Party time
12th October 2004
Musical chairs
Traditionally, politics goes to the seaside in late September. So, usually, do I. But this year was different. Thanks to Hertfordshire County Council’s review of Primary School provision I only got a brief whiff of Brighton’s bracing air. Then it was back to real politics in Stevenage.
Perhaps 'real' is not quite the word to describe the Education Panel meeting on Tuesday 28th. September. Surreal is more like it.
This was partly the fault of the setting. The morning session was held in the Gordon Craig Theatre. The Panel was seated behind a U-shaped table covered in white cloths. They seemed very small and remote on the big stage. The dim lighting did not help. In the afternoon the Panel, with the audience and the U-shaped table, migrated to the cavernous sports hall. Though we could now see the Members faces, they, and the table, were perched on platform surrounded by funereal black curtains. It felt more like a trial than a meeting of a Council sub-committee.
Panel games
It was a trial. For all concerned. But especially for the audience who were, literally and figuratively, in the dark for most of the time. When the thirteen-point resolution containing the Panel’s recommendations to the Cabinet on southern Stevenage was finally passed none of the many parents, teachers and governors sitting anxiously in the hall knew what had been decided.
This was because the organisers had not had the foresight, or the courtesy, to print copies of the resolution beforehand. Nor did the Chair have the sense to read it out.
So I found myself standing below the platform, refusing to allow the Panel to discuss central Stevenage until the people in the hall knew what had been decided about the schools in the south. Eventually, we were told that the Panel had agreed not to issue the statutory notices to close the five schools concerned. Instead, whilst accepting in principle the need for a three-forms-of-entry school on the Longmeadow site, they had decided to hold further consultations with parents, teachers and other stakeholders on this and other options before proceeding further.
This was a small, but significant, victory. Sadly, there was none for central Stevenage. After a brief discussion the Panel agreed to recommend that the Cabinet approve the issuing of the statutory notices to close Pin Green School.
Chamber music
The Education Panel meeting made me ashamed to be a politician. But my faith in my calling was somewhat restored by Stevenage’s full Council meeting on the Primary School Review.
The Borough Council has no power over education in Stevenage. But it unanimously passed a resolution asking for the consultation on the Review to be withdrawn and re-run. The Councillors also decided to refer it to the Local Government Ombudsman. Finally, they asked me, as the Member of Parliament for Stevenage, to bring the whole matter to the attention of government ministers.
Passing the parcel
The Local Government Ombudsman is going to have a heavy postbag over the next few weeks. At least 150 people have written to me asking for the consultation to be referred to him. I was also sent a copy of a letter on this subject to written by four Stevenage Primary Heads to the Hertfordshire Cabinet Member for Education, Robert Gordon.
The four Head Teachers, who are not from any of the affected schools, express serious concern about the structure of the Review and the manner in which it was conducted. They attended the initial meeting at the Valley School in January this year where Heads were told that two-forms-of-entry would be the preferred model for the whole of the town. They were also given a list of eleven evaluation criteria that, they were told, would form the basis of the Review. The Heads would like to know why these criteria were not used and why the three form model is now preferred. But above all, they would like to know why they were not told of the changes. After all, they are the people who have to deliver education in Stevenage.
But broken promises and lack of consultation were not the Head’s only concern. They were also worried about the significant, and unnecessary, distress that the timing of the Review and had caused. I could not agree more.
Cabinet making
The next chapter in the saga found me and a hundred or so concerned parents, teachers and governors in the Council Chamber of County Hall on a cold Monday afternoon. A huge, Nuremberg-like, structure with pillars and stained glass windows, the chamber is not designed to make the public feel warm or comfortable.
However, the Cabinet had learned a thing or two from the Panel meeting. Copies of resolutions were handed out, decisions were clearly enunciated and there was a slightly apologetic air to the whole proceedings. The audience clapped when the Chairman announced the stay of execution on southern Stevenage. But this is not a re-run of the consultation. Just a pause whilst they try to persuade parents of the benefits of a three-form-of-entry school.
We must bear that in mind in the weeks to come.
Barbara Follett MP
