Route 39 – Double standards, surely not?

Route 39, the as yet unproven free school academy in North Devon, and their supporters are currently basking in their dubious ‘success’, having received news recently from Torridge District Council that due to austerity cuts, the council simply cannot afford to challenge; via an expensive judicial review, the Secretary of States decision to over-rule the council planning authority (what authority?) and the Governments own Planning Inspectorate.

Led by the Acting Principle of the School; Mr Jordan Kelly, in a ‘Protest’ march on April 1st (no, its not a joke!), Route 39 supporters picketed the council offices at the vote, waving placards, chanting and apparently verbally abusing other people trying to get into the council chamber to speak. Later that same evening, following the councils decision narrowly in their favour, the school supporters then proceeded to drive through the tiny village of Bucks Cross, where their new school will now be constructed at huge taxpayer expense, blaring their car horns and screaming the name of the school out of their car windows!

In the meantime, the Route 39 website states “We look forward to working productively with local residents to ensure that the school becomes the asset to the community we intend it to be” and on their Facebook page the following promise is made: “The hand of partnership is proffered. Although it might be too soon at the moment, we believe that combined energies could be a formidable force for good in north Devon.”

This week, Chair of Governors, Mr Richard Bence and presumably the trustees of the ‘free’ school appeared to hold out an olive branch to the local community, stating again on Facebook: “To those who have fought with passion against the development, please consider using your energy to be a part of how the Academy develops. It will be a positive and pro-active benefit to the students, the Academy and the AONB. PM me or this page.”

Shame then that on Mr Bence’s personal Facebook page this week, it seems his good lady wife might not share the same community spirited view as he, writing “Huge congratulations and thanks to all the governors and teachers at Route 39 Academy who have worked so hard throughout all the filth, slander and lies that have been thrown around over the last 4 years. Finally their undivided attention can be spent on the right thing. (Maybe they could spend a while responding to the appalling rubbish that some people have spread, as they were too professional to slag off the ‘no campaigners’ and people who should know better. Boy, did I want to though!?) Welcome back to our husbands and wives! It will be good to have you home.“

Having never met Mrs Bence, one can only presume the ‘filth, slander and lies‘ and ‘appalling rubbish’ she must be writing about was all the negative, disingenuous and misrepresentative comments peddled by Route 39 and their supporters when they were trashing existing local schools to prospective parents, the fiction that made up the Route 39 application to the Department of Education (particularly that bit about the numbers of children that would be attending the school) and the constant social media bad mouthing of the local community of Bucks Cross and Bucks Mills, describing them as “selfish retired people that have never had kids”!

As regards being ‘too professional to slag off the no campaigners‘, one would have thought that Mrs Bence was aware that Mr Bence and the trustees of Route 39 attempted to have NDG removed from his role as a Governor of a neighbouring secondary school, claiming that postings as NDG had “brought the role of governor into disrepute”. In a face to face meeting in July 2015, Mr Bence accused NDG of libelling himself, other trustees and the school itself and of deliberately targeting the children at the school!

Mr Bence and the trustees were cordially invited to put forward evidence that NDG had stated anything that they considered to be factually incorrect or inaccurate – NDG offered to remove anything on this blog that was proven to be untrue and would apologise unreservedly if this turned out to be the case. Both Mr Bence and Route 39 Academy have to date furnished no evidence at all to substantiate their outrageous claim.

It was also pointed out to Mr Bence that the opinions stated were exactly that – opinions, that we all have a right to hold and that as the Chair of a school funded with tax payers money – they are a ‘state school’ as he now proudly proclaims, he, the other trustees and the employees of the school are considered ‘civil servants’ in public office and as such are held to a higher level of accountability than the average man in the street. This means that their actions are also open to a higher degree of fair scrutiny and criticism, a role which NDG has provided consistently throughout this period.

In respect to Mr Bence’s allegation that NDG had deliberately targeted the children at the school, this was vociferously challenged and he apologised and retracted these despicable comments.

Mr Bence was finally asked how else NDG could further assist him and he asked if NDG would be willing to speak to the children at Route 39 directly? This request was agreed to but rather unsurprisingly, the invitation failed to arrive!

These personal attacks from Route 39, its trustees and its supporters simply serve to remind us why we must continue to stand up and challenge inequity, inequality and self-serving greed wherever we find it. We accept that we may not always be successful, as in this unfortunate case, but no-one can ever say we didn’t do our level best to protect our local children’s education and the countryside in which we reside.

Finally, one pearl of wisdom that Mrs Bence might like to think on – “Don’t get confused between my personality and my attitude. My personality is who I am, my attitude depends on who you are!”

Just saying….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…. it might be now!

