Tale of the last 3 Schools Standing

I wrote this for John Baron in Leeds Guardian in 2010. Thanks to private education company [Education Leeds] and to PFI, three little jewels in the Leeds education crown quite destroyed, but at this point the local community [see picture below] saw off this attempt at a land grab. The next time they didn't even bother with a proper public consultation and . . . . . to be continued.

A tale of the last three schools standing
It's the last day of the consultation process into the future of City of Leeds, Primrose and Parklands schools today. In a guest post, education campaigner and blogger Victoria Jaquiss gives her take on the process.
Hundreds flocked to the City of Leeds High School meeting. Photograph: John Baron/guardian.co.uk


Victoria Jaquis

Friday 5 March 2010 10.07 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 11 June 201420.30 BST

I'm kinda wondering about this whole 'let's close City of Leeds School, and divide all the kids up between five other schools' proposal. Is it one big diversionary tactic so they can sneak in two more academies before local government cuts and a general election come along to spoil the fun?

Because, on the face of it, we have a terrific inner-city school, of a good size, with 14 years of good Ofsted inspections (and who'd think you'd ever want to thank Ofsted?) and with students speaking 74 different languages.

It's only been on its present site since 1992, has survived four or five attempts on its life since 2003, and it takes in children from all over Africa and Europe, and even Africa through Europe (there's your trilinguals - Ghana through Austria, Zambia through Germany).

And it takes in children with English, not even as a second language, and manages to include them in lessons, under the guidance of Ofsted-commended EAL department, again without affecting the education of their local peers.

Sounds good, doesn't it?! I'd like to send my children there, just handy, down the road from I live. Oh I did send them, and they got eight and nine GCSE grade A-Cs respectively. And not one penny on bus fares!

School deserves a medal

How did this school attract all these amazing staff? Myself included! It deserves a medal. Actually it got two last year: most improved attendance in a Leeds school.

It was awarded to us by the very same people who have written on the consultation document, "we are not confident that ... attendance, standards, achievement ... can improve quickly enough".

And then my own Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows won the National Festival for Youth World Music Award. Top UK youth steel band! How high do you have to go to counted a high standard and achievement by Education Leeds? (And top player, Varshika, who played 25 gigs, as well as the Albert Hall, got nine A-Cs, including A* in Maths – just in case, someone wants to say, it's only music!)

And then there's students: Wells and Ellen. They've been with us for four years now, and with support from City of Leeds staff and from local residents, they survived the last attempt to return them to Malawi.

Wrenched from home in the middle of the night, taken to Yarlswood Detention Centre, they spent two months there. And it was City of Leeds staff, in combination with their church and with members of the local community, who wrote the letters and raised money that gave them a stay of execution. How would you measure that then?

Shall we give them a last literacy test before the Home Office gathers up all their life in Leeds and forces them onto the plane back? Where will they be on our results? I don't think there's league tables for kindness, extreme care and beyond the call of duty. Primrose High School could become an academy. Photograph: John Baron/guardian.co.uk

Primrose High School, sadly, the only one of the three to be devastated already by new PFI building syndrome. PFI is Private Finance Initiative, part of the BSF programme aka 'Building Slums for the Future'. Last year the Institute of Architects describes BSF as an opportunity lost. And I would describe that as the understatement of our time.

As with all Better Schools for the Future (only kidding about the slums, once the roofs are screwed down properly, they'll be great), they were designed without a teacher in sight. "What shall we do," said the architects, "to make it really hard for the music department?". "I know," said the builder, "we'll put a two-lane highway between the Music Room and the practice rooms." "Yo, man," said the architect, "that'll keep them busy."

Concrete staircases

"What about outside concrete staircases encased in metal cages? Then everybody would get cold and wet moving from one lesson to the next?" "Like it," replied the builder. "From the street it would look like of those prison documentaries."

The old Primrose school building was terrible. When it rained you could hear it pounding down on the roof. Whereas, in the new building, it just rains straight in. Obviously this is less noisy, but actually it's really distracting when it short-circuits the keyboards or when the cello strings get wet. At the South Leeds PFI new-build the rain knocked out the entire recording studio and a class set of keyboards and computers, but it was okay because they built the corridors wide enough so that the new keyboards could rest up against the walls. A public meeting looking at the future of Parklands School was held in Seacroft recently. John Baron/guardian.co.uk

Parklands. So here we have a good - by anybody's standards - all girls' school, a little jewel in a big city's crown, with the most improved number of A-Cs of any Leeds school, rocketing them off the National Challenge list.

With this school, we have attracted and would continue to attract Muslim academics and their families to this city, if speakers from the floor at the so-calledconsultation meeting are to go by.

