Call for re-run of new Hackney school consultation

A group of local residents is calling for a school consultation to be re-run so that parents can be given the option of selecting a state school.

Hackney Residents for Comprehensive Education (HRCE) has drawn up a petition calling on the Learning Trust, the body which currently runs Hackney schools, to disregard the results of this summer’s consultation on whether a new school in South Hackney should be either a free school or an academy.

HRCE’s campaign, Save our State Schools, demands a re-run of the consultation: one which is more widely advertised (the first survey had just over 200 respondents), runs for twelve weeks (the original consultation ran for three) and includes a fourth option: a new local comprehensive school.

In order to raise this issue for debate at a full meeting of Hackney Council, 150 signatures must be collected by the end of this month. At the time of writing, 30 signatures have been added.

HRCE was founded this summer following the Trust’s consultation, when a group of local residents united in their belief that the public had not been properly informed about the consultation, nor encouraged to participate.

The original consultation yielded just over 200 respondents: 69% voted in favour of an academy, 10% favoured a free school, whilst 21% expressed no preference.

HRCE maintains these results are non-representative at best, and at worst, are founded on “misinformation and manipulation in order to achieve a pre-determined outcome”, according to the petition. That predetermined outcome, argues the HRCE, is the covert dismantling of local comprehensive schools.

“We have no confidence that the recent Learning Trust consultation … accurately represents the views of parents and residents in the borough,” an HRCE spokesperson said.

Whilst the campaigners are determined and organised, they face one enormous hurdle: the government will not allow new state comprehensives to open.

“The Department for Education has clearly identified academies and free schools as the only funded options for new schools”, said a Learning Trust spokesperson. “Given this, we have consulted on these two options”.

But for the opponents of Education Secretary Michael Gove’s Education Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament and is not yet written into law, this is not good enough.

HRCE member Gary Colman says the core issue is that the process has lacked the necessary transparency for residents to make an informed decision, and the democratic process residents deserve: “If the government had said proudly before the election, that they wanted to end comprehensive education, and had the support of the people, we would have had democracy. The fact that they’re doing it covertly is the problem.”

Recent leaked emails from the Department for Education have added to suspicions that the DfE is in a hurry to push forward education policies that limit local control. Gove’s confidant Dominic Cummings wrote of the free schools support charity the New Schools Network (NSN): “MG [Michael Gove] telling the civil servants to find a way to give NSN cash without delay”. Soon thereafter, the NSN received a £500,000 grant to carry out its work. The grant opportunity was not publicly advertised.

So, the spread of academies and free schools continues despite this local opposition. Last week, the Learning Trust gave the final go-ahead for Mossbourne Academy, widely regarded as one the most successful schools of its kind, to open a second academy on the site of Cardinal Pole Lower School on Victoria Park Road, which will itself be relocated.

But Alisdair Smith, Secretary of the Anti-Academies Alliance, is concerned that academies are viewed as a “magic bullet” to save failing schools. “What worries me about Hackney”,” he says, “is the belief that the success of Mossbourne proves that academies make schools better… Just because a school becomes an academy, doesn’t mean they become a good school.”

Lifelong Hackney resident and HRCE member Jamie Duff had hoped for a new state comprehensive school on the Cardinal Pole site.  But despite the almost certainty that Gove’s Education policies will continue to block HRCE’s efforts, Duff insists: “Even if we lose, we will still fight to protect the existing comprehensives from academy conversion.”

More about the Save Our State Schools campaign.

Related:

Analysis: ‘Free schools’ revolution will affect all Hackney students