I spent the whole day today at Consett Community Sports College, though it felt like a return to Blackfyne as I walked the corridor to the classroom where I once taught and talked to ex colleagues and pupils.

The reason for my visit was to attend the day-long seminar the school was running in collaboration with the Anne Frank Trust.

The day was moving, harrowing, challenging and yet filled with hope. What made the day especially hopeful was the fantastic band of young teenage “peer-educators” who took us through the exhibition, elaborating on the detail and clearly having taken the subject matter completely to heart. All week they had been showing the material to classes from their own school and local primary schools, as well as the public at Christchurch Hall, but their motivation and enthusiasm was undimmed.

We also heard the account of Ruth Barnett, one of the young Jewish children who was transported to England before the war to escape the persecution, but whose whole life had so clearly been terribly affected by it. She built an excellent rapport with her large young audience who asked her lots of questions.

I came away challenged in many ways. Watching the slide that leads from “labelling” people who are different into brutality and injustice, or just indifference, was a powerful challenge to anyone involved in politics

Another challenge is to resist any stereotype that labels our young people as somehow “worse” than previous generations, or suffering from short attention spans. Not that anyone would ever do that!

Consett Community Sports College will be holding a series of workshops and an exhibition about the Holocaust on Wednesday, January 27.

The event will include:

• the Anne Frank: A History for Today exhibition;
• workshops exploring the historical and contemporary relevance of the Holocaust;
• a talk by Holocaust survivor Ruth Barnett;
• information stalls run by the Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS), Show Racism the Red Card and community safety liaison officers;
• an Anne Frank bookshop; and
• a special showing of the 2008 film Defiance, which is set during the Second World War.

Members of the public can attend the event, which takes place between 8.30am and 6pm but must contact the school or EMTAS in advance to apply for an invitation.

Consett Community Sports College can be contacted on 01207 503515 and EMTAS can be contacted on 01740 656998.

A separate community event will take place at Christ Church Hall, in Consett, on Monday, January 25 between 10am and 3pm. Local people are invited to go along and see the Anne Frank: A History for Today exhibition. No prior booking is required for this event.

Trawling the web I discovered that Consett Green Spaces Group have managed to make it into the (as yet unconfirmed ) minutes of Durham University Council in November 2009 which make reference to two challenges to the Academy site, the second being

an informal challenge from an organisation called ‘Green Spaces’ who were concerned at the loss of an open green space in Consett. A public consultation event was being organised for either 7 or 8 December due to outline how the academy building would integrate with proposed new leisure facilities (to be managed by Council Leisure Services, not the Academy) and retain the site, with plenty of green space, as a public amenity.

I wonder if they’d prefer to delay signing on the dotted line as they note

the heightened risk environment of a forthcoming election and cuts in public spending remained but that the University was working very hard with its partners to mitigate the potential risks. The University’s involvement in the Academies would become legally binding at the point at which the Funding Agreement was signed – now due to be in March 2010.

Finally I was disappointed to note little sign that they had been dragged kicking and screaming into an agreement to start the Academy on a split site in the existing buildings from the following notes:

i) that the process and timescales for the development of the County Durham Academies had been given ministerial approval. This meant that DCSF, the County Council and the University were now all aligned in their acceptance of the approach to be taken.
ii) that Durham County Council Cabinet had approved the two motions stated in the paper at its meeting on 11 November. This enshrined in the planning the four terms gap between establishing the Academies and the new build.
iii) that the resources needed to cope with the accelerated timescales were in place and were delivering the necessary planning as per the progress report.
iv) that all these developments were key parts of the risk mitigation discussed at the last meeting of Council.

As a prospective parliamentary candidate for North West Durham I get all sorts of information. I think it’s important that you get to share it.

“Take it away” is an Arts Council initiative designed to help more people get involved in learning and playing music. The scheme allows individuals to apply for a loan of up to £2,000 for the purchase of any kind of musical instrument, and pay it back in nine monthly instalments, completely interest free.

Anyone over 18 can apply, and the priorities are:

• to encourage children and young people to develop their interests and skills in music making
• to inspire new players of all ages to begin learning an instrument
• to enable those on lower incomes to acquire an instrument appropriate to their needs (or the needs of their children)

You need to buy the instrument through a “participating store” and you can find the full list for the North East here 

You can find more details of the scheme here 

Unfortunately the scheme is unable to accept applications from people who are unemployed and receiving state benefits.

