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Headteacher of Highbury Fields School, Bernie McWilliams |
HEAD TELLS SCHOOL TO REJECT £10m
Buildings revamp would be ‘too disruptive’ to education
A HEADTEACHER launched an outspoken attack on the government’s education policies this week, declaring that children were being treated like “products”.
Bernie McWilliams, headteacher of Highbury Fields School, warned against “diluting education” with threats to merge his school with another.
And he called on his school to refuse a £10 million government grant because of the enormous disruption refurbishment will cause.
In an exclusive interview, Mr McWilliams, who retires this year after nearly 30 years at the school, criticised the culture of turning schools into businesses.
He warned: “Education is beginning to mirror aspects of business, and although there are lessons to be learned in managing organisations, the children are not products – they are people.”
Mr McWilliams accused education bosses of wanting to treat children as little better than financial units.
He added: “In terms of efficiency, management of buildings and staff, there’s a lot to be learned – but one of the things that makes schools different is that we are dealing with children.”
Explaining his call to governors to refuse £10 million worth of improvements, Mr McWilliams said he was not willing to “sacrifice” children’s education – particularly during exams.
“I would love £10m,” he said, “but I’m not willing to make the sacrifices on behalf of my children. This building would need rewiring, new boilers and central heating. It’s a secondary school on a postage stamp-size site, and £10m of work could not be completed during school holidays.”
Mr McWilliams spoke out against a wave of change facing the girls school, which could see Highbury Fields merging with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (LGA) in a federation, and sharing one headteacher.
He said: “I’m very opposed to any merger. I feel it would change the character of EGA and our school.
“Highbury Fields is a very small school with a particular ethos. We’d be dealing with many more pupils because we’d be adding them under one management on a number of sites.
“I feel strongly that a federated school of 1,600 pupils is far too large to allow individual attention to each child.”
He also argued that larger schools are less easy to manage.
Mr McWilliams said: “We’re small, and we’ve got quite a lot of staff. The last Ofsted report said we’ve an exceptional relationship between staff and pupils, and it takes time to build that up.
“This kind of relationship make pupils better citizens, more confident, and more likely to be a bonus than a drain on the community.”
Mr McWilliams criticised the idea of having an “executive head” in charge of two schools.
“Any head who’s not available for the pupils, who doesn’t spend a lot of time with them, is not going to keep their welfare as individuals at the centre – instead, they would be more involved in issues around education,” he said.
He says he wants to avoid a system where each school would have a sub-head, who would need to clear every decision with the executive head. “The head should run the school, get their shirt sleeves rolled up and get stuck in,” said Mr McWilliams.
“They should be with the staff, be in classrooms and make sure the standard of education is high. In federations that presence gets diluted.”
Executive member for education, Lib Dem councillor Ursula Woolley, said: “If building works are managed carefully they don’t need to disrupt education, and that’s what we’re doing across the borough.” |
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