Consultation on primary provision in Stevenage
On Tuesday 19 October, I addressed the House of Commons regarding the Hertfordshire County Council’s Review and Consultation on Primary Provision in Stevenage. This is a transcript of my address, followed by the response of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Mr. Stephen Twigg.
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to air a subject that is causing my constituents and me a great deal of distress and, if plans go through, is likely to cause us even more. I am here to ask the Minister to listen to our problem and to do all that he can to persuade Hertfordshire County Council to rerun its recent review and consultation on primary provision in Stevenage.
I shall try to give the background to the problem, discuss Hertfordshire's solution and then say what we in Stevenage would like to see done. Historically, Stevenage has had a large number of surplus primary school places. That has been true for almost a decade, and at present there are 1,590 surplus places, or nine and a half forms of entry. This is both a problem and an opportunity.
I was glad when, this January, Hertfordshire County Council decided to address the problem by holding a review of the surplus primary school places. I was even gladder when, in a speech to the school governors and head teachers concerned, the county council officials said that the review would be transparent and clear, and that they would publish the 11 criteria on which they had based their decisions. We heard nothing at all from January until late May, however, and only a strong rumour at the beginning of June that the county council would indeed publish its review, but that the review was delayed because of the postponement of the local elections until 10 June.
I assumed, as did many head teachers, teachers and parents,that the review would be published in September and that the consultation would end around Christmas. Hon. Members may imagine my surprise when, on 21 June, we were sent the review and discovered that the consultation period was just under nine and three-quarter weeks, and that it was due to start in the few hectic weeks before the schools closed for the summer holidays, and end on 31 August. In other words, it was perfectly timed to fit two-thirds of it into the school holidays.
When consulting on the closure of six primary schools, people do not usually allow such a small window of opportunity, or hold the consultation in the holidays. Not surprisingly, the parents, many of whom are here today, were deeply suspicious of the county council's motives. I do not know whether it was carelessness or whether it was contrived, but whatever it was, the timetable has been most inconvenient and difficult.
The summer holidays are traditionally a time when we all forget about things such as politics, primary provision and schools, and go away and sit on a beach or walk in the hills -- but local parents did not do that this summer. Instead, they spent their time organising. I have in my hand a petition of 8,000 signatures of parents in Stevenage who are against the county council's proposals, and I shall present it to the House of Commons later this week. The parents also ensured that the county council received a record number of response forms; one county official told me that the council had received 100 per cent. more than usual.
More than 3,000 response forms were returned to the county council, of which 97.3 per cent. were from people who were against the council's proposals.
What were the proposals that caused so much consternation? As I said, Stevenage has a long-standing problem with surplus primary school places, particularly in the southern end of the town, in which the population is ageing and where, because of housing inflexibilities, we have been unable to build the sort of housing that would allow older people to move out of their large houses into smaller ones. Numbers in the schools were therefore going down. The review dealt with two schools in the centre of Stevenage and four schools in the south of the town.
One usually expects reviews to list the options considered, and the reasons why some are good and some are bad. One also expects stakeholders to be given a choice. The people of central Stevenage were the lucky ones: they were given exactly one choice. They were told that one school in the centre of the town -- either Pin Green or Bedwell -- would have to close, and that was it. There was nothing else. No other solutions -- and believe you me, there are many -- were considered.
As I said, the people of central Stevenage actually turned out to be the lucky ones, because the review said quite baldly that in the south of Stevenage, it could not possibly recommend anything else but the merger of four schools to create a primary school that is very large for Hertfordshire. Hertfordshire's 20 most successful schools have no more than 300 pupils, and its largest primary school has 560 pupils. The school proposed for the south of Stevenage would have to have 842 pupils, which is a lot. There are only about seven schools in the whole country that are that large -- I know that the Minister happens to have one of them in his own constituency. However, I would point out to him that there are special circumstances in Stevenage, involving a history of very low achievement.
Parents, local politicians and I found it deeply insulting that the review document was entitled, "Raising Standards in Stevenage". That is because over the years -- certainly over the 10 years that I have been living in Stevenage -- standards have been very low. They are the lowest in Hertfordshire. When I moved to the town in 1995, I was shocked to find that only one-third of children who left school at 11 to go to secondary school could read. Is it surprising that those children did not do well in their GCSEs, or that they did not go on to A-levels or university? Is it surprising that in 1995 there was 11 per cent. youth unemployment in the town? Much of it was caused by the fact that the youths were unemployable because they were illiterate. Remember: only one-third of the children could read at the age of 11.
