The Real Tragedy of Route 39

With the Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government, the Right Honourable Greg Clark MP keeping us all waiting (and waiting) for his pronouncement in respect to the ‘called in’ planning appeal made by Route 39 Academy, the organisation proposing to build an expensive new free school in North Devons Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and where, unsurprisingly, there is minimal and indeed declining demand for new secondary school places, we take this moment to present a satirical look at how we come to be where we are today and to review the myriad promises that were made by Route 39 to the local community when they embarked upon a quest to drive their halcyon dream of ‘educational choice’ down the throats of the good people of North Devon.

Whatever the Ministers final decision, this ‘comedy of errors’ has always been a tragedy, not least for the many children involved at all the locally affected schools.

This governments free school and academy policy is divisive, it splits communities apart and sets schools in competition against one another, negatively impacting families and teachers alike and taking educational funding away from LEA schools and their students to give to the free schools and academies deemed somehow ‘more deserving’. All this is wrapped up in a glossy veneer of sanctimonious political spin and falsehood, with an underlying premise that we mere mortals won’t understand what is actually happening. That’s the real tragedy of this story and this government should be ashamed of themselves.

The Players:

Route 39 – a well-meaning group, fascinated by ‘liberal’ educational ideas, enticed with huge sums of tax-payers cash and enamoured by the choice of having a brand new school to send their kids along to and who seemingly only believe what they wish to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary!

Department for Education (DfE) – A government ministry ideologically driven to destroy state education and to replace it with a private/grammar school style equivalent, but completely paid for by the tax-payer. The bad guys?

Education Funding Agency (EFA) – the paymasters for the aforesaid DfE – rather like Shylock in the Merchant of Venice!

(Former) Secretary of State for Education – the Right Honourable Michael Gove MP, a man who had a plan, whether you liked it or not!

Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government – the Right Honourable Greg Clark MP – right now, the hero or the villain! – depending upon your point of view!

Devon County Council – the local authority, usually to be found sitting on a fence!

North Devon Journal – a local rag, with less journalistic integrity than a blunt pencil!

Principal, Route 39 – She who must not be named!

Chair of Governors – the Chair of Governors!

The Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) – the name says it all, a precious resource that belongs to everyone, not just those that think it is all theirs!

Torridge District Council Planning Committee – A group of Councillors that we trust to know what’s right for the local area.

Planning Inspector – A nobleman, who knows the difference between right and wrong and is fair in all he says and does (one hopes!)

Ofsted – A force to be reckoned with!

The Local Community – the common, decent people! The good guys!

The Story:

This saga began back in mid 2010, when a small group of presumably disenchanted parents woke up to the fact that the new Con/Dem government had begun lavishing vast amounts of tax-payers money into the establishment of ‘quasi-private’ educational facilities known, rather ironically, as ‘free schools’. This small group came together, saw the ‘opportunity’ and decided that they wanted in on the action!

Calling themselves ‘Route 39’, their first thoughts were to try to establish a new secondary school in Kilkhampton, however, another free school initiative in near-by Bude had been recently shot down in flames by the local townspeople, quickly giving the Route 39 group pause for thought. If they were to be successful, they needed to approach this differently!

Mostly congregating around the Hartland locale, they decided to move their school farther from Bude, looking instead towards the A39 in the Hartland/Clovelly/Bucks Cross area – this was very useful as it meant that their children would have their bright new secondary school of choice right on their very own doorstep, which would of course be wonderful.

Traipsing back and forth to the Department for Education (DfE) in London was a bit of a chore, but it was worth it, as the good civil servants were giving the Route 39 group lots of helpful advice on how to get their hands on all that lovely money! They were told what to say and what not to say, what to do and what not to do and they were pointed in the direction of some very expensive, but incredibly helpful consultants, who could ‘guide’ them through the process of building their dream 700 place free school in beautiful North Devon.

Like a pantomime fairy, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) also appeared and, in the manner of a doting grandmother doling out sweets to her grandchildren, handed over around £300,000 to Route 39, to help them prepare their funding application. Times were good!

‘Great Expectations’ – The Free School Application

Jobs were divided up and tasks swiftly allotted – there was work to be done! Their application to the DfE, destined to be one of the greatest works of fiction since Dickens wrote ‘Great Expectations’, had to be penned, but what to say? Route 39 realised that they needed to paint a picture in words that the DfE would find irresistible – after all, it’s not every day that someone offers to hand over £ millions to a bunch of amateurs with little if any professional educational background, so they had better make it convincing!

