The Brexiteers will no doubt argue that the outcome of the EU referendum should be respected because that’s the democratic thing to do. The country has spoken and the matter settled. Whilst this is fair enough in the case of a General Election it is a bit harder to justify in the case of a referendum that delivers a marginal result. After a General Election you know that the result is only for 5 years and opposition politicians will be elected to continue to argue against the policies of the victors and continue to advocate for policies that the voters rejected. A referendum is the chance to answer a binary question to all intents and purposes forever. One can debate this with Constitutional wonks until the cows come home. This is all rather academic. The most practical answer to those who tell you that they are the majority and, therefore, that you have to knuckle under, is to leave and form your own majority. It is the lesson of Yugoslavia, two of whose former republics are now members of the EU and going it alone quite nicely.

So as the Scots think about leaving the UK in order to remain a part of the EU, isn’t it time that London did the same? An independent London would, after all, be bigger than Scotland (population 5.3m). Indeed Londonia with a population of around 8.5m would be larger than 13 current EU member states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia). It would be as large as Austria, and not that much smaller than 6 other member states (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Portugal and Sweden)

What I think will make the idea of secession from the UK appealing to many Londoners is the fact that London is paying for much of the rest of the country. How many residents of our great, world city who have woken up today horrified at the prospect of leaving the EU will view the idea of going it alone a step too far when they are told that one pound in every five they earn is going to fund the rest of the country? The EU referendum result seemed to swing over to Leave because people in poorer regions were worried, quite wrongly, that migrants were essentially taking more out of public services than than they were putting in. It’s ironic that these voters were disproportionately older people and therefore more likely to be taking more out of the system, in age-related benefits and health and social care, than they were putting in. And to add insult to injury, this deficit is being funded by a group of people who overwhelmingly wanted to Remain and live in another place. Moreover, those exporting funds to run the things that make us a nation in practical terms, like universal services such as education, the NHS and social care, may well be disproportionately hurt by the vote to Leave as London’s financial services industry loses out to EU competition.

This whole sorry saga has an added piquancy because of the involvement of one Boris Johnson. The man supposedly was Mayor of London for 8 years where he was tasked with standing up for Londoners and getting the best deal for them. No sooner was he out of that job then for reasons of his own ambition he jumped on the Leave bandwagon, knowing full well that Brexit would be bad for London. This morning he could not speak to reporters outside his London home. Instead he had to run away to escape the hostile jeers and catcalls from furious Londoners. Now it seems he will be plotting his final surge to secure the Premiership. Does anyone seriously think that Johnson is a figure that could unite the country? I am sure they do in parts of Ukipland. In London? No chance. For London, Boris as PM would be the last piss take.

The Leave vote was a slap in the face to all Londoners. Do the Brexiteers think we will take it lying down? Dream on.