Worthing High Governors must go petition - sign now

Current parents at Worthing High have set up a petition calling for the resignation of the Chair of Governors, Tony Cohen.

Read, sign and circulate to Worthing High parents.

Good luck with this.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/whs_gmg/

Our Statement of Purpose

West Sussex Academy Watch

Statement of Purpose

March 2013

West Sussex Academy Watch (WSAW) believes in a free and democratically accountable state education system which is responsive to all stakeholders.

We believe that investment in schools is often wasted on structural change according to the government policy of the day. Instead, investment in teaching in learning should take priority.

We accept that academies are now part of the educational landscape in West Sussex. The following five points will be the litmus test by which we hold to account existing academies; schools pursuing academy status; and West Sussex County Council, for its policy of ‘encouraging all schools to convert’.

1.     Once a school governing body has voted to pursue academy conversion they must commit to a consultation process which is built on democratic principles by being open, robust and meaningful, and which engages all stakeholders. Any consultation must take into account the wider impact on its local community as well as the stakeholders of their school.

2.     All consultations must include:

a.    A Public Meeting.

This must go beyond parents of children that currently attend the school and actively engage the wider community.

b.    A Parent and Staff Ballot.

c.     An Impact Assessment under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED).

3.     Schools wishing to become academies must demonstrate the capacity to improve not only themselves but other local schools too, whether they are academies or not.

4.     Schools wishing to become academies and existing academies must demonstrate how they will use their additional ‘freedoms’ and money to improve educational outcomes for children.

5.     Governors of schools wishing to become academies must demonstrate their capability and capacity to run autonomous, financially demanding, large, complex and ever-changing organisations.

West Sussex Academy Watch does not believe that any school should be forced to become an academy. This objection extends to shifting Ofsted categorisation which forces more schools to ‘fail.’

'Not good': Ofsted gives a mixed verdict on free schools

'Not good': Ofsted gives a mixed verdict on education reforms in major setback for Michael Gove

Substantial improvements needed in three of the first nine free schools to be inspected, yet Government is pushing ahead with hundreds more

Indpendent, 17th March 2013, Brian Brady

Michael Gove's flagship education project has been dealt an embarrassing blow after inspectors demanded that three of the new wave of "free schools" must improve their teaching, leadership and pupil performance. In the first official verdict on the Education Secretary's free schools programme, Ofsted inspectors have ruled that three of the first nine institutions to be examined are "not good" schools.

The "requires improvements" judgement handed down to Batley Grammar School in Yorkshire, Sandbach School in Cheshire and Kings Science Academy in Bradford is the third-lowest of the four possible grades that Ofsted can give – one above the "inadequate" rating. Each school now faces another full-scale inspection within the next two years.

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Gove must go demonstation today DfE

Big demonstration against Gove outside Department for Education today. Like.

Are the wheels coming off the Gove bus?

Has anyone got any grease and a spanner to give them a hand?

The real thinking is coming from professionals, not policymakers

As Michael Gove learns that hasty policymaking can come back to bite, some good ideas are now coming from the professionals who do the job, says Fiona Millar, Guardian, 11/3/13

Are the wheels coming off the Gove bus? The once-Teflon secretary of state seems to be more on the back rather than front foot these days, not helped by the well documented and thoroughly unpleasant activities of a few key advisers. Very bad politics on the part of someone who aspires to be a party leader, in my opinion.

But it is the progress of his substantive reforms that, on closer examination, provide a textbook example of how hasty, over-promoted, ill-thought-through policies usually come back to bite.

The short-term legacy of the Academies Act – not in the coalition agreement, pushed through parliament using a form of legislation previously reserved for combating terrorism, supported by the supine Liberal Democrats and supposedly a cure-all for the nation's education ills – is distinctly mixed. The original Labour academies mission is so diluted that the performance of academies is now no different from similar maintained schools and conversions have flattened out. The vast majority of schools in the country are still maintained but there is still understandable widespread concern about what sort of middle tier can hold schools to account in an increasingly fragmented landscape.

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The Academy, Selsey rated inadequate by Ofsted

Sad news for The Academy, Selsey in West Sussex. 'Inadequate' Ofsted rating March 2013. It opened on 1 September 2011 as a sponsor-led academy, as a part of The Kemnal Academies Trust. This is yet more evidence that academy status does NOT improve standards or benefit our children.


Read full report here.

With threats and bribes, Gove forces schools to accept his phoney 'freedom'

Guardian, George Monbiot, 5th march 2013

Through its academies programme, the government is creating a novelty: the first capitalist command economy

So much for all those treasured Tory principles. Choice, freedom, competition, austerity: as soon as they conflict with the demands of the corporate elite, they drift into the blue yonder like thistledown.

This is a story about England's schools, but it could just as well describe the razing of state provision throughout the world. In the name of freedom, public assets are being forcibly removed from popular control and handed to unelected oligarchs.

All over England, schools are being obliged to become academies: supposedly autonomous bodies which are often "sponsored" (the government's euphemism for controlled) by foundations established by exceedingly rich people. The break-up of the education system in this country, like the dismantling of the NHS, reflects no widespread public demand. It is imposed, through threats, bribes and fake consultations, from on high.

The published rules looked straightforward: schools will be forced to become academies only when they are "below the floor standard ... seriously failing, or unable to improve their results". All others would be given a choice. But in many parts of the country, schools which suffer from none of these problems are being prised out of the control of elected councils and into the hands of central government and private sponsors.

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Dear Mr Gove: Michael Rosen's letter from a curious parent

Michael Rosen, The Guardian, 4th March 2013

How is having targets for four-year-olds 'improving children's lives'?

I see that the education select committee has asked you and your permanent secretary to reappear before them. I was surprised by your response: you seem to think that this is a waste of time. You wrote to the committee saying you were free to answer their questions: "Then, perhaps, the Department for Education team can get on with improving children's lives and you can consider where your own energies might be directed."

I had no idea that it was your job to tell the select committee what they should be doing. Isn't the idea of you telling others about how their "own energies might be directed" laughable?

I've been in several parts of the country that are reeling from the chaos of your top-down transformation of the structure of education. As was predicted, an academy can fail an Ofsted inspection. The problem is that you seem to think that turning a school into an academy is a cure and, following from that, you don't seem to have imagined a scenario in which the cure could fail or that the cure itself might ever need curing.

So what happens when an academy fails? Presumably, as your "energies" are "directed" towards this by the red light flashing on the map in your office, you as sole commander of Academy England issue instructions: "Switch sponsors! Chuck out AET, bring in Harris! Hang on, I sent Harris to that other place. How about a superhead? Any superheads around? No? Why not? No one wants to apply for the job? Tell the head in the next-door school, she's got to do the job or she's out on her ear. Federate!

"Now you're telling me that if she becomes superhead the deputy head doesn't want to be a stand-in head? OK, this is the plan: who's the local authority? Right, this might be tricky, but I want you to sidle up to them, tell them that I've never been against local authorities and see if they can ... er ... provide some assistance to this academy ..."

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