Several councillors, including Kevin Allen (Labour, Preston Park), Ken Norman (Conservative, Withdean), Anne Norman (Conservative, Withdean), Vanessa Brown (Conservative, Stanford), Jayne Bennett (Independent, Stanford) and Pat Drake (Conservative, Withdean) were present. Juliet McCaffery, another Labour councillor for Preston Park, was present and joked that she was finally being given a chance to speak publically about the SAR - she was prevented from speaking at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee last week by her Labour colleague and Chair of that committee, Simon Battle. When she was introduced there was a spontaneous round of applause for her principled stand on the issue.
Anne Meadows could not attend, but she sent her apologies, and Cate Miller read the speech she gave to CF&S Committee on 2nd February.
MYTH BUSTING
What also became very clear was that so many parents thought that the new admissions system would not affect children in lower years. Children in years 4, 3, 2 and 1 will all be affected by the new admissions proposals!!!
Parents in what will be the Dorothy Stringer and Varndean catchment were also shocked to hear that the catchment will be oversubscribed and by upwards of 95 children. When you take into account the priority given to out-of-catchment siblings and to children with statements of Special Educational Needs (SEN), this looks like it will be an even bigger problem. Many of them did not realize that so many children could be sent out of catchment as a result of the lottery. Nor did they realize that the lottery would involve all the children in the catchment, not just a few.
LONGHILL MUM AIRED HER VIEWS
It was also good to meet a mum from Longhill. She spoke to the hall about the situation they face: that they will have a difficult intake with high levels of Special Educational Needs (SEN) and that the school will also be oversubscribed.
She was concerned that they would not have adequate funding and resources to support these children properly - children previously split into schools across the city and doing well under those circumstances. Her other fear was the the school would ultimately fail and that the city would have another COMART on their hands.
As places for pupils are at capacity the city cannot afford to lose another school. Their parents may have to go through a lottery that in Rottingdean they only found out how the proposals will affect them about 2 weeks ago. It's a dismally familiar story.
HEAD OF DOROTHY STRINGER SPOKE OUT AGAINST THE PROPOSALS
Trevor Allen expressed his concerns about the new proposals. He argued that as the schools are at capacity - that there is no surplus of places - that this would cause inflexibility and lead to failure in a fixed catchment system.
He was concerned that parts of the city have been set against each other by the SAR, and argued that what the city really needs - especially with so many new developments springing up - is a new school. He thought the Argus should front a petition from the City of Brighton & Hove to be sent to Whitehall requesting, as a special case, that we be granted funds urgently for the building of a new school in the city. He thought that this would help resolve some of the issues, and also bring the city together again.
What was also interesting was that the Working Group had been informed by council officials that the head teachers of Varndean and Stringer were being consulted on certain issues:
- That the heads had been asked about adding classes to Dorothy Stringer and Varndean.
- That they had agreed not to use the 10% places that could be assigned to children based on aptitude.
- That they were talking to the heads about these schools not opting for Trust School status - which means they can set their own admissions criteria.
If Dorothy Stringer and Varndean did attain Trust School status, it would send the whole proposed fixed catchment system into turmoil.
He also suggested that David Hawker might find a way out of this problem by deciding to lead and drive a campaign for a new school for Brighton & Hove all the way to Whitehall.
Other speakers included ex-member of the Working Group, Martin Powell, who spoke eloquently about COMART and Kevin Allen who was concerned that the CofE representative on Scrutiny was being abused by councillors not happy with the outcome of that meeting (the return of the proposals to CF&S next Tuesday). Vanessa Brown also spoke briefly to offer her support to the campaign against the SAR.
SCHOOLS4COMMUNITIES SPEAKERS
Members of Schools4Communities spoke, including the Chair, Mark Bannister, Robert Eastwood, Paul Fellingham, and press spokesperson, Tracey-Ann Ross.
Mark Bannister gave a well-reasoned overview of the anti-proposals position, and set out some of the significant concerns for areas across the city including: Moulsecoomb, Bevendean, Coombe Road, Preston Park, Fiveways and Balfour, Patcham, Withdean and Westdene, parts of Hove, Hangleton, Portslade, Woodingdean and Rottingdean.