Sadly, Torridge District Councillors last night voted 15 to 11 not to pursue a judicial review against the Secretary of State’s decision (against all advice and the planning inspectorates recommendation) to let Route 39 Academy build their new secondary school in the North Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Route 39 has 123 students, less than a typical primary school and about 1/3 of the number they told the Dept. for Education they would have attending. To buy the site and build the school will now cost us all £ millions and the countryside will never be the same.

Now that the Government has announced that all schools will be Academies by 2020, why do we need this one? All the other local secondary schools have spare places available for students and most are rated good by Ofsted – Route 39 got a ‘requires improvement’ last Summer!

The Government are now teeing up all schools to be integrated in MAT’s or Multi-Academy Trusts, comprising clusters of schools with centralised financial budgets and control, ripe fruit for ‘out-sourcing’ to the likes of Babcock, Pearson, Ark, E-ACT and other large corporate ‘for profit’ education providers. These companies top slice the first 10%+ from each schools budget for their own shareholders before spending a penny on the children’s education and welfare.

I wonder how many Conservative Party supporters, donors and former Ministers sit on the boards of these organisations?

What a warped world we live in!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers?

With everyone still waiting for the Secretary of State to make his pronouncement regarding the future of the Route 39 free school in North Devon, it has been quite some time since anyone has cast an eye over their recent activities. So, given the poor weather this past weekend, NDG decided to catch up with the ‘goings-on’ in Happy Valley, just to see how they were all doing. Surely all must be well in La-La Land?

With the fairly recent departure of the very principled former principal, NDG was interested to see what changes had been initiated in pursuit of the ‘requires improvement’ judgement that Ofsted had placed on the free school. Regular readers will no doubt recall that ‘quality of teaching’ and ‘achievement of pupils’ were the two most glaring; shall we politely say ‘areas of under-achievement’, that were highlighted by the Ofsted inspectors, when they visited the free school in that idyllic ‘Summer of 2015’.

Well, it now appears that governance and financial control may be other areas that ‘requires improvement’.

On October 6th 2014, NDG highlighted the deficiency of Route 39 and its trustees to conform to the standards and regulations for public transparency that other schools across the nation have to abide by and to which Route 39 trustees agreed when they signed their Education Funding Agency (EFA) funding contract. In particular we highlighted a lack of clarity and avoidance of public scrutiny through an apparent inability to publish the minutes of any governing body meetings on the Route 39 website.

A quick look at the Route 39 website tonight reveals that the Academy Trust has not published a single minute from any meeting since 16th October 2014. Well, we hear you shout, ‘they probably haven’t had any meetings since then!’. Unfortunately this is not so – a short read of the ‘Report of the Trustees and Financial Statements for the Year Ended 31 August 2015 for Route 39 Academy Trust Limited‘ clearly states that within the time frame of the report, the trustees held seven Board of Trustees meetings (Page 7) and seven Finance and Personnel sub-committee meetings (Page 8), the minutes of which should all be in the public domain as; after all, this is public money that the trustees are accountable for!

Perhaps publishing minutes of these important meetings on the school website for parents, colleagues and the local constituency to read is yet another thing that Free Schools can arbitrarily ‘opt out’ of, however this would seem most unusual for any new school seeking to demonstrate its openness towards its local community: Respect – Engage – Aspire we seem to recall!

The Report of the Trustees… also reveals a couple of other very interesting points.

In terms of internal audit and scrutiny of the financial systems and management controls being exercised within Route 39, the trustees decided that this year, they didn’t need to fuss themselves with the appointment of an internal auditor, instead appointing the Chair of the Board of Trustees as a ‘reviewer’, to carry out some internal checks (Page 10). A reasonable person might stop to wonder how appropriate it may be that the individual responsible for signing off the Effectiveness of Governance Statement is also the same individual that is conducting the audit of internal financial control?

Also, having obviously read diligently through the Report of the Trustees and Financial Statements for the Year Ended 31 August 2015 for Route 39 Academy Trust Limited, and then duly signed (or ‘singed’ as the document incoherently states) these official documents as a true and accurate record of affairs on behalf of the members of the Board of Trustees, one wonders why they failed to notice that the Report of the Independent Auditors to the Members of Route 39 Academy Trust Limited states quite clearly that their Senior Statutory Auditor has audited the financial statements for the ‘Steiner Academy Exeter‘ for the Year Ended 31 August 2015 (Page 14).

You’d think that with the £000’s being paid to the auditors for their ‘professional advice and diligence’, the very least they could have done was ‘cut and paste’ the correct Academy name into the documents and that the trustees could have bothered to read and check the statements properly before signing and publishing them, after all they are responsible for more than £918,000 of our money!

Which leads us to perhaps the most perturbing part of the financial statement and the conclusion of the Independent Accountant.