At a time when there are east-west and religious tensions, what a credit to us in Leeds it is that Parklands is able not just to offer a single sex school to the daughters of Asian families, but to do it in such a way that they work alongside local English (white/black/mixed-race) girls. And how shameful it would be if a city the size of Leeds couldn't offer one such single-sex school.
Favourite quotes
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I end with just two of my favourite quotes from the City of Leedsconsultation documents:

1. The staff would become "potentially redundant". I opined, in my response, that "sacked" might be the word they were looking for.

2. "Have you found the booklet useful?" – this directed to parents whose world they are planning to turn upside down, into whose community they are, in effect, about to increase the rates in crime, truancy, drug-use, mental health problems and suicides, and whose children, right in the middle of their schooling, have told that officially their school is rubbish, and they must be bussed all over the city, cutting up friendship groups and go to schools, which have no better and some have worse results. "Useful"? Not really.

So there you have it: a tale of the last three schools standing. Every Child Matters? Not at all.

* Victoria Jaquiss writes the Leeds Schools Campaigner blog.

This the link below to the original blog:

http://www.theguardian.com/leeds/2010/mar/05/leeds-school-consultation-process

Inspectors take opposing view, Schools take the Blame for Poverty

In 1994 when I was Head Of Music at Foxwood School, the inspector (who stayed all week with me) and who was a music specialist, watched me teach the music listening course that myself and colleague, Mr Phillips had devised between us, and told me that we should publish it. The school passed its inspection but was closed 2 years later.


Foxwood tutor group early eighties


In in 2003, a couple of weeks into being Acting Head of Music at City of Leeds School, the Ofsted inspector told me that you should "never, my dear, talk over music". Well, in the initial stages of the course, sometimes you have to, and the fact that three students merited their own separate TA should have indicated something to this woman about how well we were controlling behaviour! And I published my book on teaching music* a couple of years later.

Ten years later - after two proposed mergers, one with Carr Manor, and one with St Michael's, after a proposal to make it a 14-19 vocational centre, after two attempts to academise, after federating it with Primrose,  then defederating it, but leaving the sixth form with Primrose, after proposing an outright closure and sending students all round the city, after chucking out the acting head, and then half the governing body (including myself) and imposing an IEB, the school finally succumbed to academisation this year.

 

City of Leeds previous logo

However, during this time, no inspections were actually failed! My own two younger children got 8 or 9 A-Cs each as a hard core of amazing staff kept the place ticking over. And they will keep on doing it, while academy bosses stuff the kids into purple-edged blazers paid for by the public money that once paid for Special Needs and Music services etc, etc, etc .

I make two points here:
1. faced with an identical listening course, two inspectors took a completely opposite view, and
2. the very existence of published inspections means that children from deprived areas will always have their schools scrutinised and attacked for all the wrong reasons . Until we attack poverty, and not the schools that try their best to support poor children, they will continue to suffer, as will, quite unbelievably, the staff who choose to work, and used to find their job satisfaction and their calling working in areas of deprivation.


* Including SEN in the Curriculum: Music, published David Fulton's, shortlisted for TES award

School Deserves praise for Stand on English

YEP Letters: April 24

Published on the 24 April 2014

 

I support the City of Leeds School’s brave stand in declaring so publicly that its students need extra lessons in English as an Additional Language.

Head teacher Georgie Sale points out correctly that even four years in the UK is not long enough to have acquired enough academic English to get the exam grades that reflect any child’s natural ability.

However, as a previous long-serving and ultimately ousted governor, I know that this is a long held view; that attention has always been given to EAL, and that, despite our children not getting the grades that would keep Ed Balls and now Michael Gove off our backs, we went on passing inspections, with the EAL d honourable mention in the dispatches.

Two years ago we gained School of Sanctuary status - the first UK high school to do so. What an honour!

And how would anyone like to be remembered as the teacher, the support assistant, the school that supported you in your darkest hours as well as your best, or the robot following orders in the exam factory?

Sadly, I see that the IEB (Interim Executive Board) has applied for academy status. This will not, in any way, improve the overall average grades.

The school will continue to languish quite unfairly in the eyes of the Government, the media and the local public.

sunset over City of Leeds carpark spring 2014

Worse, all the emphasis on EAL will inevitably be directed to improving average grades; and inevitably away from offering the individual children the sanctuary and personal support that any school should be offering as well.

However, until we get a government that has an Education Secretary who genuinely understands David Blunkett’s old slogan that “Every Child Matters”, children will be forced down inappropriate routes that only serve in the pointless competition that is pitting one country’s educational system against another.

And we won’t get this government unless we as citizens stand up for ourselves and we as teachers, stand up for our charges.