In addition, Robert Eastwood set out the future of the campaign. S4C are prepared to take the campaign all the way to Judicial Review. In the meantime, they will be providing more advice to parents on they difference they can personally make at the S4C website here.
The Argus have published an article on the meeting here.
6 comments:
Keep up the campaign!
Although I was not at the meeting (my children are already in secondary school) I feel that the B&H proposals are a recipe for disaster and need a complete rethink. It also seems incredible that a city with such green aspirations should think that it's ok for hundreds or thousands of it's children to travel much further each day to make it 'fairer'. Maybe it's time to create some very small satelite schools in Brighton & Hove that can be linked with Stringer/ Blatch/ Varndean but provide an alternative for those who choose or need it.
Fantastic what a good turn out and how positive the write up felt, I was not able to make the meeting due to work commitments but after spending a week of worry and concern it seems like there is a glimmer of light on the horizon!
Well done to you all,
Bevendean parent
So can someone please explain just what constitutes Cllr McCaffery's 'principled stand”?
She voted 'in principle' for the proposals in November. She voted for the damaging amendment to split Falmer from Patcham at the same time. Then three months later she claims that she couldn't vote for a system that leaves children in Moulsecoomb and Whitehawk with just one school.
Currently children in East Brighton (including Whitehawk) are dispersed to five or six different schools because they have little chance of accessing their nearest ones. They’re not ‘choosing’ to go to the schools they attend. They have the highest number of ‘directed’ children of any area in the city. The new system enables those in BN2 5 to attend their three nearest schools and evenly provides those schools with FSM percentages very close to the city average.
Had Cllr McCaffery and her party not voted for that amendment children in BN2 4 might also now have a choice of schools. There would have been a much better FSM% across the catchment, and the existing links between Patcham High and Coombe Rd and other areas of BN2 4 would have been maintained.
The report in The Argus quotes her saying "The bottom line is I would not want to put my 11-year-old on the bus to Hove Park. If I wouldn't, how can I expect the people who voted for me to do so? There was just no way I could vote in favour of this.”
Clearly she was intending to vote in the interests of her ward specifically and not in the wider interests as she is supposed to in her role on CFS.
If there’s any doubt she has even stated in writing that to support the proposals would have been ‘political suicide’ for her.
Surprise, surprise, she’s a politician.
Dear Anonymous
Will you please email the relevant people with your opposal!! I am a parent in the Fiveways area and I feel it ludicrous that my children have a chance of not geeting in to my local high School.
Dear anonymous of Fiveways,
Are you saying I shouldn't point out to you what's werong with the 'no' argument because you don't want to hear it? So much for debate and reasoned argument.
I'm a little confused as to which Anonymous (presumably someone who has already left comments) is responding to Anonymous of Fiveways. Can people perhaps use a pseudonym to make it easier to unravel?
I don't think that anyone is stamping on debate. Although, the debate is becoming somewhat buried as it is difficult to distinguish who respondents are. I'm reminded of an Ionesco play in, The Bald Soprano, in which every member of a family are called "Bobby Watson".
Perhaps the last commentor would like to explain why they will vote for the proposals, in spite their apparent appeciation for our plight in this area.
Although McCaffery voted for the amendment three months ago, the amendment was not decided until the last meeting. There was still an opportunity to create a dual catchment for Falmer and Patcham. Nonetheless, I do not believe that this catchment is an adequate alternative to the two single catchments. Parents living in Patcham near Stringer and Varndean may have to send their children to Falmer - hardly a local school. Moreover, Patcham is quite a distance from those of us in Coombe Road.
Patcham would help balance the FSM of the catchment, but FSM is not an adequate measure of the comprehensiveness of an intake. If you examine how many children have FSM then, to get a true picture of the intake, you must also analyse what proportion of children can but do not obtain FSM, and also what proportion are just outside the FSM criteria. Many LEAs use FSM in association with another measure, for example geodemographic or attainment based.
You can see interesting article on geo-demographic indicators here:
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/publications/workingPaperDetail.asp?ID=99
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