I didn’t recognise anyone on the Facebook page. Perhaps you’ll do better.
 

Mrs Arlene Bell, the headteacher of Beechdale Nursery School in Consett, has been awarded an OBE in the New Years Honours list for services to local and national Early Years Education.

Though I have never met Mrs Bell, I know what high regard the school is held in, and has been for decades. I’m sure all of Consett will be delighted for her, her staff and the pupils of Beechdale Nursery School.

Booktrust is an independent charity dedicated to encourage a love of reading by giving books to children, and then promoting books to them as they grow up.

To start children off they have the Bookstart scheme. You can find out more about it here . Because my own children are all far too old to have benefitted from this scheme I’d be really interested to hear from parents (or children) who have. I’d also be interested to hear from anyone who thinks they may have missed out.

Booktrust has a range of schemes for other age groups, too, so anyone interested in creating a love of reading in children will find something of interest in the Booktrust website.

Or is that 62%?

Figures get bandied around, often without a lot of evidence, but when I say that 8 out of 10 parents said they didn’t want a split site academy, I am using the county’s own consultation paper.

And when I say that governors confirmed they didn’t want a split site (even when favouring an academy) I am using the same figures.

To avoid any doubt, here they are:

The DEEP partnership (led by Durham University) who are to run the new Academy have recently confirmed as follows: “DEEP has no preference for opening the Academy in other than a single site.”

That makes me 100% certain that the people who decided that the “preferred” option was to open the Academy as a split site school in 2011 have to have been either the Labour county council or the Labour Government. Or both.

If you are not sure what realpolitik is, you’re not alone. Let Wikipedia help:

Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles.

Now apply the test to the following bits of text from this Wednesday’s report to Durham County Council’s “cabinet” which will see the closure of Moorside and Consett Community Sports College in July 2011, to re-open as a split site Academy in September that year. Here’s the text:

In recent months there have been discussions with Government Ministers on the inclusion of three Academies in Durham’s BSF programme and the impact this will have on timescales for each project. The outcome of these discussions will be agreement between the County Council and Central Government on the opening dates for each of the three Academies. Government funding (approximately £230m) for the County Council’s full Wave 6 BSF programme is dependent on this.

Consultation was carried out to establish an Academy in the Consett area with a possible opening date of September 2012. The preferred option is now to open the Academy in existing buildings from 1 September 2011, with the intention of moving into the new building in January 2013.

So once again Consett is at the heart of a blackmail plot the steps of which are as follows:

Stage One. The gentle approach. ”If you accept an academy you can have it start in shiny new school buildings.”

Stage Two. Crank up the pressure. ”If you don’t accept an academy, you can’t have shiny new buildings and you’ll stop  any other children in the county getting new buildings.”

Stage Three. Stop pretending, and tell the people of Consett the way it is. ”You’ve got to put up with an academy straddling buildings we’ve said are inadequate in  order that other schools can be built around the county - and we intend that you’ll get a new school in 2013. Possibly.”

Welcome to Durham County Council. And a Labour Government in its death throes.

The Prime Minister’s Global Fellowship sends 100 young people to India, Brazil or China to enjoy six weeks taking part in cultural and language immersion. In 2009, 5 of the final one hundred young people came from County Durham.

To qualify you have to be aged 18 or 19 on July first 2010, be a UK resident, and in full-time education at a state-maintained school or college, in training or apprenticeship, active in the youth sector in England or currently on a gap year. This doesn’t include people in Higher Education.

A briefing session will be held at County Hall on Thursday 22nd October from 2.30 to 4.00pm for interested young people and their parents and carers.

Further information can be obtained from Brian Stobie, International Officer, on 0191 3833358 or call into Member Support.

A few days after the rest of Consett’s correspondents, I got my reply from Mr Coaker. The only difference between mine and the rest seems to be that I got the Coat of Arms headed notepaper whilst most people got the rainbow, and I got Mr Coaker’s signature whilst others seem to have got Ms Littlemore’s signature.

What all the letters have in common is that they simply repeat the same claptrap presumably supplied by County Hall. “In the case of Consett, the Council has carried out a full consultation on the subject”. The other things they have in common are a complete failure to answer any of the specific points made and a request that we direct any further correspondence to County Hall. Hmmmm, that will be productive!