The Conclusion on Page 17 states that “the Academies Handbook 2014 requires an Academy to manage a programme of risk and checking of financial controls appropriate to the Academies circumstances. Furthermore, the Academies Handbook 2014 requires an Academy to reconcile bank and control accounts regularly.”

The conclusion further states “From our work, the Academy did not carry out adequate checks and bank and control accounts were not reconciled. As a result of these issues of non-compliance, the risk of irregularity is high.” (Page 17)

Do we see something of a pattern developing here?

We were told the free school would be great, we were told that these people knew what they were doing, we were reassured by Government and MP’s that everything would be fine – and yet we see pitiful demand for the free school, independent inspections finding inadequacies in the fundamental elements of teaching and achievement and now we see that the financial governance, management and control appears, if you believe the published statement of accounts, to be virtually non-existent! What is going on?

Does anyone else perhaps think the ‘Chief Watcher’ – the Secretary of State needs to hear about this pretty smartly?

 

 

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!

Route 39 – Certainly Closer to Closure?

Having taken some time to reflect upon the the documentation submitted by Route 39 to the Planning Inspectorate which; without any shred of irony, they refer to as their ‘proof of evidence’, one could again be inclined to question and challenge some of the statements that have now been put forward as justification for overturning the majority decision made last September by our locally and democratically elected representatives on Torridge District Council’s planning committee.

Playing the blame game!

In statements submitted by Mr Richard Bence, Chairman of Route 39’s Board of Trustees, Route 39 is plainly seeking to place the blame for the schools woeful record of attracting and retaining students on the fact that they haven’t been able to spend upwards of £2 million building their ‘vision’, bang in the middle of our protected AONB countryside.

The document states “Significant concern and uncertainty on students and parents who had already chosen Route 39 Academy as their secondary school and were due to start in September 2013. This led to a reduction in the number of students attending in the first year by an estimated 5 students. Continued uncertainty regarding site has led to significant student instability. In Year 1 of operation, 25 students left during the year and to date, 21 have left this, our second year. This has been balanced in part by students joining, dissatisfied with other schools. In Year 1, 20 students joined the Academy in year and to date 15 have joined this year.”

As usual, this ‘evidence’ makes completely unsubstantiated claims about parents dissatisfaction at other local secondary schools (another example of the denigration of our local school provision that Route 39 openly say they never do!) yet makes no clear comment at all about the dissatisfaction of both parents and students that have left Route 39 for a myriad of reasons, choosing only to say this was because of ‘uncertainty’.

Of the parents who have pulled their children out of Route 39, while uncertainty may indeed have played a small role in their decision, in almost all cases it most certainly was not the primary driver. The quality of teaching, the behaviour of fellow students, odd-ball teaching methods, transport costs, lack of proper governance and the strong perception among some parents that Route 39 has become a school catering predominantly for SEN children from around the wider region (in order to keep the student numbers viable) are just some of the many examples cited by some of these parents that made this very difficult decision for their children.

It is very wrong to grossly generalise the deeply held feelings of these parents, who made their original choice with the very best intentions, but who quickly found that the reality of Route 39 was far, far removed from the image that they were ‘sold’. Rather than undermine these parents, Route 39 might consider acknowledging their failures and admit publicly that their experiment in education does not, in fact, have all the answers for all parents and students.

It’s not us, it’s them!

The documents go on to blame Route 39’s inadequacies on everyone else but themselves. “While the temporary accommodation provides sufficient resources to cover the 11 to 14 curriculum, the Academy is unable to implement significant aspects of the vision including land-based learning. In addition, options for GCSE are limited as there are few specialist facilities available. We have lost a couple students recently to other schools able to offer a broader curriculum. Continued uncertainty regarding a permanent site have had a negative impact on the recruitment and retention of both staff and students. This year alone we have had two candidates refused an interview and one refused a job offer due to uncertainty regarding the permanent site.”

So, according to Route 39, it’s not only the fault of all the other schools locally that have better facilities, better GCSE options and a broader curriculum, it is also the fault of those teachers that refused to join their school. Again, they put this down to that elusive condition of ‘uncertainty’. So did these professional teachers not buy in strongly enough to Route 39’s ‘vision’, were they not offered enough money (Route 39 is not restricted as to what they pay in salaries to staff) or did they perhaps see something in the way the school is actually operating that rang alarm bells? After all, Route 39 did promise its parents and students that their teachers and teaching would be ‘outstanding’, so it stands to reason that teachers would be throwing themselves at Route 39, wouldn’t they?