Since 1997 that situation has been reversed and now about 80 per cent. of children who leave primary school can read at the age of 11 and are fit for secondary school. Standards have been raised, particularly in the primary area. However, until then almost nothing had been done, except by Stevenage borough council, which is very good. It is the only Labour-held district council in the east of England, and it ran the Raise project, which helped to raise academic achievement, but which had to stop because Hertfordshire county council would not go on funding it. That is the sort of commitment that the county council has to raising achievement, and that is why we were so insulted when it produced the review under that title. At least it could have spared us that insult.
What has happened since then? The parents got their responses in and the county council held an education panel meeting at which it very narrowly voted through the proposals for the centre of Stevenage. It agreed to issue the statutory notices to close Pin Green school and decided in principle to proceed with the merger of the four schools in southern Stevenage, but it realised that it had not convinced the parents so it decided to have "more discussions" with them.
That is not what the parents want, or what I want. We want the consultation to be rerun, because we believe that it was deeply flawed. We have gone into the matter in great detail, using the council's own standards, which it helpfully published on its website. The introduction to the standards says that there is no point in consulting unless the county council is prepared to change its mind. It has demonstrated no such preparedness. In fact, in the face of 97.3 per cent. of the people being against the proposals, it has gone ahead with just a pause in the proceedings, not a rerun.
We feel that that is undemocratic, and many of my constituents have lost faith in the whole process of democracy. They cannot understand how we are so powerless that we can secure only the tiny victory of a stay of execution. I have letters from 241 parents asking me to refer the matter to the local government ombudsman, and I shall do so. If that fails, I shall submit the case for judicial review, because the council did not adhere to its own standards. One of those standards specifies a 12-week consultation period when dealing with voluntary bodies such as parent teacher associations and governing bodies. Only nine and a half weeks was allowed for consultation, but that was during the holidays, and yet another standard says that the holidays should have been taken into account. In this case, if the holidays were taken into account at all, that could only have been part of an attempt to railroad the closure through. I hope that that is not the case, but I fear that it might be.
The element of consultation is giving people a choice -- pardon me for sniffing, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but you always get a cold when you have an Adjournment debate.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. John McWilliam): I know exactly how the hon. Lady feels. I have one myself.
Barbara Follett: You have my sympathy, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
At no stage were people consulted on whether they wanted a school of the proposed size. At their January meeting, the heads and governors were told that the model for change throughout the town would be a two-form entry school. That could have worked quite well. I shall not bore the House with the many permutations that might have been satisfactory to parents and which would have prevented the logjam of traffic that we shall get if the new school uses the two ancient asbestos-ridden sets of buildings on the Long Meadow site. It is not proposed to provide new accommodation. Instead, we will have to use buildings erected in the 1950s and 1960s that have asbestos in them, and they will have to be bodged together into one big primary school. That is simply not on. There will also have to be mixed-age classes; again, that is simply not on.
Parents feel that this was sprung on them, and they were surprised. They were called to public meetings. I did not attend them, but parents have told me that they were among the worst run meetings they have attended. They did not have the chance to speak. The meetings were totally chaotic. Parents were bombarded with statistics by county officers, who were plainly nervous -- and many of the statistics were wrong. The officers included Graveley school, which is in north Hertfordshire, not in Stevenage, in the list of schools; that raised the average achievement levels, which is simply sloppy. In some of their demographic projections-probably because the county council is in collective denial about future developments-officers ignored the additional housing that will probably be built to the west of Stevenage. They ignored the big demographic changes in the area that will see the ageing population shift from the south of the town.
Officers also made it clear to parents at the consultation meeting that if they kept their children at Pin Green school, which was threatened with closure, they would not be guaranteed suitable places for their children in September 2005; nor would any attempt be made to put the children into schools with their siblings or friends. That was not quite coercion, but it was certainly powerful persuasion. Not unnaturally, the parents moved their children, and that allowed one of the county council officials to say at the education panel meeting, "Well, Pin Green school effectively closed itself." No, it did not. The county council slowly throttled it to death. They began the throttling process last year when they told the governors of Pin Green school not to appoint a head until the review had been completed. That marked it down as a finished school.
The parents and I are asking the county council for the consultation to be rerun on democratic lines-for people to be consulted, for a consensus to be arrived at, and eventually for us to be properly consulted on several proper options. That is even more important because the bodged review and consultation did not deal with the entire problem, which involves nine and a half forms of entry, but with only three and a half forms. That means that we shall soon need another review.
The Stevenage heads wrote to me and to county hall -- I have copied the letter to the Secretary of State -- expressing their total dismay at the way in which the process was conducted. The county council knew of the problem. Instead of making it into a plus, and seeing it as a way to use the surplus places to raise achievement in a town that has historically had low achievement, it missed the opportunity. I am here today to ask my hon. Friend to try to persuade the council to do otherwise. Hertfordshire has ignored Stevenage for too long. About 1,000 children are involved, and we want our parents to have a say in how their children are educated, now and in the future.
Read the response of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Mr. Stephen Twigg.