I apologise to the many of you who I helped to persuade to write to Mr Coaker. It has obviously been a waste of your and my time, stationery and stamps. The message has to be that as long as you have a Labour Council, a Labour MP and a Labour Minister your opinions will be of no account, and the application of reason and persuasion will be a waste of time.

Only your votes can change that. And come the general election I hope to be of assistance!

In the meantime we’ll have to turn our efforts into other directions. The Labour machine can bully (and does) and manipulate, but there are still avenues to embarrass, show up and ultimately defeat it.

Don’t forget to sign the e-petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ConsettAcademy/ . It takes less effort than any other form of campaigning you’ll ever be asked to undertake!

We know that Durham County Council wasn’t interested in the views of Consett’s people on where the Academy should be sited. You might think, though, that it would have been interested in the views of its partners, its “co-sponsors”, the DEEP consortium headed up by Durham University.

Wrong. I finally extracted the DEEP consortium’s contribution to the debate. It’s called their “response”. I was curious as to whether that meant that Durham County had asked them separately for their views. It appears not. DEEP’s “response” was the result of getting the same shabby consultation document that the rest of us got.

All the DEEP suggesttions are sensible: A safe environment in which to learn, a site which encourages children to walk or cycle to school, and a separate entrance to the school for walkers and cyclists so they aren’t mixed up with cars, buses and vans.

I was particularly taken by one DEEP statement:

We want to encourage as many young people as possible to travel to and from school safely on foot or by bicycle. This will require early consideration is given to the provision of appropriate foot paths, bridges and cycle ways.

I have looked in vain for consideration of cycling in any of the council’s reports. Or footpaths, bridges and cycleways.

 Instead the county did all its calculations based on children walking 800 metres and/or catching the bus!

It’s no wonder that the leader of the council wasn’t able to give a response when I asked him which aspect of the DEEP consortium’s response had had most influence on his decision. He didn’t know whether they’d responded. He didn’t know whether they’d been asked. He certainly didn’t know what they’d said.

It’s just one more example of the “consultation” process we’ve enjoyed. Vernon Coaker are you listening?

I have set up an e-petition on the Prime Minister’s website calling on him to instigate a review of the way the Belle Vue site was chosen for the proposed Academy.

Please sign the petition and forward the address to anyone you know. It is open to any British citizen to sign.

Please visit http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ConsettAcademy/ and sign up straight away.

This is not a birthday greeting to Vernon Coaker, Minister of State for Schools and Learners, pictured alongside. It’s confirmation that twenty one local residents have confirmed to me that they have written personal and individual letters to Mr Coaker, all urging him to review the process that has led to the decision to build Consett’s new Academy on Belle Vue without a detailed analysis of the comparative qualities of alternative sites.

There are bound to be many other letters to him that I don’t know about. One I do know about, however. I was delighted to receive confirmation from Hilary Armstrong’s office that, following my copying her on my letter to Vernon Coaker, our MP Hilary “has followed this up with a letter of her own, letting Vernon know that she is happy to speak to him further about this matter.”

Wouldn’t we all love to be a fly on the wall!

We can only hope that Hilary Armstrong will confirm to Mr Coaker that her own mailbag has been swollen by this issue; that it is bitterly dividing her own and his party; that there is only one proper way forward - an independent review of the sites which offers the people of Consett proper explanations and a belief that they are being listened to.

Whether my letter to Vernon Coaker is sitting on his desk this morning will depend on how effectively the Royal Mail deliver their first class post. Whether he reads it will probably depend on the decision of one of his civil servants.

And who, you may ask, is Vernon Coaker? He is the Minister of State for Schools and learners. He is the minister who, the county tells us, has been pressing the county to name the site for the Academy in Consett. He is the minister who we were told on Tuesday is “Expecting a letter this month”. That’s why I decided to write to him.

We seem to have come to the end of the road as far as talking sensibly to the county council goes. Its ears are stopped. So now we find ourselves in the ludicrous position of hoping for a more reasonable and sympathetic response from Westminster than from our “local” government. That’s why I’ve written to Mr Coaker to enlist his support for further investigation of the potential academy sites in Consett.

It’s a long shot, but there are a couple of reasons why Mr Coaker may be a more sympathetic listener than our county council.

• He is a former teacher. He will understand that good schools need the confidence and support of parents and the local community, and that riding roughshod over that community is no way to achieve it.
• He is a member of the Socialist Education Alliance. I’m hoping that this means he thinks the opinions of ordinary people matter, and that parents have valuable insights into their own children’s education. It may even mean that he will think that the people of Consett were entitled to a genuine consultation on the site of the new academy since they obviously care passionately about it.