And while not content at simply blaming those teachers that didn’t want a job at this particular Free School, Route 39  goes on to pillory Torridge’s District Councillors on the Planning Committee. Not withstanding the fact that these people are democratically elected and that they are duty bound to exercise their duties under the Nolan Principals for Public Office, showing no fear or favour in their decision making, the statement castigates TDC Councillors by proxy because they didn’t deliver what Route 39’s board of Governors had promised to the parents, students and staff of the school. “Parents have experienced the outcome of two Torridge Planning Committee decisions and have no faith in the committee acting in the best interest of their children. It would be unreasonable to expect parents and students to have the will to endure another planning application that would require the approval of the Planning Committee once again…The delays caused by Torridge in planning applications for Route 39 Academy have had a significant impact on the short-term viability of the Academy.”

So what is the motivation?

“The progress of the Academy thus far has placed significant reliance on the team of volunteer Governors. Many have worked for four years on the Academy without pay and at significant cost personally and on their families. I am concerned that there is a point at which this volunteer goodwill becomes exhausted.” Route 39 seem, within this statement to perhaps hint that Route 39 Governors should, in fact, be paid for the work that they have done over the past four years!  This is incredible! Route 39 would do well to realise that school governors at all schools across the area and in fact across the nation, don’t do what they do for money, we all do it because it is precisely what needs to be done for the children. As Governors we volunteer to help our schools and we don’t expect to get paid for it! Why should Governors at Route 39 be any different?

The future is certainly uncertain!

Like a soothsayer reading the runes, Route 39 finally launch themselves into predictions for the future. “The viability of the Academy going forward is reliant on the number of students attending. The impact of continued uncertainty regarding the site has a high likelihood of dissuading future applicants.” they appealingly state.  “As funding is based on the number of students attending the Academy there will be a number of students below which the Academy is no longer viable. It is not possible to give an accurate figure for this as it is dependent on the needs of the students, the breadth of years and the number of students in each year.”

It might be suggested by some that this prediction is already false – the Education Funding Agency (EFA) set a minimum intake of 50 students per year into Route 39 and the academy has consistently failed to attract and, crucially, retain these numbers of students. Indeed, with only 139 students signed to attend the school from September 2015 (Update October 2015 – only 130 actually turned up in September!), the school has only 35% of the total number is stated it would have in its EFA funding application.

It is not unknown for the EFA to withdraw its (our) funding from unviable free schools and academies and with the current situation continuing, it can perhaps be said with a greater degree of certainty than ever that Route 39 is now certainly closer to closure.

Free Schools Report: Not all they are cracked up to be!

The Academies Programme has, according to the Government in its Free Schools Report today, introduced what it calls ‘healthy competition’ into our education system, that it claims may have helped drive improvement in English schools since 2010. Of course, as usual, that is only part of the story.

Schools are getting better… but they are not necessarily Free Schools!

While the government are spinning the report like crazy, saying that the academy model has made the state of schools improve generally, Graham Stuart, the Chair of the Education Committee actually said today: “It’s still too early to know how much the academies programme has helped raise standards. What we can say is that, however measured, the overall state of schools has improved during the course of the programme.”

What this really indicates is that the ‘threat’ of compulsory academisation, coupled with stricter Ofsted standards, and £ millions of educational funding being thrown at ‘experimental’ free schools has perhaps resulted in an improvement in ALL schools over the past 5 years.

What is crucial is that this report categorically does not state that this improvement is as a direct result of academies and free schools – most of the improvement has come from local authority schools and the report itself makes no mention at all of the sunken cost to achieve this improvement.

Readers should remember that the initial converter academies were limited (some might say ‘cherry-picked’) to those schools with an existing Ofsted judgement of “outstanding” and then to schools which were rated “good with outstanding features”. These schools also received approximately 10% additional funding through the Local Authority Central Spend Equivalent Grant (LACSEG) until funding regulations were latterly brought into line. It should come as no surprise that with this bonus in their bank balances, these schools should have gone on to show even more improvement than their peers. What may surprise you is that in more than a few cases, many of these schools actually FAILED to improve!

According to a recent National Audit Office report, the Free Schools budget is nationally £1 billion overspent and that the academies programme has caused the Department for Education (DfE) to be a further £1 billion overspent is a national scandal. Why is the government not being taken to task for this horrendous mismanagement of public spending at a time when every other public service, from libraries to old peoples homes to the emergency services is being cut by £ millions each year?

The money wasted on free schools could and should have been spent on all school children, regardless of where they happened to live or at the very least targetted at the most vulnerable categories of children, not just those who happened to be in a particular kind of school favoured by the then Secretary of State’s own political ideology.

The report published today goes on to state that “current evidence does not prove that academies raise standards overall or for disadvantaged children. It is clear though that academisation has led to greater competition (NDG: which implicitly the government believe is good), challenging many maintained schools to improve and incentivising local authorities to develop speedier and more effective interventions in under-performing schools.”

The report says that “While some (academy) chains have clearly raised attainment, others achieve worse outcomes, creating huge disparities within the academy sector and compared to other mainstream schools. To address this problem, Ofsted should be given the power to inspect academy chains in the same way it does local authorities“.

