Priory Parents Forum (28/11/18)

Present were about 60 - 80 parents (at a guess).

Chairing the meeting was John Griffiths - Vice Chair of the Governors
Also present:  Tony Smith -  Executive Head of Priory, Karen Clinton - Head of School, Mr Ashworth - Deputy Head Teacher and a number of other governors.

Input from John Griffiths and Tony Smith

John Griffiths lead off by talking about the great GCSE results that Priory had achieved this summer, the best in East Sussex.  He then moved on to giving some background to the decision to take the Multi Academy Trust route.  He said that Priory was struggling against a background of cuts to core services to the LEA, that some children who 5 years ago would have gone to special schools are now having to be schooled at Priory, that the LEA is taking more time to assess pupils, reduced help for families and various other cuts are having a huge affect at the school.

Mr Smith then outlined what he saw as three possible options:
1.  Stay with the LEA - E. Sussex has a further £46m of savings to make, this does not bode well.
2.  Set up our own MAT with a vision of excellent teaching, support for families and a broad and balanced curriculum.
3.  Individual academisation or group academisation under a private company.

He emphasised that the schools are currently not being forced into this (except by LEA funding issues).  Since 2004 the schools have been working together in a learning partnership, but cannot run central services like for example a Data Protection Officer.  The MAT would operate as a Registered Charitable Trust.

Discussion

Various questions were asked and inevitably I didn't manage to capture all of them but here are a few:

• Could holidays be set at different times?  Yes
• Could we have a list of pros and cons? Yes - the answer to this and all other requests for documentation was that there was, as yet, very little to share but it would be shared when it became available (or at least some of it would).
• Are there any succeeding trusts we might look at?  Yes - Evolve Trust, Brook Learning Trust, Brighton Academy.
• Could there be changes to the curriculum?  Yes, but freedom would be restricted by Ofstead
• Lots of views were expressed in support of a ballot
• One person spoke out in support of collaboration, listening to each other and possibly not having a ballot (full disclosure: that was me)
• Tony and John pointed us to the Core Offer for East Sussex (https://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/yourcouncil/about/keydocuments/coreoffer/) to get a feel for the state of the council.
• Could the school guarantee that the MAT would not be taken over by a private company in the future?  No, but it can't guarantee that that won't happen in the near future for some schools and Priory sees it as protection for the schools to form it's own MAT to pre empt this possibility.
• Questions were asked about consultation - a few of us had been involved in whitewash consultations and I think it's fair to say that Priory did little to alleviate any fears we might have that the consultation here would be the same.  It seems that they have a legal obligation to consult, but no obligation to listen or act on anything raised.
• It was clarified that each school would have a meeting on this but that Priory hadn't decided on a date (this Parent Forum was definitely not that meeting).  Tony Smith said that he was waiting until he had enough information to share.   Again, I think it's fair to say that there was some confusion that all that all the primary schools seem to be seeing fit to hold meetings in the next two weeks but Priory does not.

Save Lewes Schools Meeting (27/11/18)

I'm sure others were taking notes too, but here's my take on the evening.  It's probably fitting to say that at the moment I'm undecided on the whether I should or shouldn't support the academisation of Lewes schools and I'm trying in this post to be as impartial as possible at least regarding my reporting of the meeting.  I'll post my thoughts in a separate post and I have inserted some points in this post (which will be in brackets with "ed" at the front - editorial additions :-) ).

On the panel were:

• Holly - a local parent and organiser of the meeting (I think?)
• Sarah Tomlinson - Anti Academy Alliance and a teacher in a Lambeth primary school which has staved off academisation twice.
• Rob Johnson - ex parent at Hove Park School and organiser of their campaign to stave off academisation
• Phil Clark - Teacher at Priory and the local rep for the National Education Union
• Craig Arden from the National Education Union

Holly talked a little about the fact that there is a proposal to create a Multi Academy Trust (MAT) with the 6 schools in Lewes.  She and a few other parents have set up a slack group, a petition on change.org requesting that a ballot of parents be done, a Facebook page under the name "Save Lewes Schools" and a twitter account @LewesParents.  Her top three concerns were:
1. No obligation to employ qualified teachers.
2.  There is no evidence that becoming an academy will improve any of the measures of school effectiveness or standards.
3.  It's irreversible.  There is no going back.