I think Mr Coaker would like to hear from any of you about your feelings on the siting of the new Academy. How else is he going to hear what people think? The county council certainly isn’t going to tell him.

The address to write to is, I believe, The Right Hon. Vernon Coaker MP, Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families, Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BT.

It’s hard work writing to all the people who could influence this decision, but I urge you to one last push. Mr Coaker is responsible for academies. The bigger his postbag, the more likely he is to recognise that there’s a rabbit away in County Durham.

I wonder how many of you have done last night’s homework and written to our MP about the Academy site?

I promised you a new correspondent and this time it’s Jim Knight, the Secretary of State for Education, who is ultimately responsible for the education of our children. This summer the only lesson our children are learning is that it’s hard to protect what you care about if the people in power want to destroy it. Let’s hope Jim has plans for them to learn more profitable lessons.

Apparently he’s in Scotland just now, but since he’s able to keep his Facebook updated no doubt he’s also dealing with his emails. Contact him at dcsf.ministers@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk

There’s no formula for what you should write about it. Just make the points that are most important to you about the decision to build over Belle Vue. Feel free to add any replies to the comments on this page.

Careful readers of the cabinet papers will have noticed that reference is made to Appendix 2, the “Stage 1 Appraisal”.

You can read it here by clicking the underlined link that follows: Sites Appraisal

It gives an interesting insight into the thinking inside County Hall.

The Project Genesis site loses out to Belle Vue only on accessibility on foot and “potential for local regeneration & joined up services”. Hmm. Wasn’t there talk of a Sports Centre on the Genesis site? And wasn’t post 19 education to be developed between the college and the Academy? So wouldn’t that offer “joined up services”, or are 16 - 19 year olds being bussed between the college and Belle Vue “joined up”?

Again, I will welcome your comments on this appraisal and the statements contained in it. The freer the flow of information and opinion the better.

I have received an invitation to a public meeting to discuss Academy sites. Because the county has refused to arrange such a meeting, a group of local residents have organised themselves to get what answers they can - and good for them!

I understand that a wide range of county officials and councillors have been invited to the meeting, so it will be very interesting to see who turns up to keep the people of this area informed and to listen to our views.

Anyone is welcome. Here’s the date for your diary:

7.30pm on Tuesday 21 July 2009 at the Civic Hall, Consett.

I very much hope there will be a good turnout. There are far too many questions to be answered for a decision to be made quickly. The county council must be forced to give us the answers before any decision is made.

Monty Python fans will recognise my misquote - and will be expecting a list of good things to have come from to County Durham from Europe. Here are some.

The county has bid successfully for a project worth €45,000, that will result in collaborative computer working to strengthen links between schools in the Somme and County Durham.

In addition, many County Durham Schools are well represented in another project worth €500,000 to encourage partnerships with schools across the whole of Europe. Locally the schools include Leadgate Community Junior School and St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Blackhill.

Europe will also be funding six assistant teachers from Belgium, Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, France and Germany to work across schools in County Durham during the next school year.

It’s not just young people benefiting. Another recently approved proposal will bring in £31,500 towards the cost of a project aimed at helping people aged over 50 to get back into jobs. County Durham will be able to learn from the excellent innovative approaches of a German partner area.

Well done to the International Relations team at County Hall. Well done for attracting the money. Well done, too, for the positive approach. Complaining is easy. Rolling up your sleeves and co-operating is much harder. And much more productive.

Some of you have noticed the academy site straw poll to the left. Join in and you’ll see what the rest of Consett thinks.

Durham County Council took a small first step along the road to a meaningful consultation with local people over the academy site. The consultation will now run until July 17th, giving people a further two weeks to respond.

I welcome this small step, but no-one should get too carried away. In Iran they extended the voting by six hours. Who trusts the result that produced?

The step people really need to see is the county holding a public meeting in which they debate the pros and cons of each site. Following that, with the necessary information in their hands, let the people have their say.

There were no surprises at today’s cabinet meeting. The cabinet approved three Academies in Stanley, Consett and Durham. Only Tanfield School slid out of the net (or missed the boat if you’re an Academy enthusiast).