“Nearly half of all academies are not part of a chain. By being ‘stand-alone’, these schools risk becoming isolated from others and as such as both less likely to contribute to others and less supported if they begin to fail. In future Ofsted should require evidence of effective partnership with another institution before any school can be judged ‘outstanding‘”.

These findings raise serious questions around the establishment and funding of existing free schools and the basis upon which the decisions to approve them were taken.

Free School Funding Approvals Flawed

The Education Committee continue: “With regard to free schools, the DfE needs to be far more transparent about how and where it decides to fund new free schools. The DfE should also generally avoid opening free schools in areas which have both spare places and an overwhelming majority of good or outstanding schools.”

At long last someone in government seems to recognise what we in North West Devon have been saying for the past three years.

With overwhelming evidence that the Route 39 Free School application was based upon wholly fanciful and unrealistic projections of demand, misrepresentations of local secondary schools performance and a complete (and some might say intentional) failure to engage with the local community, the DfE and the Education Funding Agency should be seriously reviewing the decision-making surrounding the approval of the Route 39 application and taking appropriate steps to recover the situation.

Until this is done, the public can and will have no confidence in either organisation and one has to wonder how long this charade can continue!

Conclusions and recommendations

In its report from the wide ranging inquiry into the impact of the Government’s Academies and Free School Programme, the Education Committee has today called upon the Department for Education to:

Academies

• Publish clear information setting out the process and criteria by which sponsors are authorised and matched with schools.
• Publish data on the performance of individual academies and each Multi Academy Trust or chain.
• Publish clear information setting out the process and criteria by which funding agreements are reviewed and renewed.
• Review the length of funding agreements (in the light of US experience of Charter Schools) with a view to reducing the model agreement to five years.
• Analyse what makes academy chains effective and actively promote best practice  more widely amongst other chains.
• Separate the regulatory and funding roles of the Education Funding Agency, in order to restore public confidence in the academies process.
• Address the serious problems posed by conflicts of interest by taking further steps to strengthen the regulations for governance in academy trusts.
• Create a mechanism for schools to be able to leave academy chains where appropriate.
• Be more open and transparent about the accountability and monitoring system applied to chains and the criteria used to pause their expansion.
• Give Ofsted the power it needs to inspect academy chains.
• Require all academies and chains to publish the salary and other remunerations of senior leaders (within bands) in their annual accounts.
• Publish a protocol for dealing with the failure of a large chains and for how individual schools will be treated when a chain can no longer run them.

Free Schools

• Make clear how competition for free school funding is decided and the relative weight that is given to innovation, basic need, deprivation and parental demand.
• Ensure that local authorities are informed of any proposal to open a free school in their area.
• Collect statistical information on free school intakes and monitor the impact of new schools on the intake and attainment of neighbouring schools.

Primaries

• Commission research as a matter of urgency to assess the impact of academy status on attainment in primary schools.
• Make maintained primary schools in federations eligible for funding through the Primary Chains Grant to assist collaboration between primary schools.
• Review the lessons of wholesale rapid conversion across the secondary sector to identify lessons that can better inform any future expansion.

The Committee has also called upon the Education Funding Agency to:

• Enhance transparency and accountability around how it monitors academy funding agreements.
• Revise its guidance on ‘at cost’ transactions to make expectations of academies clearer.

These conclusions and recommendations paint a fairly damning picture of the mistakes, mismanagement and wilful disregard for our children shown over the past five years by the DfE and EFA in their pursuit of this Governments assault on our education system and despite the clamour and objections of educational professionals, parents, carers and communities across the country.

It’s about time this Government took responsibility for these failings, though one expects with an election looming, perhaps the individuals that have orchestrated and overseen this mess won’t be around very much longer to have to worry about it!

And the prize for fiction goes to…”Route 39″

Earlier this week, following the successful campaign by Laura McInerney through the Freedom of Information Act to get public access to the application forms submitted for Free Schools, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) application from Route 39 Academy Trust was published by the Government, and what delightful reading it makes.

The application from Route 39 seeks to present and describe to the EFA the lofty ideals and aspirations for this proposed free school in such a halcyon manner that it was hardly surprising that the EFA swallowed it ‘hook, line and sinker’. One does wonder though, had Captain Edmund Blackadder read it, he might have described the epic tome as “… the greatest work of fiction since vows of fidelity were included in the French marriage service.”

As soon as one begins reading the diatribe of misinformation, half-truths, spin and disingenuity contained within the document, it quickly becomes apparent why the Department for Education (DfE) were so very reluctant to reveal the contents of these applications to concerned local communities.