 

Victoria Jaquiss FRSA, (teacher, writer, ex-governor, local resident), by email

 

When is a Public Consultation not a Public Consultation?

When is a public consultation not a public consultation? Answer, when the public don't know about it. 

This is best done by private academy consultation company, Artelia, who used similar methods at Heath Hayes Primary School, in Staffordshire, as they are trying it on at City of Leeds School.

The only piece of advertising for this public consultation in public was in the North Leeds News, a local newspaper with intentionally a small circulation. Sadly, the date given of the public meeting was inaccurate, so the very few who were readers weren't given a chance to attend. 

City of Leeds School has, for decades, attracted its students from all round Leeds, in particular, but by no means exclusively, from those areas at the other end of the No 1 bus route: Beeston and Holbeck, and also, Harehills, Chapeltown and East End Park. Were their local papers not considered worth contacting?

At the school Reception there was a little display of the academy proposal fliers, but this is a high school. Students are either dropped off in cars or make their own way.

The only  parents waiting in reception tend to be the Polish speaking, Polish reading parents, waiting to enrol their children (yes increase the numbers on roll, and in all different school years). Not only Polish, of course, but you get the point -  new parents, whose interest in and understanding of the intricacies of UK education system will necessarily be restricted to - can my children come here?

In my opinion, if, as it said on the natty little green and white document, our "views are important to us", if this true, and if you have the money to employ this private firm, with its Sevenoaks' office address, then you have money to take an advert out in the Yorkshire Evening Post. Or even do a press release to the local tv and radio stations, as well as the local papers.

If you do get hold of the document, the middle section is turquoise green, most writing in black, fairly hard to read. At least the important contact details were on a different colour! Sadly that colour is red. Now that is unreadable. As are the words: Consultation ends at 9a.m. On 30th January 2014. 9 a.m!

At the most recent Anti-Acadmies Alliance AGM, we found out that Artelia used the same tactics at Heath Hayes - lack of proper publicity, same hard to read colour scheme etc. All a bit shabby, all a bit can't really be bothered. 

This fight is for City of Leeds to lose. And, if Artelia loses it, well, there's plenty more schools in deprived areas, and the more traumatised immigrants [I'm simplifying here!]

they get, the worse the academic results, and hey presto - it's the school that under-performing! And, all the good teachers must have left! 

Three years ago, City of Leeds School became the first UK School of Sanctuary. No mention of this anymore; and the sign outside the gates, long since taken down.

Save and Protect City of Leeds School

Five threats later, it looks like City of Leeds is about to fall on its own sword. The main argument that it puts forward in favour of academisation is that the school has no money.

The flier puts out some half-hearted arguments about standards, EAL, and multi-culturalism, a fresh start, and the alleged expertise of the proposed sponsor.

But actually all, and I mean all that is wrong with City of Leeds School is that numbers are low. Made low by several factors:

1. League tables prove only that children in deprived areas, which include newly arrived arrived immigrants and those in extreme poverty, tend not to achieve their academic potential at the normal age. They are not a genuine measure of the teachers' skills.

2. After the school finally defederated from Primrose, the school found that the 6th form, and all the money that sixth-formers bring in, and all numbers and potential numbers for retakes and pastoral learners, as well as A levels had been given to Primrose. How did that happen?

3. Five proper full consultations to close or merge or academise City of Leeds has made local aspirational parents understandably nervous about the quality of the education here. Then, that outburst on Radio Leeds, from Chris Edwards, leader of the infamous Education Leeds. Who would send their children to City of Leeds? Well, Chris, I did. And 9 A to Cs, and 3 A levels later . .

This school, condemned by rumour, actually has never been placed in Special Measures, nor had any formal criticism until last year. This building was enlarged to high standards with public money, with none of the fancy watch tower designs and grandiose facades that PFI has given the more recent new builds.

The school enjoys great community relations (the prime reason I sent my two white children there), is renowned by reputation for its EAL teaching, and was awarded the UK first School of Sanctuary.

The high quality teaching staff are drawn to this school for all the right reasons, and include Advanced Skills Teachers, and published authors.

The academy proposal suggests that the school would benefit from a fresh start. I lived through Foxwood's fresh start as East Leeds, and Cross Green's as Copperfields. Both schools lasted 4 and 5 years respectively. Changing a school's name does not change the local perception of the institution, and alienates those loyal to it, while also cancelling history. and children don't learn any better, stuffed into blazers and throttled by ties.

Really there is nothing that an academy can do that a school can't: change the school day timings, uniform etc. But there is one big thing: they can lower the teachers' pay. And that is exactly what Leeds City College is presently consulting on for it's own.

