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Future for Pimlico looks distinctly unconvincing
• ON Monday, December 3 I attended Westminster’s Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee. There were two items on the agenda which interested me. The first was the report on the statutory consultation on the proposed closure of Pimlico School and its reopening as an Academy. The second was the Q&A session with the nominated sponsors.
The first deepened my level of cynicism about how much notice is taken of the results of consultation because, although the overwhelming number of respondents opposed the closure, the argument was that “not enough people had responded” to take account of their views.
The whole meeting was run on the basis that the closure was a foregone conclusion, regardless of stakeholder views. I am quite sure that had the response been the other way round it would have been taken as justification for the closure.
The argument given for academy status was “that it was the only way to secure secularity”. If this were the case then why is Paddington Academy sponsored by ULT, a subsidiary of the United Church Schools Trust, and Westminster Academy sponsored by a charity established to fund “mainly Jewish organisations” (Directory of Grant Making Trusts entry)?
I do not doubt the genuine desires of the sponsors to do some good but Westminster City Council’s argument falls flat on its face.
The second part was, if anything, more depressing. In the Q&A session Mr Nash, the sponsor, stated that the ethos would be “aspirational” and that students would be encouraged to believe that there is nothing that cannot be achieved. He added that they would focus on “literacy and numeracy”. Is there a single teacher or person involved in education who would say that these are not their aims?
However, teachers and those involved in education can then go on to say how they would set out to achieve them. Mr Nash, unfortunately, seemed completely unable to say anything more than that he and his wife wanted to offer something to “inner city” children.
I am sure that the “inner city” children will be very grateful to have yet another patronising person who has made a lot of money come and experiment with their lives. I would suggest that anyone who wants to make a difference gains experience in an “inner city” school first, before deciding what is best for them. But, perhaps Westminster City Council should wait to see if all the teething problems at Westminster and Paddington academies get sorted out before rushing headlong into creating another potential problem.
It is proposed that a timetable, staffing structure, curriculum, schemes of work, etc will all miraculously be in place by September 2008. Neither Westminster Academy nor Paddington Academy were ready by their start-up date, despite the principals having a year in post beforehand. What is Mr Nash’s secret, or has he just underestimated the problems because he knows too little and that is what worries me most of all. His performance was simply not convincing enough to be let loose on Westminster students.
JANE EADES
Petergate, SW11
• I WRITE to clarify a number of issues in your article “City academy will be run by inexperienced charity” (December 7).
Contrary to the suggestion in your report, the invitation to the Future charity as the preferred sponsor was arrived at in the usual way for academies.
A number of potential sponsors were proposed by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and several discussions were held with each potential sponsor to ensure they could meet the council’s criteria in relation to admissions and whether they had the ambition and scope to take on the project.
The trustees of the Future charity have said, in public, that if they are the successful in their bid to run Pimlico School, they will delegate the management of the school to the principal and the school’s senior management team and that, emphatically, there will be no linkage with any of their wider business interests.
What they will make available, however, is their network of charitable bodies with whom they have established productive working links supporting new opportunities for inner-city young people, and they will also make the substantial cash endowment that the government requires. They will also seek to make available, pro bono, additional expertise and resources as appropriate.
It is this sort of engagement with schools that the academy policy is designed to generate. Furthermore, there is no assumption on anyone’s part that Alpha Plus will have anything to do with Pimlico and it forms no part of the Future Charity.
Finally, the idea that there has been no public consultation over this process is simply not true. We issued 55,000 leaflets seeking local views and there have also been three public Overview and Scrutiny Committee meetings, a public cabinet meeting and a number of other meetings where all of these issues have been discussed and debated.
STEVE FANSWORTH
Director of Schools
and Learning
Westminster City Council
• WESTMINISTER conduct of consultation about the future of Pimlico School, has been shocking.
The post of Principal for the new Pimlico Academy was advertised more than a month in advance of the closure of the council’s consultation period on December 7.
This prejudiced the consultation which has looked from an early stage as if it would make no difference at all to the council’s decision. Why do any of us bother to take part in such a charade?
The current Director of Music at the Royal Opera House and the most recent member of the choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields are both products of the Special Music Course at Pimlico.
That the school’s special music course is not part of the plan for the future is a breathtaking piece of ideological vandalism on the part of our local authority.
Revd NICHOLAS HOLTEM
Vicar, St Martin-
in-the-Fields
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