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By RICHARD OSLEY and DAN CARRIER
 
REBEL YELL OVER SCHOOLS

Governors and heads unite with Town Hall to fight reforms

SCHOOL Governors, head teachers and councillors have united in a bid to fight the government’s education reforms “tooth and nail”.

They have formed a united front because they believe the government’s Bill – published on Tuesday – will undermine Camden’s high standards.
In an outright rebellion the Labour-run Town Hall is to cool its traditionally warm relationship with Whitehall and campaign with schools against the government’s controversial Bill, which critics say will introduce selection by the back door.
Education chief Councillor Lucy Anderson sounded the battle cry on Tuesday night when she told the New Journal: “Camden will get involved in London-wide lobbying. I want substantial amendments to Education Bill. We want to save our community schools.”
Penny Wild, chair of governors at Camden School for Girls, added: “I do not see that the system needs any more fiddling. We have fiddling up to our eyeballs.
“We need to concentrate on what is happening in the classroom – teaching techniques and improving resources, not yet more reforms.”
Her views were echoed by Dorothea Hackman, chairwoman of Camden Schools Governors.
She told the New Journal that an emergency meeting with a governors steering group would convene tonight (Thursday) to discuss reaction to the Bill. Made up of Camden School For Girls chairwoman Penny Wild, Chalcot school’s Gillian Roy, South Camden’s Hilary Paterson and Alan Chesters and Fleet’s Jan Toporowski, they will discuss how best to force the government into making a series of amendments.
Ms Hackman said: “This is not good news for Camden. There is the worry that the financial incentives will be strong for schools and they will become Trusts – to the detriment of other schools near-by.”
She said the bill showed an underlying misunderstanding of state education by MPs.
She added: “The majority of MPs went to good schools. They have no inkling of the education experience of the majority of the country. Tony Blair has a rosy vision of Trust schools but it is not how the real world works. If he wants to improve them, he should start by reducing class sizes.”
The thrust of the policy change is give more power to schools to make decisions on how they are run. Business groups, parents, universities and faith organisations will get the chance to sponsor new schools or get involved with existing schools. Many will be able to run their own affairs, free from the current controls retained by local authorities.
The increasingly vocal cries for a secondary school to cover Holborn, King’s Cross and Covent Garden has ramped up the issue because the government will want any new school to be in the City Academy model.
Cllr Anderson said that new schools in Camden should be community schools and warned that Camden will not accept any form of pupil selection or reduction in the role of the council, parents and governors in the running of schools.
She added: “It seems they want all schools to stop being community schools and become independent state schools instead. This undermines all we have done. Our schools work together and we do not want a system where schools act as an independent entity.”
The issue has major focus in Holborn, King’s Cross, Bloomsbury and Covent Garden where there is a shortage of secondary places at Camden’s schools.
Cllr Anderson added: “It should be made easier to open new schools. This has not happened in the Bill.”

• The stiff opposition was echoed at a meeting on Thursday – organised by the National Union of Teachers and Unison at the Town Hall – by former Downing Street advisor Fiona Millar.
She said parents should be careful about who they let run their schools.
Ms Millar, who lives in Gospel Oak and is the partner of Tony Blair’s former spin chief Alastair Campbell, told the meeting: “Parents need to think hard about who will be running the schools. You could have religious fundamentalists running a school. You could have Nestlé running a school.”
Ms Kelly was this week trumpeting Labour’s national performance on education but added: “More than 40 per cent of children do not get 5 A* to C GCSEs, so we cannot afford to stand still. Specialist schools have become a mass movement for higher standards, now outperforming non-specialists by 11 percentage points at GCSE.
“Attainment at Academies which have replaced failing schools is rising at a much faster rate than in other schools. These schools and their pupils have benefited from greater autonomy, greater freedom, a strong individual ethos, and the involvement of community partners from business, charities and higher education institutions.”
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