Meantime, City of Leeds has a new headteacher,  and is now host to the Lighthouse School, and to the Leeds ArtForms Music Service, both of whom pay rent and who enjoy the friendly atmosphere and the good behaviour of the students. It has also re-acquired the CLC, and with an almost rural city centre location, is ideally placed for conferences etc.

This school is already back on the up, and does not require to be bribed into giving all its land and its building and control of all its staff to an FE college, whose head is coincidentally on the Interim Governing Body [an undemocratically group of people, who represent neither school staff nor the local community].

City of Leeds: The Mouse that Roars!

After Alan Bennett came to City of Leeds School to give some readings and some comment, and most importantly sign my book!, he wrote this:

21 September. To the City of Leeds School in

Woodhouse, the head of which is Georgie Sale, a

troubleshooting headmistress formerly at my own

old school and who, though not a fan of Michael

Gove, relishes schools like hers that have to be

turned round. There are fifty or so nationalities

here, including two boys who were child soldiers

in Africa and are thought to have killed people, s

and two boys smuggled out of Afghanistan in a

wooden box built above the axle of a jeep. They

came to Leeds thinking they had relatives here

but found they had moved on and so lived rough in

Hyde Park, preying on students and stealing food

until they were picked up by the police and

brought to the school. None of these I see, but

only a light airy secondary school, the

childrens art on the walls . . .   my usual stuff seems trivial and

frivolous, with the purpose of the evening to

raise funds so that these extra-curricular events

can be maintained. Were the school an academy

funds would be provided, so I must be grateful to

Mr Gove for bringing me out on this Friday night.

actual picture of the inner-city oasis that is COLS

Now actually, it is truly marvellous that this school has survived, and testimony to a great local community who came out to support the school, that it has done - survived, against all the odds. And testimony to its great staff who gave and who give beyond the call of duty to care for and educate the children, as Alan Bennett describes above. 

Of course we all know, that Michael Gove has City of Leeds in his sights. When Ed Balls vacated the office he left the dartboard up with the schools he had been targetting. But Alan [I think maybe we are on first name terms since he signed my Untold Tales] was mistaken in one respect: the school, over all the years that the Inquisition levelled its guns on it, never failed an Ofsted. 

By the time that Ms Sale was invited to be headteacher, the school was simply low on numbers. Turning the school round was not the point; regaining the confidence of local parents was the issue, so that the school's league tables would depend not upon the results upon the ex-child-soldiers but on the local children in general. [Or maybe league table are not really a good indicator of a school's suceess?. Hmmm!]

I came across an article in YEP [Feb 26 2009] about recent City of Leeds School history, and it really is no wonder the school suffered with numbers. "Sep 1994 moved from city centre site to Woodhouse . . . 

Nov 2001 phased closure announced, site to become "young people's academy"
July 2002 planned merger of City of Leeds with Carr Manor High
Oct 2002 Staff launch save our school campaign
Jan 2003 Carr Manor to remain open, but City of Leeds to become a 16-19 learning centre
Aug 2003 plans to merge City of Leeds with St Michael's College revealed
Jan 2004 threat of closure lifted as federation with Primrose High announced
Set 2005 federation formally begins
July 2007 named among 12 possible academies
Nov 2008 among 16 high schools to redeveloped as part of £300m proposed scheme
Jan 2009 academy plans announced"

It didn't stop there. After that Education Leeds tried to close the school. It failed, of coutrse, and shortly after it was Education Leeds who were kicked into touch.

And, do you know, despite all this, the school still did not fail an Ofsted.

The article also included some truly disgusting statements by Chris Edwards [ex-head of late private education company], who also said on Radio Leeds, live, "Who would send their children to that school?", but, do you know what - the school survived.

And, actually, Chris, I sent my two younger children to this school [living as I do, down the road], in 2000 and in 2001 [both leaving with eight A-Cs + a piece], and then spent every year since fighting for its survival, the younger one leaving 2009, shortly before the education company gave away our sixth form [and all the benefits that that brought the school] to Primrose High. As Dizzy would say, Bonkers!

Never Mind the Children; What about the Percentages.

Thanks again to Yorkshire Evening Post [25/9] for printing my letter:

The YEP comment [7/9/12] was right, that City of Leeds School proposal to sacrifice its school and its young people on the Gove alter of private education is not some sort of “magic bullet”.

The worst thing about this proposal is that it reactivates in the public’s mind the quite erroneous notion that it is a “failing” school. In the article the school is described as “struggling”, mentions that it has no sixth form, and stresses that the numbers dropped during the aerial bombardment that was Education Leeds’ tactics for caring for its disadvantaged schools. The article could have mentioned the improved results, the great mother tongue languages results, that it was awarded the School of Sanctuary; that the new headteacher is a successful Ofsted examiner herself . . .