It was a low key affair. I’m not convinced that any of the cabinet would choose to have academies if it were up to them. As a result they had limited arguments to deploy against a number of speakers. As one Union speaker said, it was ironic that his members were fighting to remain employees of the council, whilst the council was engaged in shuffling them off. It is also clearly ironic that the county council, one of whose key strategic aims has to be providing education for all its children, is actively passing control to an independent board answerable only to Westminster.

If you want to read exactly what I had to say to the cabinet, read on. Read the rest of this entry.

I went through to the Resource Library at County Hall today to read the responses to the Consett Academy consultation. I’d read the county summary which this website pointed to and wanted to check it out in the flesh.

Having gone through those responses one by one I am now completely convinced that of the responses that the county received - incidentally far fewer responses than in Stanley - a small majority were in favour of the Academy.  

It’s not clear cut though. One of the “pro-academy” responses contained these words:

Bearing in mind that the community has been given no political alternative and must accept a new academy for political reasons ……

That’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Nor are the numbers which total 73 for the Academy, 68 against.

Throughout my reading of the responses I had a clear sense that most of the “yes” voters were voting for a new school with new facilities, rather than pressing for an academy run by an independent board, outside the control of either parents or the local authority - which is, of course, what we will get.

At the same time, it is also clear that the involvement of Durham University has allayed the fears of many people, and that can only be to the good.

I have been asked to point out that the original report to cabinet contained an error which some of you may have noticed if you clicked through to the county website via the link I provided. Contrary to that original report the MP is in favour of an academy. The county has therefore issued a new table of responses showing this which you can see here revised-annex-3.pdf

Whilst going through the responses, I couldn’t help noticing that mine was the only one from a county councillor for the Consett area. I don’t apologise for sending in a response. You may not agree with my position, but at least you know what it is; Consett deserves new school facilities. Consett doesn’t need those facilities to be run as an academy, and the local community would have been better served by getting new facilities run by the local authority like most other towns in County Durham.

The county’s proposal and subsequent consultation has muddied the water by mixing up three issues:

1. Do parents and pupils want new school facilities for Consett? I believe the answer to this is yes, though quite a few are concerned about the size of the school that will be created.
2. Would parents prefer a school that offered education from 11-19, on the previous “school with a sixth form” model? I believe the answer to that is also yes, provided that it is provided in co-operation with Derwentside College.
3. Do parents want that school to be on the “academy model” run by the Durham Excellence in Education Partnership (DEEP)? I believe that the answer to that is at best “not particularly”, but to get the two elements listed above they’re prepared to go with it.

I’ve never liked blackmail. Apparently I’m not alone. According to the Northern Echo on April 15th “A former council education chief, Keith Mitchell, said the authority was told by the Government it had to draw up plans for academies if it wanted approval for its proposals for Building Schools for the Future, a nationwide building programme.”

I don’t think there’s any doubt that on the back of this consultation the cabinet will vote for an academy. We’d better hope it is a good one, because there is currently no mechanism for bringing a bad academy back into local control.

The Cabinet’s decision on the three academies proposed for Durham will be announced on April 22nd.

Before that we should be able to see and read the results of the consultation exercise which has been carried out. I will read that consultation with great interest, to see how closely it tallies with my own experience of talking to lots of people in the town about the subject.

It was only after listening to many people that I submitted my own response to the county - opposing an academy.

I freely admit that I started with a dislike of this “privatising” of education - a dogma which seems to spring from a dismissal of “bog-standard” comprehensive schools by Tony Blair’s adviser, Alistair Campbell.

The dogma is, quite simply, wrong. Local experience shows that a local school, well managed within the local authority framework, can deliver anything but a “bog-standard” education:

Moorside Community Technology College in Consett, County Durham, was the most improved school among those returning results. Its scores rose by 28 percentage points, from 29 to 57 per cent achieving five good grades, including in English and Maths. (Times Educational Supplement Sept 5 2008)

I would have suppressed my own feelings, however, had I felt that a majority of parents and others in this town had wanted an academy. I didn’t, and I don’t.

I went to all the meetings and chronicled my experience in a number of entries you will find in the “Education” category.

That’s why I’ll be very surprised if the consultation in Consett shows a majority in favour of an academy.

Once the papers for cabinet are available I’ll let you know - and I’ll be very happy to hear any of your views, from whichever side.

Last week at County Hall I attended a Planning Committee which was mainly concerned with proposals for three new schools under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Scheme. Frankly, it made me jealous. Read the rest of this entry.

