Recently, the Church Schools Company and Lambeth Education Authority met parents and residents as part of the Consultation Process for the new secondary school in the borough. Steve Malone was there to listen to the arguments.
If a government wanted to develop a deep cynicism in a local community which has spent years clamouring for a co-educational, non-selective, community school, here’s how you would go about it.
Firstly you say there is no case for a fully government funded school because there is a “technical” surplus of places in Lambeth. Then you offer a ‘City Academy’ which requires a sponsor to stump up £2 million pounds towards the £12 million costs, but with the sponsor given influence on the way the school is managed far beyond the proportion of money they have to find.
In the meantime you make it plain from the Prime Minister downwards that you think Faith-based schools are a good thing and offer as the only sponsor, a Church based charity whose background is providing fee paying schools outside inner city areas.
Its not therefore surprising that the announcement that the Academy would be sponsored by the Church Schools Company (CSCo) led many to think that this is a way to provide education on the cheap while introducing yet another faith school into a borough that already has more than most.
It was in this atmosphere that Alison Critchley, the LEA Policy Officer, and Charlotte Rendle-Short, the Deputy Chief Executive of the CSCo, came to Clapham Manor School to answer questions during a Consultation Public Meeting chaired by the independent consultant Jocelyn Barrow.
Jocelyn Barrow, Alison Critchley and Charlotte Rendle-Short
at Clapham Manor School.
Unsurprisingly, as this is the first time most parents have had a chance to meet a representative of the CSCo, there were plenty of questions for Ms Rendle-Short. For her part she was keen to show that the CSCo was acting in good faith (no pun intended).
“We want this school to be a success,” she told the audience. “We are hoping to develop more than one City Academy – two maybe three sometime in the future. We are building a team of national experts and asking them for their views as well as those of the local communities”
Despite these assurances, many people were concerned that the CSCo was another faith school by the back door. Charlotte spent a lot of time to try and allay these suspicions, particularly in regard to the admissions policy. “Children of all faiths and none are welcomed,” she said. “There is nothing in the admission criteria to select on religious grounds. There will be no interviews with parents on whether they go to church or not.”
Which seemed fairly categorical. However, not unnaturally, parents who desperately want the school to be built will be equally desperate that their child fills one of the 180 or so places available each year. The problem was highlighted by Alison Critchley when she said that, even now, 80 or so year seven pupils in Lambeth were being taught in an overflow school as no places could be found for them in the borough currently, a situation not helped by proposed reductions on the intake of Lillian Bayliss and Stockwell Park schools.
The proposed Admissions Policy was set out as:
Parents, particularly from Sudbourne School in Brixton, were worried that any catchment area based on the school’s location would disallow their children and wished the central point to be located further in, perhaps at the junction of Kings Avenue and Acre Lane.
Although neither explicitly said so, both Critchley and Rendle-Smith indicated that they believed a ‘feeder school’ system might be the best solution to the problem.
Everyone agrees that the Head Teacher is crucial to the success of a school, or in Rendle-Smith’s words “The head teacher’s beliefs will determine the character of the school”. An accompanying discussion document handed out at the meeting states,
"In order to satisfy the objects of its charity, CSCo is required to ensure that Lambeth City Academy will be founded on a Christian ethos…..To ensure that the school maintains this standard, CSCo will seek to appoint a Principal who is able to carry this forward through his or her own beliefs and values."
When challenged to state that the appointment of the head teacher would be purely on merit and not, at least partially, on the basis of their faith, Rendle-Short refused to answer. She did however state that “We would prefer a Head Teacher with a Christian faith because that is part of our charter, but the Head Teacher has to be the right person for the job.”
Rendle-Short, in keeping with the philosophy said that the Christian ethos of the school would be a “light touch”. She set out the criteria for the selection of the head teacher as responsibility with trust, that the DfES and LEA as well as the Local Governing Body (LGB) would be fully involved, that the post would be widely advertised and that the process would be open, fair and honest.
The composition of the Local Governing Body was also a moot point with many parents suspecting that the CSCo might well pack the body with its own appointees. Rendle-Short emphasised there was no hidden agenda. “Membership of the local governing body is not yet determined and this is what the consultation period is about,” she told the audience.
Local fears were not laid to rest by the brochure which says that the LGB would likely consist of parents, a teacher, a Local Authority nominee, a representative of the Diocesan Board of Education (!), the head teacher and “Nominees by the Church Schools Company”. How many nominees there would be was not stated and still “under discussion”.
After the meeting, parents seemed to accept the SCSCo’s assertion that it had a “passion for quality and a passion for education,” although many were still unconvinced that this wasn’t another faith school by stealth as too many important questions about the founding principles of the school and its governance were still conveniently “under discussion”. In the end, if the Church Schools Company is to become the sponsor of the Lambeth City Academy, we can only, in Rendle-Short’s words “see that we mean it, after it opens”.
At the end of the meeting Jocelyn Barrow told the audience that her report on the consultation period would be available on the Lambeth Council web site by the end of June. Only then will we see if the concerns of local parents and residents have been fully addressed.
The overriding principle however was set out by Critchley. “This will be a Lambeth School for Lambeth children. But we need to decide whether we can use catchment area or feeder schools to give priority to Lambeth schoolchildren. This being Lambeth we need to be able to defend our decision in the courts.” The issue being that the location is close to the border with Wandsworth so that a pure ‘catchment area’ solution is likely to include a large number of Wandsworth children.