More evidence of WHS shambolic 'consultation'

Here is a deeply worrying piece of correspondence between Alison Beer and a student at Worthing High, which occurred during the consultation period earlier this year.  We’ve left out the name of the student and have paraphrased their key questions in order to protect their anonymity.  Under each of Alison’s responses we’ve clarified what we believe to be the true position.

Questions sent to Alison Beer on 24^th April 2012 from a student:

1. On the basis of academy status’s main advantage being financial, the student asks why extra funding is needed by a ‘good’ school, what needs improvement at the school and what plans there are to use any extra funding.

2. On independence from the Local Authority, the student points out that the LA may have greater knowledge on educational affairs then the governors.

3. The student goes on to ask how teachers may be affected by the change in school status and asks about changes to their salary.

Response from Alison Beer 24^th April 2012

I am happy to clarify the following questions for you

1. Actually the school is struggling year on year to reach balanced budget and almost had to make teachers redundant this year like other schools in the area.  Therefore we can use the extra funding to stop this happening as well as other student improvements such as better computer facilities, wireless throughout, move to better mobile technologies such as Ipads etc plus give the departments more money. If I am honest the list of things we need to improve student learning is endless. 

WHAAG comments:  April 24th (the date of this email exchange) is in the financial year 2012-13.   This extract is taken from the School’s Report to the Governing Body Spring Term 2012. (Item 7 March 1^st 2012 Governors Meeting)

Karen Hayler – Business Development Manager:

“Our initial budget allocation for 2011-12 was £4.459m during the term additional grants from WSCC and the Government have increased the fund allocation to a current budget of £4.724m.  I am projecting achieving a balance budget for year end 31^st March 2012.

We were able to allocate £48,000 to buildings works this year which was mainly spent on our new Food Technology Classroom which opened in September 2011.  An additional £75000 has been invested in ICT including moving to a virtualised server environment, installing windows7, new PCs in T3, T1 and E13 plus installing WI-FI throughout the school.

Following guidance from WSCC we are expecting a budget of £4.742m for 2012-13 which includes a substantial uplift for the Pupil Premium Grant, which now includes students who have been registered for FSM anytime in the last 6 years.  In addition, several funding pots which had been previously held by WSCC are being delegated to schools – but are likely to have SLAs attached – so the funding will come in and go out again.

Leadership Team have been looking at budget models for next year, based on our expected £4.742m and a final budget will be presented to the Environment Committee for approval on 24^th April 2012 – we are not anticipating the need to make further redundancies.”

Clearly this was written before the final budget was finally closed but West Sussex accounts show the school recording a surplus for the year end 2011-12 of just under £100,000.

It is true that she school went through a cost saving exercise earlier in the 2011-12 as it was anticipating a deficit in the budget of £45,250 which was addressed based on a budget of £4.459m, although you will note from Karen’s commentary above that this was not the year end position and that funding increased by over £200k in the year.  The cost saving exercise, detailed in the minutes of the Governor’s Environment Committee 26^th April 20122 did result in “real” headcount savings of 1.56 fte achieved through a number of routes including redundancies of support staff.   

So what to make of Alison’ response to this student’s first question?

“Actually the school is struggling year on year to reach balanced budget and almost had to make teachers redundant this year like other schools in the area.”   

Remember this is taking place on the 24^th April 2012.  The school is predicting a balanced budget and not anticipating redundancies.  This feels like scaremongering.

Alison then states:

“Therefore we can use the extra funding to stop this happening as well as other student improvements such as better computer facilities, wireless throughout, move to better mobile technologies such as Ipads etc plus give the departments more money.”

Now let’s remind ourselves of what Karen Hayler reported to the Governors:

“We were able to allocate £48,000 to buildings works this year which was mainly spent on our new Food Technology Classroom which opened in September 2011.  An additional £75000 has been invested in ICT including moving to a virtualised server environment, installing windows7, new PCs in T3, T1 and E13 plus installing WI-FI throughout the school.”

There is a concerning chasm between what Alison Beer is telling this pupil and what Karen is reporting to the Governors has already happened. 

On to Alison’s next response to this student’s questions:

2. Unfortunately we have had no input from West Sussex County Council for a year or two now as they have no capacity to support good schools anymore.  We therefore have to find new support networks and The Academy school network is very strong where we would gain good support.

It’s difficult to know where to start with this. WSCC provide s number of services to WHS including Educational Psychology, Welfare, Sensory Support, EMAT etc. 

Indeed her own consultation document states “However, we will need to use this additional funding to pay for services that the school will no longer get

automatically from the LA including Insurance, Educational Psychology Support, Sensory Support, Outdoor Education Support, Legal Services and various group licenses.”

Alison’s answer to her student is very misleading and surprising.

And so to Alison’s final response 

3. I do not believe that Academy status would affect the teachers here in a negative way.  The only way it would affect things like salaries is if they improved as we would have more resources.  The unions, which protect the teachers, do not like the move to Academy status as currently, they have quite a lot of say in the local authority which they don’t have with the department of education so cannot influence local schools as strongly.  Also, some of the “Sponsored” have changed the teachers’ pay and conditions but “Converter” Academies (as we are proposing to move to) do not tend to as they are good schools which don’t need to change things.

This answer is a combination of political opinion, which suggests that unions have a negative impact on schools, and anecdote, on academy approaches to pay and conditions. We think this is inappropriate.

So to Alison’s final comment “I hope this helps” we say it clearly meets your agenda Alison but has misled one of Worthing High’s students, a student who posed some very intelligent questions.