Consultation on this proposal ends on March 20th. Please make your voice heard. You can download the form here

I told you I’d written to David Williams, Corporate Director, Children and Young people’s services. Here are the questions and replies. Because this is a long and complex issue I have split the questions and responses.

Read the rest of this entry.

Ok, so you may getting bored with this debate, but at least you get two meeting reports in one go this time.

I’ve now attended all four public meetings, and in my view the last was the best - at Consett Community Sports College (aka Blackfyne). The reason why I thought it the best was that it clearly had the highest attendance, and probably offered the widest range of views and questions from the audience, the bulk of whom were parents.

I think it’s now possible to summarise what I have heard broken into three areas: In Favour of the single site Academy proposal, Against the single site Academy proposal, and concerns that would be applicable to any single site new-build.

In Favour:

There is a widespread acceptance of Durham University as a “good” sponsor if there is to be an Academy. Their commitment to education, their expertise and the possible usefulness of their wider staff and student resources are attractive. There is less enthusiasm for the third part of the consortium (North East Chamber of Commerce) who have been conspicuous by their adsence throughout.

There is some approval of making post 16 (or “sixth form”) education available in school again as well as in Derwentside College.

There is some agreement that new school buildings will assist in educational improvement - and an academy will make that happen sooner.

There is some acceptance that the wider curriculum that could be offered sooner by an Academy could offer a better educational experience for children.

Against

There are concerns that good schools will be destroyed, with no certainty that their replacements will even match them.

There are concerns about loss of control of local schools. An Academy will be directly answerable to national government rather than County Durham.

There will be a reduction of choice for parents and children - this was a common view amongst parents.

Teacher unions, and many teachers, are against Academies (though not all parents were particularly concerned about that).

Many parents are concerned about the size of the proposed Academy - a problem which would be avoided (at least for a while) if the Academy was rejected

Concerns (applicable to any “merger” of the schools into one)

Whilst a few parents felt a bigger school would offer a wider curriculum and greater opportunities, more parents were concerned that a large school would be impersonal and intimidating.

All parents with children who would be involved in the period of transition were concerned about the disruption to their children’s education.

Many parents wanted to know where any single site school would be sited (because it would make a difference to their support of such a scheme).

If that makes it sound as though opinion was very evenly divided, that would be misleading. There were undoubtedly more negative comments and questions than positive ones from parents. Comments from teachers were even more opposed to the proposal.

There are three questions I still want unambiguous answers to, and I have written to the Director of Children’s Services for such answers:

1. Does Consett have to have an Academy, because not doing so would stop/slow the money from government for the rest of the “Building Schools for the Future” across the County? In short, are we “over a barrel”?
2. What extra financial resources will an Academy have attached? Traditionally there was always a £2 million sweetner/enhancement as an additional incentive for an academy but it’s not clear that any such incentive is on offer in Consett.
3. How was Consett chosen as the place for one of the three potential academies?

These may not be the “critical questions” - but if the decision is balanced, everything needs to be accurately known and taken into account.

Consultation ends on March 20th. Return your forms, or email you views to schoolorganisation@durham.gov.uk before then.

I think the “Police Academy” films got to 7, so you’ll be glad that the “Consett Academy” series of meetings will only get to 4.

The next two public consultation meetings are on Monday of next week at the Civic Centre, and Tuesday at Consett Consett Community Sports College (aka Blackfyne). Both at 7.00 p.m.

Tonight’s meeting was very different from the first one at Moorside.

It didn’t help the meeting that none of the sponsors was present to put their case. A funeral had intervened for one of the key representatives, but the effect was to remove an important element in the debate.

The parents raised a good few concerns:

Size was a key concern. The parents were clearly concerned at the prospect of a school of 1500 pupils.

The transition was another concern. One parent’s schooling at Blackfyne had been disrupted by the swicth to comprehensive in the late seventies. No assurances were going to make him feel OK about a similar transition for his own child if two schools merged.

Lack of choice was another concern expressed more than once, though one parent did state quite forcefully “there’s no choice now”.

As you read those issues above, one thing may strike you. They aren’t really about an Academy. They’re about Consett having just one secondary school - local authority or Academy.

That’s an over simplification of the debate, but it’s not far from the mark. One thing I am convinced about is that unless there’s a change in the next two meetings, the consultation will produce more concerns than it does enthusiasm. And that will present a real challenge to the county council.