City of Leeds School, which has passed one inspection after another over the last years, has only one crime: i.e. low number of A-Cs.  And its only struggle is with the Authority who should know that poorer, disadvantaged, often newly arrived refugee children are unlikely to produce exam results to compete with Queen Ethelburga’s.  And who should applaud the teachers who choose to work where they can include supporting and educating our city’s most vulnerable children, inside their regular job.  And whose reward seems to be quite unwarranted public castigation. [Thank goodness for job satisfaction].

The only way to stop the city having schools with a low percentage of A-Cs, well, apart from reneging on human rights deals and closing the borders, is to spread out the inner-city kids around all Leeds schools, and dilute the poverty effect on any one individual school’s results.

Bye bye Guardian Leeds Thanks for helping us in the fight to save City of Leeds School

Well, it's very sad to see John Baron and his wonderful local Leeds Guardian go. He did wonderful work here for so many us in Leeds giving voice to all of us who campaign on local issues. He personally sat down at the computer and showed me how get this blog started. And after that with a few hiccups I became a digital convert.

My blogs, both this one and the NAME [National Association of Music Educators] one has got myself and my wonderful Silver Sparrows onto the World Service, into a full page spread in the Times Ed, giving us a national and even international voice to the campaign that was Stand Up for City.


City of Leeds School is a local, successful comprehensive school, up the hill from Woodhouse Moor on the one side and Meanwood Ridge on the other. And it is of course home to the Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows and Leeds Silver Doves, award-winning steel bands, whose next major gig is the festival of Britain at the Southbank centre, London.


The festival of course is just icing on the cake. The rest of the time this school gets on with rock solid education, passing one inspection after another including the latest Ofsted with the new framework. And City of Leeds School is all the more important to this city and our community now that Parklands and Primrose have been forced down the academy route.

Parents who don't want their children to leave the local education system can send their children to City of Leeds School, and can of course move them in any year. In-year transfers aren't normally reccommended, but schools converting to academies are making massive changes anyway.

Anyway, thank you John for showing me the way and giving space to all the Leeds campaigners. and for introducing me, at the how-can-we-replace-you meeting on Wednesday, to that wonderful phrase, but not so wonderful concept: digital disenfranchisement. I shall be campaigning next against libary closures if only to work that phrase in!

"Not to proceed with the closure of City of Leeds School"

So, here it is: the revised reccommendation from Education Leeds to Leeds City Council's Executive Board:

"not to proceed with the closure of City of Leeds School . . . "

And how many hours of sleepless nights, and how much leisure time was missed and spent in the pursuit of signatures on petitions; how many anti-depressants were handed out; how many letters were written to papers, and blogs like this written, when we could have been feet up, glass of wine, chuckling at Paxman giving somebody or other a hard time; how many t-shirts and badges; how we hugged the school; attended union and other political meetings . .

How many children said to us, "This school is s---, why did we come here? What's the point?" How many children took their GCSE exams this year knowing that the powers-that-be [ie Education Leeds] had told them that their school and their teachers were rubbish and that it wouldn't be here in two years time to take in their younger siblings. And the chief executive went on local radio and said, "Who would send their children to this school?"

And now, a thousand signatures, 2 EDMs later, and lot of private lives on hold, the reccommnedation is not to proceed with closure.

Where is the apology? Where are the children whose parents moved them mid Year 7, with Education Leeds' blessing, from City of Leeds School to Roundhay School, or Lawnswood School or whatever school they went to. They went mid school year; the damage irrevocably done. This would have been a massive check to their education, even if they were not even English-as-a-not-very-fluent-second language!

City of Leeds was the school in Leeds whose EAL [English as an Additional Language] department was raved about by all Ofsteds. Some of these these children have left us, because their parents believed the hype. Some of these children have left us because their parents knew that They were out to get us.

I see the headlines say the school is "thrilled", is "delighted" etc etc. Well no, not thrilled but relieved. We have only got what we deserved. To stay open, as City of Leeds School, as a bog-standard satisfactory comprehensive, catering for the individual needs of all of students.

Plus of course the debating awards, the poetry-slam awards, the music awards, the attendance awards, the business awards, basketball awards, and the rest.

We had better be careful. The latest Ofsted inspectors told us we were satisfactory bordering on good. A good academic cohort and we'll be outstanding, and we all know Gove thinks that should lead!

Power Corrupts

In my youth, I could never see the sense of the saying Power corrupts: absolute power corrupts absolutely. It seemed to have no logical basis. But, in the UK, our experience of "strong" third term governments with large majorities seems to make the point.

Obviously Thatcher was a bully from the off; and Blair compromised on so much that it was never strictly accurate to call it a "Labour" government.