For example; within the document, Route 39 have deliberately misquoted or omitted comments made by local Head Teachers that were met in the preliminary stages of the application process, meetings that Route 39 sought in order to be able to claim that they had ‘consulted’ with local Secondary School principals.

Local school heads and teachers have been portrayed as supportive of the application when in fact they were not, while at the same time, the Route 39 application implies that our local schools are worthless and under-performing. Small wonder the strength of feeling towards this arguably divisive and disrespectful organisation from our local education professionals and the wider community alike.

What we can now see of course  is exactly what we have long suspected – that the Route 39 application made what could be described as wildly inaccurate, completely unsubstantiated and factually flawed statements about the demand for the school from the local area, the performance of other local secondary schools in the same and adjoining catchments and the suitability of their proposed site for a ‘safe, secure and environmentally sensitive’ school.

The Route 39 application states quite clearly that from the ‘massive’ demand they perceived from the local community for their proposed school (you will remember herds of people flocking to the Milky Way when Route 39 offered them free entry tickets – that was the ‘demand’ that they presented to the EFA), that they would subsequently get 100 Year 7 students attending the school in September 2013/14 and further 100 Year 7 students attending in September 2014/15 and each year thereafter (see the table from the application below).

In fact, the numbers that actually started in September 2013 amounted to no more than 58, of which only 33 were Year 7 students, the remainder being made up of children from Years 8 and 9 that were attending other local secondary schools.

Route 39 had to draft in these other children to make up the numbers as crucially, the EFA had set a minimum target of 50 children starting in September 2013 in order to qualify for funding.

Obviously one would have thought that in return for the £millions of educational funding being requested by Route 39, the EFA would have demanded that this minimum number of students should be from the Year 7 cohort, but that would assume a logic that appears to be sadly missing from the EFA, no doubt because logic would run counter to the current educational ideology of their masters; the DfE. At that time, the Governments headlong rush to open as many grammar school ‘look-alikes’ funded from the public purse as possible before the next general election, would make Usain Bolt look like he was running backwards!

Even Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York has today described the governments free schools policy as a “failed attempt” to create grammar schools benefiting those with “means and ability”.

You could be forgiven for thinking that last years intake failure was simply just ‘opening day blues’, but one year on and September 2014’s figures were no better, in fact they were even worse, with only 49 students making up the new intake and the current total standing at a paltry 107! (Ed. May 7th 2015 – We now know the September 2015 intake numbers, 38 from Devon and 9 from Cornwall, a total of just 47 children. This number is below the 50 children required by the EFA and massively below the 100 the trustees of Route 39 have always claimed, from their application and ‘demand analysis’ would want to attend the school. Isn’t it obvious now that there simply is not the demand for this school that the EFA were led to believe existed and shouldn’t this hugely expensive ‘white elephant’ be closed and its allocated funding (£2 million) used to help the thousands of local secondary school children in the area?)

Students (and their parents) arriving at the school full of joy and hope soon appear to discover that Route 39 cannot deliver as bucolic an educational vista as they so evocatively and eloquently describe in their EFA application and the raft of glossy marketing materials subsequently produced by the school (with tax payers cash that should be spent on childrens education).

Even in this past couple of weeks, a local secondary school has welcomed yet another ex-Route 39 student to join its classes, obviously from parents disillusioned by the reality of the Route 39 experiment.

Local educationalists were more than bemused by the claims made by Route 39 within their application document prior to their approval to proceed. Among these were the lauded claims that they would not permanently exclude any student, which was a key example of Route 39’s ‘Definitions of Success’.  They also proclaimed that their absence target (5%) would be “significantly below the national and local values due to initial start up status of the school and implementation of engage, respect and aspire.”

Well, reality tells a different story. Although crowing to the EFA that “Our clear aspiration is that there will (be) zero permanent exclusions and temporary exclusions will be less than 2%”, within the first year, Route 39 had permanently excluded its first pupil.

Attendance rates do not appear to be faring much better, with Route 39’s principal reporting to the academy trust governors in October 2014 that absences were running at 5.9%, going on to inform them that one pupil on the roll had not bothered turning up at all! By way of comparison, the % total absence for Secondary Schools (excluding free schools) across the whole of Devon is 4.9%.

While it is far too soon to begin to assess the actual impact of the educational provision achieved at Route 39 against the almost messianic claims touted within their application manifesto, the word on the street is that once again, the cold reality of delivery is somewhat different to the ‘fairytale fantasy’ contained within the 241 pages of the Route 39 application.

Only time will tell, of course, but whatever the outcome of the appeal made to the Planning Inspectorate over the planning application for the school, in the interests of transparency and accountability we shall continue to scrutinise Route 39’s performance and to hold them to account for the huge amounts of public money that they are spending. This is the very least that we can do for all the thousands of other children in the Torridge area that are being disproportionately denied access to this vital educational funding.