This new council, nearly a year old, has developed a curious “agenda-free”, “leadership-lite” style of consultation whereby people are asked to participate in decision making while many of the key pieces in the jigsaw are missing.

So they’ve been asked to hold opinions about Action Area Partnerships whilst not knowing what they’ll “do”or how the people on them will be chosen.

Now they’re being asked to hold opinions on an Academy without knowing where it would be built, or what will happen if they turn it down. It’s a much more important question than Action Area Partnerships and a clear sense of direction is needed.

Dates have now been published for the meetings to discuss the proposed academy for Consett.

Of course, this is not just a debate about academies. It’s actually a debate about four things at once:

1. Whether Consett is happy to have a single secondary school
2. Whether Consett wants new secondary school buildings in the foreseeable future
3. Whether Consett wants an academy
4. Whether Consett wants an 11-19 school

Unfortunately, however, we are not allowed to debate these issues independently because Consett is faced with what in the sales industry is called the “half nelson” close. In sales the line goes something like, “If I could halve your fuel bills, would you sign up to XYZ Ltd”. In Consett’s schools’ issue the line is, “If we give you a new school, will you accept/welcome an Academy (and, possibly, an 11-19 version).”

The big difference between the sales pitch and Consett’s choice is that in the sales pitch you can negotiate. But when it comes to new school buildings negotiation is not possible. It is almost certainly true that unless Consett accepts (or even welcomes) an Academy it will not get a new school in the foreseeable future. It may or may not be true that agreeing to three academies for the county was the deal struck with government to get funding for the “Building Schools for the Future” programme across the county. What is amost certainly true, however, is that as purse strings tighten in the credit crunch, only toeing the government line will allow the possibility of funding a new school here.

That frustrates me hugely. Whether Consett gets a new school building should depend on the quality on Consett’s current buildings compared with schools across the county. That’s been the position in many other town across the county.

Whether Consett gets an Academy should depend on whether the people of Consett believe that their children’s education is best served by a school controlled by the local authority, or one controlled by sponsors. That’s not a choice any town in the county has made. The decision has been made by the County Council.

In this town we’re going to have to be hard-headed. Politics (whether it should be or not) is often called “the art of the possible”.

I’m pretty sure that is what is possible, if there is widespread agreement amongst local people, is:

1. Either to retain the existing schools in the existing buildings
2. Or to have a single site new-build Academy

I’m less sure, however clear public opinion proved to be, that Consett would be allowed an 11-19 Academy if that was what it wanted.

One thing I’m sure of. I’ll be at as many of the meetings as possible to listen to what people (particularly parents of children likely to be affected by the proposals) would choose. I hope you’ll take that opportunity, too. I’m assured that everyone is welcome to the meetings which take place as follows:

Moorside Community Technical College

Wednesday Feb 11th             7.00 pm

Ebchester Church of England (Controlled) Primary School

Thursday Feb 26th                 7.00 pm

Civic Hall, Consett

Monday March 2nd                7.00 pm

Consett Community Sports College 

Tuesday March 3rd                7.00 pm

The question of whether Consett and Stanley should have all five of their secondary schools closed, and replaced with two new academies, comes before Cabinet at County Hall today.

That would be in addition to just one other academy in the county which would replace Belmont and Gilesgate facilities.

Academies are schools run by a sponsor or sponsors, rather than by the local education authority. They bring in outside expertise, ideas and sometimes cash. At the same time, they leave a school with less local control.

The first thing that is clear is that the Government refused the original county proposal that its intended three academies would all be run by a consortium of Durham University, The Durham Association of Secondary Head Teachers, and the North East Chamber of Commerce. This is nick-named DEEP or Durham Excellence in Education Partnership.

Lord Adonis, who made that decision, was clearly influenced by an independent report, commissioned jointly with the council, and which described the consortium as a “partnership which does not exist”.

The same report added, “it has no track record of sponsorship of academies, and had little insight into the work involved.” The report concluded that the bid was “untenable”. The new proposal for Consett, however, is still that it should be sponsored by this consortium.

The other thing that’s clear is that Consett and Stanley getting new school buildings is being tied up with accepting Academies. Some would call it blackmail.

That’s not the position in Seaham, Sedgefield, Shotton Hall, Spennymoor, Bishop Auckland, or Durham Johnston. All these are getting new buildings without being forced to become Academies.

