Education policy was clearly short-sighted

YEP Letters: September 12

Published on the 12 September 2013

Shock, horror! Leeds needs 4,000 new school places. To start off with, I think a few I-told-you-sos are in order.

Summer or winter, campaigners with local knowledge and educational expertise attended endless meetings after their days at work. And they opined that Educational Leeds’s car-crash of a school building policy was short-sighted.
I well remember the midwife at the West Leeds High School meeting who told the consultation meeting that the birth rate was going up, not down in Armley. And, on the other side of Leeds we noted that growing immigration trends was more likely to need Leopold expanded rather than closed down.
We argued the case time and time again against a smug and well-paid Education Leeds, whose representatives did not hail from Leeds, and who had no local knowledge; we pointed to Africa as we would now point to Eastern Europe. But they were on a mission to make a difference, and they closed down and/or merged approximately 40 Leeds primary schools.
Today we have to put things right, but there are mistakes we should avoid. We must:
1. Listen to the unions and other campaigners. They are not in it for the money or power – there being none for this type of work. They are in it for the children and their education.
2. Understand that first generation immigrants tend to have bigger families than any subsequent generation.
3. Large schools for little children are not a good idea.
4. Children should not have to go to school in building sites
So, as the remote Gove spirals out of control, and has decreed that all new schools should be academies, play the game. Restore Royal Park, for example (a building much in need of occupants), call it Royal Park, Brudenell Annexe.
Give Miles Hill its heart back. But remember stuff happens and things change, so build in flexibility and community use provision for when the refugees go back and the families get smaller again.

Victoria Jaquiss FRSA, Education campaigner

The Future and the Passing of Single Sex Education In Leeds

Not jumping for joy; not thrilled; City of Leeds School only got what it deserved: the rest of its life back for ever. And the knowledge that it is valued in the community. [The petition now signed by over 1000 local people asked for the school to be "saved for the Name and the great teaching experience that Children of Leeds receive"]

Now spare a thought for Leeds' only single sex school: Parklands Girls High. Given the [National] Challenge to get 30% or more GCSE A-Cs; it rose; it surpassed the challenge; it became the most improved [exam-grade-wise] school in Leeds.

But Education Leeds' eyes were already being dazzled by the lure of more cranes on the horizon. As they did with Intake [Leeds flagship performing arts college], they just ignored the strides that the school had made; and ordered a change of goalposts.

By threatening Parklands with closure Education Leeds , in one fell blow, depressed the new intake, and now decreasing popularity and an apparent lesser need for a single sex school in Leeds are added to Parklands' crimes. And, in the consultation document Education Leeds wrote, as quoted in YEP:

"but the education authority [ie Eddie Leo] said that its declining role and difficult financial situation was a challenge for sustaining progress".

At the council meeting last Wednesday, as they were agreeing to the end of Parklands Girls' High School, several councillors were concerned about whether there would be a future need for girls-only education in Leeds. The Chief Executive of Education Leeds said he would "commission a report".

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, let me reccommend that we save money, time, heartache and the inevitable check to the education of all of the girls presently at Parklands. Keep the school open. It is popular, successful; it has stood the test of time; it has 50 years of growth and history. And you can't just build those things.

In its report to the Council's executive board [7 April 2010], Education Leeds stated, of City of Leeds School,
" [3.3.3] The new Ofsted inspection framework has much higher expectations of scools and the school is judged to be at high risk of being placed in special measures at the next inspection"

Let us remind ourselves that City of Leeds School passed that new framework inspection on May 7th 2010. I'll leave you all to do the rest of the logic for yourselves.

Big Schools; Little Schools. A Sad Little Story

One advantage of being "unpopular" is that your school tends to attract and is given the pupils that other schools don't want, and because it is relatively smaller, it is easier to spot these individuals' needs.

A true story.

In my Year 7 class this year there a French speaking African boy. Now P was very shy, and I was doing the usual trying to bring him out, include him in the ensembles, while not overwhelming him. Sometimes I would speak in French to him because I couldn't tell whether it was shyness or lack of understanding when he didn't respond. [I know that the newcomers need to operate in English, but the odd sentence here or there doesn't hurt.]

