Opposition grows to London Schools Funding Cuts

Government proposals to introduce a new natonal funding formula for schools from next year are expected to lead to big reductions in funding for local schools. Essentially the formula would result in funding being redistributed from schools in urban areas to other parts of the country, with schools in inner London particularly badly hit. 

Teaching unions estimate that funding for Lewisham schools could be reduced by more than £27m over the next two years, equivalent to the salary of 582 teachers.

Source: School Cuts.

Opposition to these plans is growing. Last night there was a packed meeting for Lambeth parents at Sunnyhill Primary School SW16, called by the National Campaign for Fair Funding for All Schools.

Last night's meeting @FairFundLambeth

Tonight (Thursday 16th March 2017), there's a similar event for Lewisham parents taking place at Edmund Waller Primary School, Waller Road, SE14. They say:

'The National Fair Funding for All Schools Campaign is holding a public forum for parents, teachers, head teachers, governors and councillors in Lewisham to raise awareness about the proposed cuts to schools’ budgets. The event will be attended by Vicky Foxcroft MP, Cllr Luke Sorba, Nicky Dixon (CASE Lewisham), Matt Dykes ( National Fair Funding For All Schools Co- Founder), Philipa Harvey (NUT). Other speakers to be confirmed.

Our aim is to build a local coalition of parents, teachers and leaders in support of the National Fair Funding Campaign to stop these proposed devastating cuts. Lewisham parents, teachers, and heads we'd love to hear from you, please join us. This is not yet a done deal as the consultation closes on 22nd March 2017; the government must hear our voices' (event details here)

London schools have generally got better over the last 20 years, and funding has played a significant part in that. More money means more teachers, more support staff and better resources. No doubt schools in other parts of the country could benefit from a rise in funding, but the pot of education funding needs to be increased to enable this rather than taking the money away from London schools.

School funding cuts protest by Queens Road Peckham station, 25 February 2017

New Cross Academy finance officer jailed in 'biggest ever education fraud'

Surprized that amongst UK newspapers, only The Daily Mail seems to have picked up on the jailing of an accountant for nine years for the 'biggest ever education fraud' seen in the UK. Sam Kayade was found guilty of obtaining £150,000 by theft and £3.95 million by fraud, and was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court on 24 June.

Kayade worked for Haberdashers' Aske's school, based at two sites in Jerningham Road and Pepys Road SE14, from 1997. He continued as a finance officer during a period in which it expanded to become the Haberdashers' Aske's Academy Federation taking over other schools including Malory school in Downham (which became Knights Academy), Monson Primary School (which became Hatcham Temple Grove) and Crayford Academy in Bexley.

The court heard that Kayade began transferring money into a bank account he controlled from 2006 and continued until the fraud was discovered in 2012. It became public knowledge in 2014 when the school took civil action against Kayade which resulted in the court ordering him to pay back funds to the school. However only £800,000 has been recovered. Parents were told in 2014 that the fraud amounted to £2m, with the federation's accounts filed in March 2013 stating that £1,047,788 had been lost through "unauthorised transfers" in 2011 and £924,316 in 2012 (Guardian, 12 July 2014). Now it appears that the full amount may have been twice that. 

£4m over seven years is £570,000 a year - an amount that would comfortably pay the salaries of at least 12 teachers at the top of the salary scale. You have to wonder how any school could fail to notice such a gap in its finances, and at the irony of the Government's Academisation programme premised on the need to bring in private sector business know how to education. Haberdashers academies have been very popular with Ministers - Michael Gove famously sent students off to sleep during a visit in 2012 -  and the schools have one of the oldest business sponsors in the country - the City of London Haberdashers livery company. While sophisticated fraud can be difficult to detect,  a hole in the finances that large would put most schools in a cash flow crisis that would be impossible to ignore. Questions too for the Government's Education Funding Agency which funds academy schools and presumably monitors what they do with the money.

The Haberdashers' Aske's girls school in Jerningham Road in 1905
- the buildings remain much the same today, though there are a few more cars and buses!

John Roan Resists Meeting

Last November staff at The John Roan school in Greenwich took strike action against plans to turn the school into an Academy. While 'academisation' (horrible word) was put on hold, it is now back on the agenda nationally with the Government threatening to make every school an Academy whether they want to or not, as well as to scrap the role of parent governor and other changes that will further distance schools from their communities.  The policy is already proving very unpopular across the political spectrum - as most schools are doing fine already, why put them through a costly and disruptive organisational change with no evidence that it will improve them? Shouldn't they be focusing on education?

At The John Roan meanwhile staff, students and parents are now concerned about cuts and redundancies as well as the ongoing Academy threat. Tomorrow night (Thursday 14 April 2016) John Roan Resists are holding a public meeting at Mycenae House, 90 Mycenae Road in Blackheath.

A teacher remembers Mandela's visit to Brixton

Graham Jameson (on the right in above picture), who some of you may know from his time as head of Edmund Waller Primary School in New Cross, recalls the day in July 1996 when he took children from Walnut Tree Walk school in Kennington to meet Nelson Mandela on his visit to Brixton:

'The picture I was looking for showed most of Nelson Mandela rather than just the top of his head. It also showed me shaking his hand. But I can’t find that. What we do have here is Mandela bending down to speak to Fola from my then school, Walnut Tree Walk in Lambeth. It’s a shame about the other one, but actually this is a better picture because it shows how Nelson Mandela was always a man of the people and especially a man for the children. On that same morning he’d been leaving the Dorchester in the official car to take the short drive to Brixton Recreation Centre. A friend and colleague of mine had taken a group of his children, from what would now be called a PRU, up to the hotel to waive as the car passed and Mandela stopped the vehicle and got out to talk to them. I couldn’t help thinking of those long and brutal years on Robben Island where he didn’t see his own children and never heard the sounds of children’s voices.

The flowers you can see that Fola has just presented to Mandela’s daughter, Zenani, are in a bouquet in the colours of the ANC that I got made up by a florist in Kennington. The florist had asked me if they were for someone special. Fola’s mum, Benedicta, was so proud of her and she was beautifully turned out. The same couldn’t really be said for me, though the tie and waistcoat did belong to my dad, a man whose sartorial facility I failed to inherit.

When it came to my turn to shake hands I found myself saying: “Welcome to Brixton, sir” –a greeting both brief and anodyne. Frankly the emotion of that meeting was so overwhelming that I couldn’t trust myself to say anything else. After he’d spoken to the people in the line-up (lead by Heather Rabatts in the white outfit) he and Prince Charles (on the far left of the picture) proceeded into the Centre. There were other people waiting to be presented inside but to get there he had to pass a crowd corralled behind a barrier. They were wild with enthusiasm, many shouting “Madiba, Madiba.” Mandela recognised an old comrade and, again ignoring protocol, walked across and embraced him. As he got into the Centre our children were playing their batucada instruments to welcome him. Of course he went over to them to thank them. One of the children said “Why are you crying?” to me and I could only blurt out: “Don’t look at me, look at him.”

Generally I’m with Bob in Subterranean Homesick Blues and ‘Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parkin meters’ but what was so clear that day was here was a man whose moral authority came not from populism but from a sort of nobility. When I think back on a longish career, I sometimes muse on failures and disappointments and ask myself what it all meant. Then I think back to that day with its transcendent feeling of hope and human affirmation and a little light of meaning goes on in my head'.