Stop gambling with our children's education!

Please read, sign and share our West Sussex County Council petition. You must include a West Sussex postcode through home, work or place of study to be eligible. Thanks!

http://epetition.westsussex.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/petition/1952

Worthing High Academy one step closer?

Herald online, Wednesday 22nd August 2012

A CAMPAIGN group said it would continue to fight Worthing High School’s plans to become an academy after the proposal moved a step forward.

On Friday, August 17, Worthing High School confirmed the Department for Education ((DFE) had given the school the Secretary of State’s agreement, in principle, for conversion to academy status.

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Anger as Worthing High comes one step closer to becoming an academy

Argus, Bill Gardner, Tuesday 21st August 2012

A school has moved a step closer to becoming an academy amid protesters’ claims of a “whitewash”.

Education secretary Michael Gove has agreed “in principle” to Worthing High’s controversial planned conversion to academy status.

Debbie Woudman, chair of the school’s Parents’ Forum, complained parents and teachers had not been listened to.

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All hands on deck!

Dear supporters new and old

We have loads of fab new flyers and posters. Now we need to get them out there - flyers to be handed out at local events, shoved through letterboxes and posters to go up in shop windows. If you would like to help then please, please get in touch.

Our next public meeting will go ahead this coming Tuesday 21st August at 7.30 pm at Cricket Club, Manor Sports Ground, Broadwater (entrance via Georgia Avenue if you are coming by car). This will be a quick meeting to catch up and coordinate new publicity / petitioning before the new school term. Hope to see as many of you there as possible.

If you are unable to make the meeting but would like to lend a hand then please get in touch with us via the facebook page or our email: worthinghighacademyactiongroup@hotmail.com.

Thank you!

Michael Gove's school privatisation bonanza

Another angry voice (blog), 17th August 2012

It has been revealed that the Coalition government have been lying about the amount of school playing fields they have sold off. In answer to a Freedom of Information request the education minister Michael Gove claimed that his department had sold off 20 playing fields since 2010.

That Gove was prepared to admit that every single application to sell off playing fields had been approved was bad enough, but just a couple of weeks later the Daily Telegraph revealed that the figures were false and that Gove had actually approved thirty playing field sell-offs. In five of these cases the playing fields were sold off against the advice of the School Playing Fields Advisory Panel. It was also revealed that many of these decisions were taken on behalf of Michael Gove by someone called Lord Hill, who upon closer inspection turns out to be a Conservative party member called Jonathan Hill that has never been publicly elected in his life and has absolutely no experience in the education sector. Hill who used to work for Bell Pottinger (a large Tory donor) was turned into a Lord by David Cameron shortly after becoming Prime Minister, presumably in order to give him a veneer of legitimacy as he set about selling off public property against the expert advice.

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Fear for free school in Chichester

Chichester Observer, 15th August 2012

I TEND to share the legitimate concerns raised by Owen Cole’s comments (Observer, August 2) following MP Andrew Tyrie’s endorsement for the creation of a local free school being granted in Chichester.

I am no fan of this current Lib-Con coalition, so resent seeing state education being used as a ‘political vanity exercise’ under Michael Gove’s divisive stewardship. From five-years-olds reciting poetry to older children learning the chronological list of monarchs, troops for teachers, a return to

CSEs – the views of ministers on the kind of knowledge they value is well known in schools.

Any claim that ‘curriculum freedom’ is being granted to schools is tempered by the announcement that five subjects (chosen by ministers) will make up the English Baccalaureate – the new gold standard for school performance.

Michael Gove has already approved three free schools by groups with creationist views, one claiming ‘creation as a scientific theory’ in its curriculum. Heads will not need a headship qualification and teachers in free schools will not even need a teaching qualification – raising concerns about quality and public scrutiny.

In addition, 19 of the coalition’s 24 flagship free schools have taken a lower proportion of pupils with eligibility for free school meals (FSM) than would be expected from an equivalent state-funded school in the same local authority.

Figures from the Department for Education reveal that just four of the 24 free schools that opened last autumn have taken an equal or higher proportion of children eligible for FSMs than the average for state-funded schools with pupils of the same age group across their local area.

With two children in local WSCC primary and secondary schools, one of which is being forced to expand within existing cramped site (as a response to demographic trends), it does not seem really equitable that a free school (using state educational grants) has the ability to find and develop a new site during an age of austerity!

Any parent contemplating moving their children to a free school only needs to study the selection criteria, curriculum content and calibre of teaching staff – to reveal the quality and inclusivity these state-funded ‘free’ schools intend to become.

D Gaylard

Peacock Close,

Chichester

Will academy students lose out over dramatic shake-up in teaching?

Argus, 7th August 2012, Andy Lutwyche

Government proposals will allow teachers without formal qualifications to work in academies. With more than 20 such schools already in the county and more set to make the switch, it would lead to a dramatic shake-up in the profession. Andy Lutwyche, a maths teacher at Worthing High School, which is set to become an academy in the autumn, argues that the policy will affect the morale and quality of teaching – with students ultimately the ones losing out.

Last week Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Schools, announced that new academies and free schools could employ “unqualified” teachers, or those without QTS (Qualified Teacher Status), with existing academies able to apply to do the same.

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Those that can...

Letter in Argus 1st August 2012

I IMAGINE most parents assume the individuals responsible for educating their children are qualified and trained to do so.

Until now parents have been safe in making this assumption.

However, last Friday the Department for Education announced that academy schools are free to recruit unqualified teachers.

If Worthing High School’s academy bid is successful, parents and prospective parents face the possibility of their children being taught by individuals who are unqualified.

Are parents in Worthing comfortable with this?

Scott Maynard, Bulkington Avenue, Worthing