But the absolute power that absolutely shocked me [putting aside the weapons of mass unlikelihood], was the amount of educational expert advice which was dismissed and ridiculed, and even left unread.

The Cambridge Primary Review [published October 2009], welcomed by most educationalists was sneered at Eddie and Vern. They misunderstood the most basic of reccommendations: that formal education shouldn't start till after children are six. They took this to mean no schooling till seven, and publicly dismissed the report almost as it was published.

Price Cooper Waterhouse concluded in their recent report [2008?] that academies per se made no difference to standards. But still Eddie and Vern continued in their quest to de-stabilise inner-cities communities by mashing up and smashing up the bog-standard schools in order to produce no overall improvement at all. Lives lost, careers in tatters, families and friends separated, demand for mental health health services at breaking point, really really rubbish building erected at some public expense, communities in chaos, and what for? Well, for no overall improvement in standards.

And power also appears to corrupt locally. Let's take our local council, and its relation to City of Leeds School, one of the three schools which essentially this blog was set up to defend.

We have written letters as part of the "consultation" on closure and academisation. But as we have to submit our objections to the very company who is demanding our closure, we naturally don't trust the system. And we usually send copies of our objections to our councillors as well.

Our Head of History sent his objections, as per, round the councillors with a demand of notification of recipient opening it [there's probably a technical term for this]. And yes, one Leeds councillor, who will, in time, vote on closing this school, did not even open the email setting out quite rational arguments why it should stay open.

Add that to the Lib Dem councillor who publicly described City Of Leeds School as "poor", and you have to question what good is power if those wielding it don't do so in an informed manner. I am rather thinking that these people will eventually be taught a lesson by History itself.

Well, they sure didn't choose City of Leeds School, and who can blame them!

The Yorkshire Evening Post ran an education special on 11 March, earlier this year. It featured some very angry families from Middleton and Cross Green who have been allocated City of Leeds School, somewhat against their wishes. And who can blame them?

If Education Leeds hadn’t spent so much time rubbishing its own schools there might be thousands less unhappy parents. But, essentially you cannot allow parents not putting City down as one of their choices to be allocated this school while you have published your proposals to close it. It is criminally irresponsible. And if you are going to allocate school choices against parents' wishes, what an interesting experiment it would have been to make those allocations to families from Woodhouse and Hyde Park. Now there's a thought: a local school for local children. No, it'll never catch on!

At the Parklands consultation meeting, the spokesperson told us that there weren’t enough school places in east Leeds and that’s why they had to close Parklands and build a new co-educational school. Well, what sort of a company decided to close and merge Braimwood and Agnes Stewart and allow in an academy in Seacroft which is not obliged to take in local children?

The same sort that closed and merged Wortley and West Leeds, and then had to reopen one of them.

They would be the same people that have taken advantage of their high profile position in education in Leeds, and used the media to put us down. If a spokesperson says on Radio Leeds [8.15 a.m. Feb 10 2010] , “Who would want to send their children to City of Leeds or Primrose?” then they cannot seriously then allocate places to people who don’t even live near!

And the problem with the YEP article is the unchallenged statements eg “I’ve been reading about [City of Leeds] . . standards are really low, and it’s one of the worst schools in Leeds.” This is not what the Ofsted [2009] says. Again, deliberately in order to discredit the school, this is what Education Leeds is saying, and has written, inaccurately, in the consultation booklet.

As it happens, there are parents, who have done their research carefully [looked at Ofsteds, visited the schools, talked to City pupils], and made the decision to let their children take the two buses [not three] across the city. Amy [from my steelband] came from Beeston everyday for five years and is now taking her A levels at Notre Dame Sixth Form College.

So, here’s a revolutionary suggestion. Keep City of Leeds School open. Concede that crude exam measurements designed to test native English speakers are probably not suitable for recent immigrants whose vocabulary levels may be only be about 3 or 400 conversational English words. At the same time recognise that this school is well able to differentiate, and push the academically able forward while developing English or social for others.

As for the reluctant parents. My heart goes out to them. When the poweres-that-be take the pressure off City of Leeds, there are 60 odd Yr 6 children whose parents were planning to put City first, and who had changed their minds. They will be able change their minds back. That’ll free up some spaces. It’s a start.

Not really playing fair. Is this libel? Is this the death of democracy?

I've gone from being a hopeles digital immigrant to an reasonably competent website reader and user in five short weeks. So, after reading in the Online Guardian what Education was claiming about City of Leeds School, I checked for myself. And what did I find:

"City of Leeds [and Primrose High School] both face major challenges to improve teaching, attendance and behaviour standards and require urgent changes to meet the target."

