How PFI New-Builds Drain the funds from our School System

When the late unlamented Education Leeds began its cruel and pointless destruction of Leeds schools, I thought, Blimey, have they got shares in construction companies? But I dismissed the thought because, in my naivety, I didn't think that the powers-that-be would work like that.

I thought that they were self-obsessed incompetents who seized upon this or that most recent piece of "educational" research in order to please their masters and mistresses, who were actually also self-obsessed incompetents, but further up the food chain.

Then after the devastation that was the closure of my beloved Foxwood, which seemed to involve a lot of money spent on consultants, the refurbishing of Cross Green to turn it into Copperfields, and a long-winded re-organisation and rehiring of staff, plus the design of and the making of and the purchase of new uniforms, new signage, new this and that with the new logos. . . . .

 . . . . Well after that [that colossal and pointless waste of money in order to save money] I developed an interest in these matters. Over the following years,  I went to just about all the "consultation" meetings in Leeds for closure and mergers. And heyho! How they seemed to involve demolition and rebuilds.

And worse, by now they had invented PFI, so the new builds came with very long and very expensive strings attached: Company A would design (well!) and build the new school. But having kindly put the money up for the building, the company now charges school rent for the next 25 or 30 years after which they may or may not still own it. After that the school may or may not belong to itself. And, and I'm only guessing here, the roof will probably still leak.

And so PFI, also draining the NHS of all it can get, sets about plundering education. Leeds schools are paying rent to shareholders in far-flung countries while having to make TAs and teachers in the UK redundant. Aided and abetted by Ofsted - but that is for another blog and another day.

Now this "rent " was not money that the school was used to paying, and it was not already catered for in the budget. The hook was that a "decaying" old building would be replaced at no initial expense to the school with a brand new one. The fact is that the old buildings were not so unfit for purpose . . .

To make matters even more sinister, the ancillary staff who managed the building such as caretakers and cleaners would no longer be employed by the head and the governors but by the construction firm. The incomes from letting out any rooms for music centres or sports clubs now went directly to construction firms and its shareholders; the inconvenience all rests on the school. If a music teacher wants to run an after-school practice in her or his music room, s/he must book it. What!

Well, we in Leeds have seen enough of these new builds to know that "building schools for the future" was no more than a nice little epithet. I have never forgotten the day that I was at a governors' meeting with members of Education Leeds. They were joking about how many cranes you have at any one time on the Leeds skyline. A shiver ran down my spine! They were proud. They thought their power amusing.

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 I was at the seasonal occasion a few years back when Chris Edwards of Education Leeds told us that this would be his last Christmas at Leeds, and added he hoped we would get all we wanted for Christmas. I openly opined that he had already just done that. But it was too late for Royal Park, Leopold, Askett Hill, Agnes Stewart, Braimwood, Parklands, and the other thirty plus Leeds schools that his improbable regime had put an end to.

Now it seems the population is growing after all and we need some new builds. I wonder how they will be funded!

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

"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!

Trigger Happy, and who only just scraped a pass?

In his letter of 22 September 2009, Ed Balls wrote from his Westminster Office to Education Leeds thus:

Dear C____ ,
I am writing to thank you for the dedicated support you have given this year to the National Challenge - our ambitious programme to transform secondary school standards . .

Despite this very progress, . . there have been some schools where results have been disappointing. . .

If local authorities fail to act, I will not hesitate to use the full range of powers available to me to trigger intervention or inspections. . .

The City of Leeds and Primrose federation again performed very poorly* and we must now urgently deliver long term solutions for these vulnerable schools. . . . you will also wish to consider what steps you can take now, including issuing a warning notice or asking for an Ofsted inspection.

Rt Hon Ed Balls MP
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families

On May 6 2010, while the rest of the United Kingdom was at the polls, Ofsted phoned up City of Leeds School to invite themselves in for a one day quickie.

Well, there we were, fighting closure, some of us on a daily blog basis; we were out delivering leaflets for parent and council candidate, Adele Beeson, who was standing on a Hands off our School ticket. There were letters to the papers, attending ward area meetings [not as exciting as they sound!], all the stuff you do. We were trying to keep our Yr 11s focused on their exams, while the students felt that they were being told that their school: their home from home for the past five years was rubbish. And where did work/life balance go?

Wisely, as it turned out, I decided against going to the Count. The others didn't get home till past 3am, and some of them got photographed for the local newspaper asleep against a wall.

So, May 7 2010, while the country started to hold its collective breath re the election results, City of Leeds School in Hyde Park and Woodhouse Ward, Leeds. discovered that it had passed an Ofsted Inspection - new framework and all, while down at Merrion House there was a gnashing of teeth that you could hear all the way up Woodhouse Street to Leeds Met and the Fenton [the first is a university; the latter a pub].

Somewhere between Ed Balls and Ed Leeds, they had shot their last bolt, but the ultimate weapon [and I'm sure Ofsted never meant to be seen as such] was fired and failed to find its target. Someone with more power than it was safe for them to have, was making assumptions and decsions about schools that one of them had never seen, and the other maybe had been into a dozen times, mostly in order to put it down.

Who "triggered the Ofsted"? Who knows? Who assumed that it was fair to judge German-speaking, Ndebele-speaking, Pushto-speaking, Setswana-speaking, Polish-speaking, and in short pupils with 74 separate first languages, who assumed that they could take exams in English and do as well as if they had taken them in their mother tongues? And, and, and, what about why are they are in Leeds in the first place - for their health, for a holiday! I don't think so. No disrespect to my adopted city, but you wouldn't leave Ethiopia for Leeds for a recreational break.

And at the same Ed Balls [Rt Honourable, ex of Westminster] came back to Morley, Leeds to find that he had only just scraped a pass.

[* oh no, they didn't!]

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!

Leafletting

We have been leafletting again. If it's not dark or raining this is by no means an unpleasant experience. I have developed a dog-in-house-fingers-out-fast-response, taking no chances with barks and bites. Most people are either receptive or polite about our campaign. There's still the entrenched "No way would I send my child to City!", and they seem to be supported by the Education Leeds spokesperson who said as much on the Radio Leeds breakfast Show last Wednesday [10 February].

I must say I had heard the rumours, then I went in to City as a peri, changed my mind overnight and sent both my younger children there. This doesn't mean to say it was perfect, but it was more than good enough, and better than the school that I had sent my two older children to.

When I worked at Foxwood, I asked head teacher, Bob Spooner why local parents made such an effort to bus their their kids out to John Smeaton, Boston Spa and the like. He said they don't want their children to mix with the rough sons and daughters of the criminals classes. I would say to say to these anxious Woodhouse and Hyde Park parents something sanctimonious like the "sins of the father" and so on. But the fact is that our school is full of the children of aspirational African and Eastern European parents. We have an A* English=as=an=Addtional-Language Department to help them without their problems impacting on the education of the native English speakers. and children of supportive parents are more likely to come out with 9 A-Cs than a drug habit. And they'll save enough money on busfares to go on more holidays.

However, if the truth is too inconvenient, I would say to those who don't want to have their minds changed: If City of Leeds is closed, the truancy and crime rate in the local area will increase, as will calls on mental health services.

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.