The shortage of secondary school places was the first lamb to be slaughtered! The Route 39 group claimed, without the merest hint of a smile, that the numbers of children in local primary schools was growing and that this was going to increase exponentially over the next 10 years. We would have so many children in our local primaries that they would be bursting at the seams and, logically therefore, we absolutely really must need and have a lovely new shiny free school in eh, lets say for starters, the Milky Way Theme Park – thank you! “Build it and they shall come…” seemed to be the message they wanted us to believe.

Now we all know that this was not really the case at all. Local primary schools, particularly in rural areas such as North Devon are shrinking considerably as pupil numbers decline. They are increasingly finding themselves short of money, as the DfE and the EFA have conspired to change the way small rural primary schools are funded and as the student numbers fall, the inevitable consequence is that the small schools are no longer viable and they then close. Families are smaller than they used to be, so there are fewer children around, which in turn means that local secondary schools have many spare places, often referred to as capacity. It was pointed out by local Head Teachers that there were more than 1100 secondary school places (11.8%) available and unfilled within the catchment area that Route 39 wished to serve, but this was dismissed by the group as complete nonsense – they had statistics from Devon County Council to prove that everything they said was true – duh!

Spinning like you’ve never spun before!

At this point, Route 39’s media machine went into hyper-drive – they had to convince the fictitious parents of all these thousands of fictitious primary school children that their new school was going to knock spots off all the ‘rubbishy’ secondary schools in the area. So that’s what they set out to do. The venerable North Devon Journal swallowed Route 39’s press releases, printing everything pretty much verbatim without it seems so much as a sub-editor casting a world-weary eye over them for factual content.

Trips to all the local primary schools provided another opportunity for Route 39 to ingratiate themselves with would-be parents and to wax lyrical about how wonderful, bright and breezy their new school was going to be, with its caring and nurturing ‘stage not age’ learning process suited to each individual little one that attended, the zippy new technology and flashy iPad gadgets that each child would receive (not free in the free school, as it turns out!) and its ‘classrooms in the outdoors’ to make the most of the freedom, fresh air and farm smells that all parents around here want for their offspring, don’t they? Not at all like those uncaring, dilapidated, bullying, non-achieving, overloaded, inner-city type existing secondary schools in the TOWNS of course!

Someone then had a grand idea! “We need to show that everyone around here loves us,” they thought, “…so why not give out free tickets to the Milky Way Theme Park, count everyone that comes through the doors and get them to sign up, saying they will send their children to our dazzling new school? That will prove that there is a real demand for our school and anyhow, we have been given so much cash by the EFA, we can have printed balloons and everything!” So that’s exactly what they did!

“I know what Outstanding looks like…”

The pace now quickened, and emboldened by their faultless plan, Route 39 had now appointed a new Principal and opened a ‘pop-up’ shop (v.trendy LOL!) in Atlantic Village Shopping Mall. It was during this busy time that the group met with that pleasant chap, the Secretary of State for Education (at the time), the Right Honourable Michael Gove MP, who unsurprisingly reinforced everything that Route 39 and the North Devon Journal had ever said or written. He even stated that “Every child should have the choice to go to an excellent local school”, so we guess he must have been talking about Holsworthy Community College at that point!

The new Principal was wheeled out at every opportunity to become the ‘face’ of the school, smirking away as she earnestly told anyone who would listen how committed she was to the school and how, with her educational background and experience, she knew what ‘Outstanding’ looked like! This comment was prompted by Route 39’s amazing promise to parents that they would be North Devons ‘outstanding’ school, providing an education to children that would deliver exam results that were at least 10% higher than any other school! “We have set ourselves ambitious targets to exceed the current local, county and national average results of 5+ A*-C GCSEs including English and Maths by over 10% including children from disadvantaged backgrounds. This will make the school one of the top 25% performing schools in the country.” Grand words of which we shall hear more later in the journey.

Where have all the students gone?

The demand that was extrapolated from Route 39’s free play day, their on-line ‘consultation’ (listing 777 people who had responded to the survey and implying that they were in favour of the free school, but this number included all those that said they hated the idea!) and the ‘feedback’ they claimed to have received from enraptured parents begging them to open a free school immediately, prompted the Route 39 group to claim to the DfE and the world at large that they would get 100 pupils in Year 7 attending the school as soon as it opened in September 2013, with a further 100 more bright-eyed and eager students promised each September onwards.