I want to see investment in school buildings in Consett - I taught here long enough to care - and I want the best possible education for all our children, but I do have reservations about the proposed academies which relate to:

• Their size (1,500 in Consett, 1,800 in Stanley)
• Who’s in control
• Lack of choice for local parents
• Whether this is just another “fad” experimenting with our children’s education

I’d be delighted to know what you think. Why not do the straw poll to the left? If enough people vote I’ll have something to go on more than my own prejudices.

If you see children filming with cameras in Consett - don’t worry. You won’t find yourself being made a fool of on prime time TV.

The younsters at St . Patrick’s Primary School will be filming their walk to school as part of the International Walk to School Week. They’re in the vanguard of the more than 120 schools in County Durham taking part in the week which is designed to highlight the benefits of walking to school.

If you’ve never really thought about the benefits of children walking to school, here’s just a few of them:

• More than one third of UK Primary school children take less than the recommended amount of exercise of an hour a day. This is thought to be one of the main causes of the rise in childhood obesity, which can lead to ill health later on.
• More than 1 million children are now classified as obese. Obese children are more likely to go on to develop heart disease and illnesses such as diabetes and osteoporosis.
• Children who exercise regularly get better test results. 79% of eleven year olds who were exercising regularly were scoring above average in national English tests.
• Obesity has trebled in England in the last 20 years. 50 per cent more girls than boys (under 11 years) are overweight.
• Approximately one in seven children suffer from asthma, and although not a cause, traffic pollution can trigger asthma attacks in 80 per cent of sufferers with an asthmatic condition.
• More than one billion car journeys of less than one mile are made in the UK every year.
• A generation ago 80 per cent of seven and eight years olds walked to school. Today only 20 per cent of primary school children go to school unaccompanied.
• One in five cars on the road at 8.50am are doing ‘the school-run’.
• Each pupil makes up to 5,000 trips to school and back during their 11 years of education.
• School children who walk to school inhale two thirds less traffic fumes than those that are driven.

If that’s not enough reasons why it’s better for the kids, just think what it would do for their parents to take the extra bit of exercise!

So look out for those children with their cameras, and tell them “Well done!” Their film will be part of a movement to change the world for the better. That’s something worth doing.

It happened again this morning - policy veering like the wind. It was only last year that government introduced “Contextual Value Added” (CVA) to school league tables, but today it ditched any continuing interest in CVA by declaring that any school where fewer than 30% of children are getting five A-C GCSE grades would have to improve or face closure and replacement.

CVA isn’t a perfect judgement of a school (for fuller information look at the BBC on  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7176947.stm ) but it does offer a real attempt to evaluate the principle that we all know - Loamshire Grammar School should get better exam results that Oil Drum Lane Secondary Modern. Exam results alone, therefore, do not prove which school does more for its puils in relation to their ability, domestic circumstances, previous attainment etc.

The 2007 tables told an interesting story. The School which scored most highly on CVA had only 17% of its pupils getting getting 5 GCSEs at grades A-C. Clearly it is an excellent school with a lot of disadvantage to make up. Conversely, amongst the schools listed with the lowest CVA were two where 54% of the children got 5 GCSEs at grades A-C.

All this goes to show is that making simple judgements on the back of exam results will lead to bad policy making. And it’s not just an academic question for us here in Consett. Amongst the schools listed on the BBC website as below the required standard ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7444822.stm) is Moorside Community Technology College.

Because Moorside Community Technical College is not in this ward I don’t know it as well as the other local comprehensive school, but I’ve spoken to enough parents and pupils to know that they don’t see it as a failing school. Their view is endorsed by its CVA score which at 1012 is well above average. Their view is also endorsed by Ofsted which describes it overall as a “good” school.

So perhaps it’s time that the government started listening to parents, teachers, puils, educational experts and Ofsted rather than its own spin-doctors. Then we might start to get some real educational policy-making.

I got an email today from a friend to notify me of a Government consultation paper on the future of informal adult education. Responses are required by June 12th. As she sees it, “In a nutshell…if you read between the lines… it says “Who needs informal classes when you can learn by typing stuff into Google now or watching the TV, Vocational classes  are so much more important. We might as well leave all this informal learning to volunteers and book groups”"

A website has been set up called “Save Adult Education” where you can read about it and sign an online petition. You can find it at http://www.saveadulteducation.co.uk/ 

Better still, for those with the energy and resilience necessary you can read the Government’s own consultation paper and submit your comments at http://www.adultlearningconsultation.org.uk/consult/