Good Heavens, I said to myself. This is fiction. No wonder Ed and Vern are so keen to close it. It sounds like anarchy in the UK is alive and kicking and hanging out in Woodhouse and Hyde Park. I thought I'd check out the Ofsted report so I could publicly refute what really amounts to libel.

Hmmm, maybe not so digitally competent. Got fed up searching for the report. Take my word for it, check it out yourself, visit the school.

And I also read:

"Parklands Girls’ High School’s GCSE results have already exceeded the national target this year but due to a declining roll and difficult financial situation present a challenge for sustaining progress beyond 2011."

Now presented with this success, this would seem the natural response:

"Well done, Parklands, let's build upon this success. Now that your results are gone back up, the girls will soon come flocking back." Instead, Eddie Leo looks around for somewhere new to put the back of the net.

Then I read:

"Councillor Richard Harker, executive board member for education at Leeds City Council, said: “Public opinion is a vital part of the decision making process. We recognise that major changes for the three schools have been proposed and want to fully engage with everyone connected to the schools to gather their opinions. This consultation will ensure that all views will be taken into consideration by the executive board before a final decision is made.”"

Well, Councillor, in the recent by-election the public just voted 100% keeping City of Leeds open. So now how vital is public opinion? Or will Education Leeds just move the goalposts, as they are trying to do with Parklands?

To sum up, when the Guardian Online looked for information about the proposed closures, they turned to a website which provided inaccurate information. This is hardly playing fair, and I would argue it could be seen as libel. And, if the closures go ahead, what is the future for democracy?

Counting at the Town Hall

In early January 2010 Adele Beeson, Independent candidate for Hyde Park and Woodhouse, inner-city Leeds, officially confirmed that she was standing for Council. On February 18 2010, out of a count of 2200 voters she got 150 votes. Labour won with 1054 votes, and with rather more than five weeks experience and campaigning behind them. All the candidates declared their support for City of Leeds School, so we can also declare that 2,200 people, in fact 100% of voters, voted for City of Leeds School to stay open. Of course, this is just a way of spinning it, but I think it makes sense. And, for those who like to count things, something of a result, I would say, which They need to take heed of.

The Thomas a Becket of Schools and the Mother of All Parliaments

Just rereading the billets doux between our local education firm and comedy duo, Ed and Vern from the DCSF. Ed "thanks" them for their "dedicated support", and Vern is "grateful" for their plans to "accelerate the delivery of long term solutions." He goes on to note their "intention to close City of Leeds School" , and then welcomes "the immediate support that you propose for all the schools . . "

There's no support being offered here.it sounds more like the final solution to me! It's more like: Who will rid me of this turbulent school? And They've lost touch with reality. Interpreting facts to suit whatever.

In September Ed writes that he "particlularly pleased to see Parklands rise above the floor, " so well done there, Leeds. Oh no, it's January and Vern is happy to see Parklands become an academy. Looks like they're exceeding orders here, but it's going down well.

Back in September, having spotted that Intake has heroically achieved the magic percentage, Ed has to describe this as providing "a good platform for the new Academy", but really I don't think it needed this tragic turn of events - change and loss of teachers, change of uniform, loss of one of the most famous names in Leeds schools' history, living in a building site for the next couple of years, excluded from the central services.

So why, from a government, once so revered and respected, are two men sitting in an office, sending out letters, trying to make sure that they and their department are covered in glory, with their "ambitious programme to transform secondary school standards . . "?

And City of Leeds School stands in their way.

consulting

I've always thought that "to consult" meant to ask someone's opinion and then act upon it. As I said in my letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post [published 10.2.10], it's new meaning is "to tell the public, at some expense to the public, what one is about to do". Well call me old-fashioned but I think that if you have a really really bad idea, and you ask a lot of people what they think and they tell you that is a really really bad idea. Well, then I think that you should stop having ideas altogether. And, as for being paid to have bad ideas. It makes even less sense.

Over the past few years a group of people with no personal or historical loyalty to Leeds, have had some really really bad ideas, disguised them as proper educational philosophies and then foisted them on an innocent school-using public.

These are two of my favourites: 1. merging a single-sex state secular boys school [Braimwood] with a mixed church school [Agnes Stewart] on a site near neither of them, and making that school an academy, thus taking it out of council control or influence 2. consulting three schools [Farnley Park, Wortley, West Leeds] on the closure and merger of two of them, and explicitly suggesting to the third that because the new school will be too small for the merged schools, then they will collect the fall-out. Swallow Hill was always designed to be too small. What the consulters didn't expect was that a couple of hundred pupils would not meekly falls on their sword and decamp across the ringroad. So, having told Wortley what a rubbish condemned buliding they had, they then had to spend a whole load more on refurbishing it. What I mean is that we had to pay.