Then one week, as we were walking down past the practice rooms and the instrument stores, en route for a practical lesson in the steel pan room, P pointed out the violins, and told me that he play. And so, as it turned out, he could; he played to the class; he was good; and the others applauded him and gave him respect. We fixed him up lessons with the violin peri, and then we set about reminding him on a weekly basis to go to them.

That would have been a good story, except that four weeks later, after the school was threatened with closure P disappeared. He had gone [in advance?] to one of the schools that Education Leeds had chosen for our students to be sent to after it would have suffered the threatened closure.

This would have been a sad story in itself, but then the big popular school that P had gone to, was then put in Special Measures only a couple of weeks later, with safe-guarding and behaviour as key issues. So there is our little shy boy in this big new popular school, with safe-guarding as an issue. Leaving the rest to your imagination. Little fish; little ponds; big ponds.

[Now there are arguments to say that this school is not as bad as it painted, and to be honest, I only visit it occasionally; don't teach there; don't know the full picture; can't honestly judge; and I wouldn't want any other school to suffer death by rumour; so there's nothing more here than is in the public domain. And Ofsted: Ofsted was the icing on the cake of our campaign to save City of Leeds School, so I'll hear nothing against them; well not right now.]

But I think about P from time to time, and I just can't help wondering if he has walked past the instrument store yet.

It works! Blogging, that is

Well, on last Saturday's blog I bemoaned the lack of action on the Newlands Ground Zero. Wednesday I'm walking past the spot, and there is boarding. And where there is boarding there will undoubtably be building.

My next wish was that the two principal architects, local and national of the pointless closure programme in Leeds should be voted out of office.

Oh, well, one out of two ain't bad. And it was a close shave for the Morley and Normanton man - whatsisname, thingy, you know. . . And actually, maybe still parliament, but not in government.

And, of course our very own private education company is to be wound up next year. I'll think they'll want to take out a few positions as they go. We must just hold our nerve.

So, three out of three. A cause for a small and guarded celebration.

On July 10 1994, lest they forget

On July 10th 1994, I was walking back from a party in the Burley area of area, near to the cricket ground. As I walked up Brudenell Road I became aware that the clouds in the sky were arranged in the wrong order. They were dark at the bottom, then light on top. I turned into Hyde Park Road and the full force of what I was seeing struck me. A fire. A really really big fire.

At the crossroads of Moorland Road, Royal Park Road and Hyde Park Road, I looked down and I looked up. The Newlands was in flames, and these flames reached as high up into the sky again as was the building itself. There were people in the streets, police cars and fire engines. Pupils of mine from Royal Park Primary School were outside in their dressing gowns. Families were evacuated from the houses that joined onto the pub.

Next day the bulldozers finished off what the fire had started. In the weeks that followed we got used to having our cars torched. Over a decade later you can still see the scorch marks on the tarmac of some of our streets. Where the pub once stood, our Ground Zero is just a patch of wasteground, an ignominous reminder of a glorious piece of local history.

Next day at Royal Park School, headteacher extraordinaire Rita Samuel made sure that the events of the previous night were incorporated into the school day. And children and their parents who could been traumatised by the drugs gangs who had fire-bombed my local pub, were helped to feel safe.

It seemed that someone in the drugs world had grassed on someone else, and they were using our patch to have the fight on. The national press had a field day. Hyde Park became a synonym for a no-go area; theatricals coming to lodge with us gave backword.

Enter Unity. A group of local poeple got together to reclaim the community. There were people in full-time jobs, but it was mostly pensioners, the long-term sick, the disabled and the unemployed who took on Unity Day - a celebration of all sections of our diverse society standing up to the gangs and saying we will work and we will celebrate together. Leeds Council gave them a grant; the rest was fund-raising, fund-rasing, fund-raising.

