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.