I think it's time that the some adults stood up to some other adults, before our children's respect for adults collapses entirely. And these adults know who they are!

Shocking

Well, I was brought up to think that the War to End All wars would have ended all wars. Women had got the vote, and eventually it was okay for men to be gay as well. Children with Special Needs got Included. It could only get better. Sadly it didn't. Some idiot decide to count things and invented league tables. There was a brief pause when David Blunkett said Every Child Matters, which sounded good, but it didn't really, because they did make a magazine in Leeds called that, and then they said, Oh you'd expect a dip in results in the first year after a merger, an academisation or a closure. So, obviously the children that year didn't matter. So, really, it's more about bragging about how good the UK system is, than actually doing anything good. And actually, the dip is more likely to take a genration to get over rather than a year.

What I found so shocking about the consultation meetings was that a group of five, presumably intelligent people, and we can only presume people with some sort of educational background, would put aside their integrity and their common sense and put forward an idea that your average Year Six pupil would see right through. Close a school, split friends up and send them to other schools that they have not chosen, right in the middle of their high school career, because a year group doesn't get the average grades that some blokes in Whitehall set, when 55% of that year group did not start their City of Leeds, or Primrose School career in Year Seven. When we also inherit the kids the pupils they exclude from other schools; And when the presumed intelligent people open their mouths to the press and slag us off in quite an unprofessional way.

And the blokes [Ed and Vernon] in Whitehall have never visited the school; they don't really understand, they don't answer the letters we send; they're only interested in their reputations, in averages and so-called "standards" and not in individual children.

And it was Year Six pupil, Luke, who said - it was the last comment from the audience that he wanted to come to City of Leeds but that he wouldn't if they said they were going to close the school. And they have been saying that for about seven years. And lots of people who had wanted to come, in the end changed their minds. Not, unpopular, Education Leeds, until you made it so.

These consultations

This week I attended the public "consultation" meetings for City of Leeds School and Primrose High School. Now I have no ambitions to be a politician. After a long day at work, and, given the choice of sitting on my sofa blanking out to "Desperate Housewives" or "University Challenge", well these TV programmes would surely win over an evening spent in a school hall somewhere near where I live. But, for the foreseeable future, and also, for the last ten years, relaxing has not featured in my life. My sensible life/work balance came to an end with the end of Foxwood School in 1996.

Well, these consultations:

The local paper said there were over 400 people at the City of Leeds - well over, more like 600, I would say. The Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows, in betwween Schools Prom dates at the Royal Albert Hall and Leeds Town Hall played; there were refreshments and colourful and informative displays of the school's strengths. Letter of support from our councillors and all candidates for council for the by-election coming up next week. Letters of support from MPs Greg Mulholland [meaning he is breaking ranks with Leeds Lib Dem/Tory coalition which has sanctioned this guastly school sacrifice]and Hilary Benn [meaning that Mr Benn is breaking ranks with his cabinet colleagues]. Hundeds of us were wearing the badges, and some us have even got the t-shirts.

It was more like a party atmosphere than a school closure proposal. This would have been because staff, pupils, parents and local residents had been out leafletting the neighbourhood in order to ensure that evryone knew about it. By contrast the consultation at Primrose was a more sombre affair, even though parents had been out leafletting the previous week. It was hardly helped by there being noone on the door for latecomers.

Leader of the Council, Richard Brett, arrived at ten past seven. I got there at twenty past. I spent the next twenty minutes texting "Let me In" to all the people that I knew at the meeting. Mr Brett lost heart at five to eight, and then minutes later the caretaker happened to come past and let me in. Later I opined that that if they, Education Leeds, couldn't organise a public consultation meeting . . . you may guess the rest.

City of Leeds School 2

The fight is hotting up.

City of Leeds School has now been threatened with closure or merger three or four times in the last decade. We think that it's not rocket science to note that a mix of students from relatively poorer families, some dysfunctional families, some ordinary families: either first, second or third generation Asian immigrant, or ex-Leeds Uni families, some children from local children's homes, some children excluded from the newly formed and highly contraversial academy, some children who arrived in Leeds from Europe or from Africa, and some from Africa via Europe, some foreign students struggling in English, some of them cheerfully trilingual, loads of children prefering City to their own local high school from all over Leeds - well you get the picture: it's a heady mix of students at different points in their lives, and their educational development.

Well, it's not rocket science to note that academic exam results will a, be variable and b, be irrelevant. So why judge the school by them?

It's an exciting, challenging and enjoyable place to work. So why does the government put so much pressure on Leeds Council to close it?

Every Child Matters! Hardly!