Now there is still drug-dealing in this area; there is still violent crime including rape and murder; cars still get broken into regularly; Chestnut Avenue "enjoyed" the reputation for years of being the nost-burgled street in the UK, but it's all less than it was. There is a bastion of stability in the middle of all this: City of Leeds School, with the neighbouring attached City Learning Centre, with a network of tentacles going out into the community with counsellors, youth workers and the like. The school now has its own police officer who has a background in youth work.

When children are frightened they know which staff they can approach. Close City of Leeds School, or reconstitute it in whatever way looks good on paper, and you can make the difference between a child disclosing and a child living in fear. Close City of Leeds and those families who can will start to drift away, and those who can't, the most needy will be even more in need. Even the families who don't send their children to City of Leeds School need it to be there.

There's a time and place for GCSEs and it's not always Year 11. Schools under pressure to deliver the exam goods may actually be be doing more harm than good to some of our students.

Gongs and the Wild Vampires of Capitalism

I see from the Yorkshire Evening Post that the Chief Executive of Education Leeds is looking back at Education Leeds' legacy through some sort of rose-tinted glasses. While I recognise that there are good things about Education Leeds [eg management training, risk assessment people, music service], I don't recognise these so-called achievments as such.

Achievement Not Number 1. "most people didn't want to send their children to local schools, but there had been a cultural change . . . and now they "were banging on the door" [of John Smeaton and Morley]" So what did they do for Morley High School that they couldn't do for City of Leeds School? Instead, careless talk found its way into the papers. I found a YEP headline last year, saying the federation between Primrose and City of Leeds wasn’t working. This wasn’t a professional judgment based on any evidence, just someone thinking aloud. A couple of months later, Primrose’s Ofsted commended the effects that this joint venture was having on the school.

Then there’s the bit about being the 50th Sunday Times “best place to work in the public sector”. Well this was a solicited award. Employees of Education Leeds were sent surveys a few months ago, saying that Education Leeds was applying to be one of the “Best Places to work in the public sector”. So they got 50th of the companies who applied to be in the awards. Big deal. But not an "accolade". Reminds me of the award that Leeds PFI Schools got. Having visited a few of these wobbly building, I was surprised to see that Leeds PFI schools won some building award [in YEP last year], till I saw it was from the UK PFI Buildings Association.

Another Leeds highlight is the Stephen Lawrence Award, and I agree this was a worthy initiative. But a few years ago, my friend was rushing back to her school [St Peter's] in order to put the finishing touches to its Stephen Lawrence Award display, when she found out that another school had been chosen as award winner without her school even being viewed. Then there was another lowlight: a couple of years back when a brother and sister each nominated the other for some sort of award from Education Leeds - I forget which - both received it, and the comment from the presenter - We've never had a brother and sister get these at the same time!

So, what's happened here is: it's Leeds in the Year 2000; it's education; there's some problems; bring in a private company. My friends, Steve and Sally, came to the CASE [Campaign for State Education] meetings, and warned us, and they were absolutely right. Capitalism was after new blood. What's left to make to money out of, now that we have our claws back into the nationalised industries? Children, my pretties, children and schools.

And Leeds Council offered up its neck to the privatised vampire, and they started to draw blood. And the firm they brought in to draw this blood was called "Capita", its very name hardly disguising its intentions. But the council laid aside its garlic, opened the windows and let the angels of death fly in. Oh and how they ripped their teeth into Royal Park and Tinshill and Leopold and Asket Hill, and whenever there was inner-city children who needed the love and protection of teachers and support staff whom they'd known all their life, they cut the links, and oh how there was money to made what with the meetings and the documents and the building of annexes.

But as we're thinking where is the point of all of this; our children are worse off now, well, there are gongs to be had, awards to give out, and the World seems to be saying: Well done to you all; here's a clock and a laminated certificate. So our schools must be great now because they have all got certificates to prove it.

And what is all so sad is that there are legitimate awards being handed out on a regular basis at civic ceremonies at Leeds Civic Hall, and they are being devalued by the vampire gongs.