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London Diocese schools score way above the national average
It is not too late to hold an open competition to decide who is best placed to run Camden’s new secondary school,argues Tom Peryer
LEAKING memos intended only for a few eyes is a mean trick to play – but it does add to the fun and gaiety of nations and gives an insight into the thinking of those who make decisions and call the shots.
Councillor John Bryant’s memo to Liberal Democrat governors makes it perfectly clear what he thinks about education in Camden – including church schools. He does not care for them and does not want to see any more of them – not while he is in charge of education.
Cllr Bryant is not alone in feeling the need to hold his nose when the subject of church schools comes up. Of course, as an elected councillor he is entitled to hold that view and to put that view to the electorate. What he and the other councillors in charge of running the council are not entitled to do is to say one thing in public but another in private.
For months the Church of England and parents campaigning for a church school were told by councillors and officers that no decisions had been made about the new school and that the council had an open mind on whether to go for an academy and the best way of appointing a sponsor. Many suspected all along that this was not true and that the open “consultation” meetings or the invitation at the last minute for the Church of England to present its case were window-dressing. This memo proves that this was the case.
In order to justify to his colleagues his view that the door should be kept firmly closed on a church or faith school, he makes entirely negative comments about them. He points the finger at St Mary & St Pancras school near to Euston which went into special measures. He is absolutely right – this school did go into special measures, after having been a beacon school. What he does not tell his colleagues is that in June Ofsted inspectors said: “St Mary & St Pancras is a good school with many outstanding features”. Nor does he tell them that the diocese, through a hugely creative and entrepreneurial approach, has completely rebuilt that school to provide stunning accommodation at very little cost to the state, by building student accommodation on top of the school.
In the interests of the whole truth, I should tell you the results of the other nine C of E schools that have so far been inspected in the current round by Ofsted. Four (yes four!) C of E schools are judged to be “outstanding”; two more are “good with outstanding features”; two are “satisfactory” and one has a “notice to improve”.
In other words, 7 out of 10 Camden C of E schools are judged to be good or outstanding.
But it is not true that we claim, as Cllr Bryant implies, that all our church schools in the London Diocese are successful. You would have to be pretty stupid to do that. What we do say is that overall their results are significantly above the national average and the London average at both primary and secondary level. We have a far higher proportion of good and outstanding schools compared with the national figures. And before you say it, this is not because there is all sorts of hidden selection going on – certainly not in Camden where we have an even spread of schools from the very affluent areas to the more deprived areas, just like the community schools. For the record more than 40 per cent of the pupils in C of E Camden schools are entitled to free school meals and two thirds have English as an additional language.
Even more outrageously Cllr Bryant claims in his private memo that “The diocese allowed predecessor church schools to fail so that an academy backed by huge dollops of government money could rise from the ashes”.
This is nonsense. Cllr Bryant should know that the legal responsibility for ensuring standards in schools belongs first and foremost to the council which is given the money by central government to do that job.
Where a school, council and the diocese have together not succeeded, the diocese has had the courage to close the school and, if necessary, bring in other partners and co-sponsors to help give new direction and impetus to the school.
So what about the new secondary school in Camden?
Even at this stage we believe it is not too late to hold an open competition to decide who is best placed to develop the new school. If the judicial review succeeds they may have no choice. The council says to run a competition threatens the whole Building Schools for the Future process because decisions have to be made about the design of the new school.
That is a probably a large red herring but to put that one to rest, the competition could say that each potential sponsor will have to accept the plans for the school wherever they have got to. We are willing to accept that condition.
We are ready to argue our case in public before an open-minded adjudicator who has not made his or her mind up already.
We might lose but at least we feel we will have had our say and day in court.
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