Phil Clark said that over 70% of schools (I think in Sussex) are still under the LEA and the LEA is not going to disappear.   The funding the schools get as a MAT will be the same as they get now - with a small payment at the beginning to cover legal fees etc.  There are many, many Academy failures (ed I leave these to you to look up) - he cited Lilac Sky and later Wakefield Academy Trust as an examples.  Again he stated that there is no evidence that academies improve results and made the point that if this were the case the government would be shouting it from the rooftops.  One of the things that would happen if the schools were to academise would be that we would lose LEA oversight, another is that leadership pay tends to spiral upwards while that of teachers doesn't.  He made the point that Academisation is not being forced upon us in Lewes - there is no school in special measures.  He thinks there should be a ballot of parents to give them a say on whether this should happen or not.

Sarah Tomlinson talked about a number of disaster academisations - Wakefield, Jurand (where they chopped up the playing field and also set up an elite dating agency (ed !) ) . She said that there were cases of "orphan schools" which had been academised, abandoned by the original companies and then no one else had wanted to take them on.  She also said that the Terms and Conditions for teachers under Academies could change radically and that many teachers now working in Academies wanted to leave.  She cited one school where the longest standing member of staff had been there for just 18 months.  Her suggestions of what we could do were: - Lobby governors, look for information online about academies, search the news.

Rob Johnson - concentrated on what we could do as parents (which in his view is "whatever we want").  He suggested we poll the streets, get t-shirts, organise photo friendly events and invite the media, banners, talk to councillors, push for a ballot.  He recommended we make it personal if we can (NB Phil Clark later disagreed on this) - in Hove Park they had a headmaster who left after academisation failed and went to work in an academy.

In the Q & A following the speakers the following points were made:

• There will be consultation meetings in every school in Lewes.  (ed Keep your eyes peeled for dates, push for meetings when everyone can attend and go to them)
• We do not know the timeframe we're working to however a bit of detective work has uncovered in minutes from a meeting at Priory that in July it was decided to push for a MAT in the next 12 months i.e. by next July, however there were comments that it doesn't seem to be a rushed process here in Lewes.
• A parent governor from Wallands gave a little background on what he felt was driving the decision - namely that the local schools felt they were not getting support from the LEA and that the "status quo is not viable".
• The point was later made that perhaps we could work with the LEA to change the status quo, someone also suggested raising extra funds by raising council tax.
• It seemed from what was said that it's possible that the decision to academise could be taken by teachers and governors without the support of parents.
• If the schools do go to MAT there will be no democratic oversight of them.  The primary governing body would be the CEO, CFO and a board of trustees (which could have parents on it), in Lewes there would still be boards of governors but they would probably be reduced in size.
• A MAT has an obligation to have a CEO.
• There will be no extra money but it would be up to the MAT to decide how to spend it.  The point was made that there are 120 schools currently under the LEA, there would be 6 under the MAT so there would be way fewer economies of scale.
• The schools are currently working together and there is no reason why this should change whether or not they become a MAT.
• Mr Smith was, 2 years ago, vehemently against academisation.  He is now leading this change to academy status.  He was not there to answer what had made him change his mind (ed Parents of kids at Priory there is a Parent's Forum this evening (28/11/18) and there will be a meeting at Priory for us to find out).
• Phil Clark added in the Q&A that the noises from the LEA were very depressing with the LEA basically saying they can't help with anything.  He mentioned that co-operative schools had been a model they were looking at for inspiration. 
• A worry was expressed that a MAT would standardise the schools but Phil Clark said there was no plan to do that here.
• Any school is at risk from being forced into academisation if it goes into special measures.  If all Lewes schools were in a MAT then the MAT would be able to help them and obviously they'd already be in an academy so couldn't be forced into one.
• Sarah Tomlinson suggested we organise a debate pro and vs academisation.
• It was suggested we lobby the LEA to support the schools.
• A Green Party potential candidate was there who stated the the Green Party is opposed to academisation.

-ends-

If you were at the meeting and you said something which I haven't noted or if you think I've misunderstood and misrepresented what was said, please email me on fi dot cooper at gmail dot com - (likewise if you know the name of the chap from the National Education Union).  If there are any spelling mistakes I'm happy to hear about them but if you want to record opinions, please put them in the comments.  Cheers