Route 39: Does FOI release reveal lack of financial governance?

October 6th, 2014: Update – Finally, Route 39 have complied with my Freedom of Information request and released the minutes of their Governing Body meetings and Finance and Personnel Committee meetings. They emailed me at 4:40 pm today, 20 minutes before close of business on the final day they were due to reveal the information under the FOI regulations – nice touch chaps, very mature!

The Chair of Governors kindly wrote saying: “In response to your Freedom of Information request, please be advised that ratified minutes of the Governing Body and its committees are available here: http://goo.gl/GP0p4r“.

Who is checking Route 39’s spending? Obviously not the Finance Committee!

It remains somewhat perplexing that it takes someone like myself to hold this establishment to account, and to ensure that they conform to the standards and regulations for public transparency that other schools across the nation have to abide by and to which Route 39 trustees agreed when they signed their EFA funding contract . Why are not the Department for Education, the Education Funding Agency, Ofsted, the parents of students at the school and the governors themselves ensuring that this information is transparent and available for public review?

But hold on… it seems that between December 5th 2013 and June 10th 2014, Route 39 didn’t hold any Finance and Personnel Committee meetings at all, and the June 10th 2014 minutes are not accessible. Very tardy!

Does this mean that for the first six months of this year, at a time when the school has been heavily involved in funding its abortive planning application, Route 39 has been merrily spending tax payers money without any control, oversight or governance in place to monitor and review their outlay? Surely not?

Why are the DfE and EFA not investigating this poor governance and asking governors the challenging questions that need answering?

Schools have a duty to publish certain information on their school website. This includes but is not limited to: details of the pupil premium allocation and spending plans, the curriculum – content and approach, links to admission arrangements, SEN Policy, Charges and Remissions Policy and Behaviour policy. Taking its legislative basis from The School Information (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2012, the publication of such information is a requirement for maintained schools, academies and free schools.

I also wonder why Route 39’s Governing Body minutes are not accessible to parents and the local community via the schools website, as they rightfully should be – All other local secondary schools do this as a matter of course, but I searched tonight and Route 39’s are nowhere to be found!

Blowing our trumpet for local secondary schools

Having recently visited Holsworthy Community College for the day as part of my Governing Body duties, I came away uplifted by the variety and diversity of activities undertaken and enjoyed by the students at our college. This also left me wondering if people in our part of North West Devon actually appreciate how good our local secondary schools really are?

With other places constantly bigging themselves up in the local media and online to justify their existence, seemingly for even the most prosaic activities (pickle making being a recent example!), it would not be surprising that some may be led to believe that the children in our existing secondary schools don’t get involved in their own projects or participate in extra-curricular activities, sports and cultural events.

That misconception, of course, could not be further from the truth.

So, by way of ‘blowing our own trumpet’ for once, I have taken a quick trawl through the websites and parents newsletters from our local secondary schools and colleges, just to see what our kids are actually getting up to, apart from all the studying that they do!

What I discovered was awesome! Unsurprisingly, our children actually do LOADS of GREAT STUFF!

From raising money for leukemia research to participation in county sports events, winning business innovation awards to international exchange visits, children within our local, existing secondary schools are every bit, if not even more; engaged, inspired, motivated, competitive and concerned as those from any other place.

Just take a quick look at the Enrichment and Intervention video on the Great Torrington School website to see how their children get involved in everything from Science Club to the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. GCSE Geography students took part in an Urban Fieldwork trip to Plymouth, while other pupils enjoyed a night away, staying at the Met Office in Exeter!

At Holsworthy Community College, Year 9 students recently participated in and won the Devon and Cornwall Business Council Enterprise Day Challenge – Their rewards for winning the event were fantastic. Co-sponsors of the event, Hillside Foods (http://www.devonhampers.com/hillside-foods) offered the students the opportunity to visit the marketing department and see how they had developed into a local success story. The other prize was a full day down at the Virtual Jet Centre in Exeter where they get to fly a Boeing 747 simulator, as if they were doing pilot training. (www.virtualjetcentre.co.uk). Other students at the college have raised over £1260.00 for Marie Curie Cancer Care and Bristol Royal Childrens Hospital. Amazing stuff!

Meanwhile, over at Bideford College, students have enjoyed success in sports competitions, with a particularly successful Netball season – the Year 7, Year 8, Year 9 and Year 10 teams all winning their age groups in the North Devon Netball League. And Expressive Arts is also an area where Bideford College shines – two of their pupils, Amelia Dennis (Year 7) and Charlotte McLean (Year 12) were Music winners at the North Devon Arts Festival. Amelia, who plays the euphonium and violin, competed in a number of events and received some wonderful comments by the adjudicator. As well as winning her brass section, she was also the recipient of the Natwest Shield for Performance. Charlotte, who plays the violin and the flute, completed in two separate events and was awarded the Gunderson Whitehead Cup for outstanding Woodwind Solo. Perhaps glittering muscial careers beckon for both these talented young ladies.