Incidentally, their first planning application to open the school at the Milky Way Theme Park was soundly rejected, so instead they opened the free school in what was the old Clovelly Primary School, which again; ironically, had closed a few years earlier due to a severe lack of pupils. At around the same time, Route 39 had applied for planning permission to build their dream school at Steart Farm, Bucks Cross, deep within the boundaries of the North Devon AONB!

Now, of course, we know the truth of the matter – In March 2012, in a piece to the North Devon Journal, Route 39 stated publicly that they had “95 Year 6 parents signed up to send their children to the new school“, and used this figure to justify taking their proposal forward to the DfE. However, when the first term started at Route 39, the free school actually managed to attract only 33 pupils for Year 7, with many of those subsequently leaving during the school year as the new school failed to live up to its grandiose expectations. The free school reported in May 2015 “In Year 1 of operation, 25 students left during the year and to date, 21 have left this, our second year.”

Similarly in 2014 and again in 2015, the numbers of parents opting to send their children to Route 39 stagnated, due in the main to an underlying lack of real demand and the fact that local secondary schools generally continue to perform well (despite what Route 39 would have you believe), achieving magnificent results for the children that attend them. In September 2015, only 40 children (out of 100 promised, remember?) joined the school and Route 39 apparently now have only 130 children on the role (including children brought in from older year groups), out of the 300+ they promised the DfE in their funding application.

With less than half of the numbers of children now attending that Route 39 had proudly pronounced would join them, the ‘free’ school is now costing us tax-payers more than double the amount per child to operate than they originally said it would! Perhaps somebody at the EFA should think about resitting Maths!

Something’s not right here!

Back to the story and the local community began to smell a rat! Wasn’t Route 39 supposed to engage with the local people to find out what they thought about this whole idea? Didn’t local residents opinions count for anything in this regard? What about the effect on the existing local schools – didn’t they have a say in this? Well, from Route 39’s perspective, the answer was a firm No (or, if you went to any of their Spanish evenings, it was a definitive ‘Jamás‘!).

Notwithstanding many requests by Bucks Cross and Bucks Mills residents, Parish Councils and local schools, Route 39 avoided direct engagement whenever and wherever they could. When they did finally deign to meet the public, anybody who turned up with an interest in their project, but who didn’t meet Route 39’s strict criteria (Do you live here or are you a complete numpty that we can influence?) was informed in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t be spoken to. So much for their strap-line – Respect – Aspire – Engage!

The primary concern of the local community was the protection of the AONB, a natural, unspoilt habitat for the distinctive flora and fauna of the area, which should rightly and properly be preserved for the nation and future generations, along with the safety of the children who would have to travel along the notoriously dangerous A39 in order to get to the proposed new school.

Despite loud claims from Route 39 that they were ecologically protective and environmentally aware, none of the (fictitious?) children that they claimed would attend would be able to walk or cycle to school, mainly because they needed to be brought in by bus, coach or car as none lived within walking or cycling distance. How very verdant!

But very real concerns regarding the safety of the children were continually dismissed by Route 39, even though their own, very highly paid, highways consultants; Hydrock, in a planning report concerning the A39 at Steart Farm, had observed “High vehicle speeds leading to (a) likelihood of increased severity of injury. Observed vehicle speeds through the area appeared high in excess of 50 mph. Any injury to a pedestrian, particularly a child resulting from a conflict at higher speeds is likely to result in increased severity of injury or even a fatality.”

Fortunately, when Route 39’s planning application came before the Planning Committee of Torridge District Council (TDC), local Councillors that know the area and its populace agreed with the local community and soundly rejected the free school application. One Councillor went so far as to state “I think it’s an accident waiting to happen and I for one will not be putting my name to where there is a possibility of an accident.” The Route 39 group were, needless to say, distinctly grumpy!

Permission Refused – Going to Appeal!

This planning rejection was a set back of enormous and costly proportions, one that the Route 39 group had never envisioned in all their late night meetings, when they earnestly discussed GCSE basket weaving classes and how great it would be to get that nice chap with all the tattoos in every year to tell the kids not to listen to all those nasty people in the outside world. Wasn’t this all supposed to be so easy? Weren’t we the ‘special’ ones who could have whatever we wanted, with as much money taken from other schools as we liked, because we were all getting the ‘choice’ that everyone really, really wanted, even if they said they were more than happy with how things were?