And finally, at Budehaven, catering students from the school participated in the opening ceremony in the Bude for Food Festival. The students assisted chef Fran Parody-Candea in the first cookery demonstration preparing and cooking paella in front of a large audience. 70 Budehaven students took part alongside well over 100 students from local primary schools – Bude Juniors, Stratton, Whitstone, Jacobstow and Marhamchurch in the schools Annual Dance Performance. Entitled ‘Metamorphosis’,  the 20 dances explored aspects of change and evolution. Ranging from a kaleidoscope of butterflies, to a moving piece on World War 1, from the solar system with sparkling hoops to Thriller, to name but a few, the programme presented a varied and diverse interpretation of the theme.

So you see, it’s not just small numbers of children in extra-generously funded academies and free schools that get to do news-worthy activities! Through our existing local secondary schools, our children are actively involved in these sorts of ventures every single day and they enjoy it immensely!

Route 39: DfE threatens closure of two North Devon secondary schools

In view of the Torridge District Council Planning Committee discussions being held today pertaining to the planning application for the Route 39 Free School, you may be interested to see the Impact Assessment for the Route 39 Academy Free School, recently released by the Department for Education.

The Department for Education report has only recently been made public, at a time when Route 39 Academy had already expected to have been granted permission to proceed with the construction of its 700 place school at Steart Farm, Bucks Cross. Route 39 would prefer not to have had this information made public, given their repeated claims to support sustainability of rural communities and the catastrophic effect that this report will have on our local secondary school provision and the pupils, teachers and parents that rely on these schools.

This report clearly shows that both Holsworthy Community College and Great Torrington School are at risk of closure due to a reduction in financial viability in the event that the Route 39 Academy Free School is granted permission to open.

Under Threat of Closure Due to Route 39!

Supporters of both Holsworthy and Great Torrington secondary schools, along with the Principals of Bideford College, Braunton Academy, Budehaven School and other local LEA and independent schools have consistently argued that there is no sustainable demand for a fifth secondary school within the proposed Route 39 Academy catchment, a fact that has been borne out by the massive under-subscription of children to the proposed new free school.

Meanwhile, the DfE have finally confirmed that there is currently an excess capacity of over 1100 secondary school places within the TDC area, with more than 665 surplus places within the direct catchment of Route 39 and little, if any perceived future demand, as numbers of secondary school age children within the Torridge area continue to fall in future years. The report clearly states that all the existing local secondary schools were undersubscribed in 2011/12 when the impact assessment was conducted, a situation that has continued in 2012/13 and 2013/14 and a fact that the trustees of Route 39 have continually chosen to ignore.

The impact assessment is also fundamentally flawed as it seeks to downplay the real impact of this proposed new free school by drawing direct comparisons between Holsworthy Community College and Braunton Academy, based simply on a distance calculation ‘as the crow flies’!

The DfE also need a lesson in geography, as anyone living in North Devon will be aware that in order to reach Braunton from Bucks Cross, one needs to cross both the Rivers Torridge and Taw, via Barnstaple. This is certainly not a distance of 11.3 miles as the DfE state (the distance is in fact 21.2 miles), and quite obviously, as the report states, the consequential impact on Holsworthy Community College of opening another 700 space free school in its immediate vicinity will be significantly greater than any impact on Braunton Academy.

Parents opting to send their children to Route 39 will inevitably deplete the cohorts of students attending existing local secondary schools, As these school rolls decline and as this report implicitly suggests, our local secondary schools may be forced to make additional teachers and support staff redundant and ultimately to close.

Another local secondary school and 6th form college, Budehaven, has been completely omitted from the impact assessment, presumably because it is just across the county border, and yet Budehaven is only 17.5 miles from Bucks Cross and will also suffer significant financial impact from a reduction in pupils should Route 39 be allowed to proceed.

The DfE impact assessment concludes for both Great Torrington School and Holsworthy Community College that “The Free School may affect the long term financial viability of the school.”

As each existing local secondary school sits at the very heart of its community, they are particularly important in our small towns, where they act as a focal point for our rural sustainability.  We simply must not and cannot allow our communities to live under the threat of closure of our local secondary schools in this way.

Whatever happens today, I would strongly urge all parents, particularly those with children at Holsworthy and Great Torrington Schools, to read this report, consider the impact on your family and your children of your local secondary school closing and demand that your local Councillors protect our rural towns and our children’s’ education by immediately opposing this unwarranted, ill-conceived and expensive free school experiment.

DfE Impact Assessment – Route 39 Free School