There was nothing for it…they were not going to stop now….they had no other options available as they hadn’t bothered looking into any of the 21 other sites that TDC had helpfully suggested they investigate prior to choosing to situate themselves in a protected, nationally recognised AONB, so they were going to APPEAL!

And thus began the long wait for the Planning Inspector to convene a meeting and to start his deliberations, culminating in a detailed report for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Right Honourable Greg Clark MP, who had ‘called in’ the appeal.

Autumn moved into Winter, Winter into Spring and Spring finally turned into Summer before the kindly Planning Inspector eventually turned up in Northam (after getting delayed by a bad accident on the A39! Who knew?).

He listened patiently as the various highly expensive barristers presented Route 39’s case and as the Chair of Governors confused himself over various things that he should have known, but didn’t! The Planning Inspector sat inscrutably as parents with vested interests wept while giving their ‘evidence’ and he heard the schools erstwhile Principal proclaim all that was right and holy about the education provided to the students at Route 39, while simultaneously expressing her deeply passionate and continued commitment to the school. He trudged stoically around the fields, woods and hamlets of Bucks Cross and Bucks Mills, meeting concerned residents and inspecting the streams and overflows directly in the line of millions of litres of water run-off, which is expected to come rushing down the hill from the school site, if the ‘industrial monolithic shed’ (as the proposed school has been described by the National Trust), were ever to be constructed. At last, his hearing was over and he retired back from whence he came to deliberate and report.

It never rains…

But, for Route 39, things were soon to go from bad to worse. Enter Ofsted, scourge of teachers and closer of schools, to inspect the free school and to see if everything was indeed ‘rosy’ in the garden. Sadly it was not, for after a good deal of poking, prodding and peeking, among various other things, the Ofsted inspectors considered judgement was that Route 39 Academy ‘requires improvement‘ in both ‘Quality of Teaching‘ and ‘Achievement of Pupils‘. From an independent viewpoint, this could be considered as quite a damning indictment of a half-baked, ill-conceived and poorly executed foray into a parentally and ideologically motivated, ‘choice’ based, education.

The Ofsted inspector highlighted educational progress amongst lower and middle attaining students and disadvantaged children as its first area of major weakness and said that teachers were overlooking poorly presented work and that they do not provide enough feedback to help children understand how to improve. Ofsteds report is particularly galling when one stops to consider the horrendous amount of public money that continues to be poured into this under-subscribed, under-performing and unwarranted free school.

The Route 39 group were obviously now aghast – How could this possibly have been allowed to happen? Who could be responsible for this dreadful Ofsted outcome? Self-doubt creeps in – Is it the kids? Is it us as parents? Is it the teachers? Where are the results that are ‘10% above other schools’? Is this what ‘Outstanding’ really looks like?

Then came the bombshell news – in spite of the deep commitment and passion for the school so recently expressed, Route 39’s Principal had discovered another ‘great opportunity’ and barely 10 days after extolling the virtues of Route 39 to the Planning Inspector, announced that she would soon be moving on to pastures new. Didn’t hear any of this mentioned at the Planning Inspectors meeting though!

But before you all concern yourselves further over the fate of the children’s education, please don’t worry, it’s all OK, as the Deputy Principal, who has been there a few months now, has stepped in and besides, Route 39 supposedly only has 40 new Year 7 students (out of a guaranteed 100 children, keep up!) so they shouldn’t be exactly run off their feet!

In the meantime, still no word from the Secretary of State. We know he must be a very busy man, but we’ve all been waiting a very long time now, so please just give us the answer and let us all get on with our lives.

So while we mark time to learn the fate of Route 39 at Steart Farm, we wonder… will common sense prevail or will political dogma override the greater public interest? We’ll just have to wait and see!

The End (or perhaps not!)

For the avoidance of any doubt, this is a personal opinion and interpretation of the understanding and facts surrounding this situation, based upon articles and information generally available within the public domain or witnessed by the author personally. NDG is always happy to correct any factual inaccuracies and to acknowledge any such factual error within this satirical blog, providing that you are able to furnish compelling and irrefutable evidence to back up your assertion! Simply not liking it doesn’t count!