Responses, taken a while to get to type them up!!

So it's been a while since I wrote my last post, not because I have given up!  which lord knows would be easier than trying to voice you opinion to the local authorities these days, but because Christmas and my birthday and my wife's birthday have conspired to give me no time!! Poor excuse I know but there it is.

Since I have been offline I have had responses from the Prime Ministers office, the Deputy Prime Ministers office, the Department for education and OUR local MP David Ruffley.  So what follows are transcripts of the letter contents:

From the Direct Communications Unit 10 Downing Street,

Dear Mr Waters

I am writing on behalf of the Prime Minister to thank you for your recent letter and enclosures.

Mr Cameron is grateful for the time and trouble you have taken to get in touch.

Because the Department for Education is best placed to respond to the matters you raise, he has asked me to forward your letter to the Department so that they may reply to your concerns directly.

Yours sincerely

Correspondence Officer.

From the Direct Communications Unit 70 Whitehall,


Dear Mr Waters

I am writing on behalf of the Prime Minister to thank you for your recent letter and enclosure of 4 November.

It is good of you to take the time to write to Mr Clegg. I hope you will understand that as the points you raise are a matter for the Department for Education, he has asked me to forward your letter and enclosure so that they may respond directly.

Thank you, once again, for writing to the Deputy Prime Minister.

Yours sincerely

Correspondence Officer.

From David Ruffley MP

Thank you very much for your letter regarding the schools organisation review in Suffolk, as we move to two tier in the Stowmarket pyramid.

The move to two tier is going ahead, but there are of course details to be worked upon, as you helpfully suggest.   One of the key concerns that I have had put to me is that growing Stowmarket High School requires a split site solution.   I do not think that anyone involved in the move to two tier would for one moment suggest that in a perfect world we would want a split site solution.

It is for that reason that I called a meeting at Stowmarket High School, earlier this Autumn to meet with the Chairman of Governors, the Head of Stowmarket High School and Councillor Graham Newman, portfolio holder responsible for the policy. I asked what progress the County Council have made regarding the issue of building a new High School in Stowmarket on a new site.   The news on this is not positive.

Whilst there is an ear-marked site in the long term planning document, nothing will happen unless there is capital expenditure to build it.   At present, because of the biggest borrowing deficit in this country's peacetime history, it will be some time before there is the requisite capital to go ahead and build a new High School.   Put simply, there just is no money available in the schools budget.   That means we will have to work with the buildings we have and that, I am afraid, is just a question of economics.

I have taken the trouble to write to Graham Newman personally, drawing your points to his attention.   Because of your letter to me, I intend to call him to a meeting in Stowmarket to see what progress can be made to meet your concerns, which are also the concerns of many other local parents.

Thank you for taking the trouble to raise this with me.

David Ruffley MP.

From the Department for Education.

Dear Mr Waters

Thank you for your correspondence of 4 November, addressed to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, about the Stowmarket and Stowupland area School Organisation Review. I hope you are able to appreciate the Prime Minister and Secretary of State receive a vast amount of correspondence and are unable to reply to each one personally. Your letter has been passed to this Department as it is responsible for education matters and I have been asked to reply.

Whilst acknowledging your concerns, under current legislation it is the responsibility of the local authority, in this case Suffolk County Council, for planning and providing sufficient high quality school places for all those who need one, in its area. All significant changes to maintained school provision are matters for local determination; there is no role for the Prime Minister or his Ministerial team and they are unable to influence the decision.

I understand that Suffolk County Council has recently consulted on proposals for school reorganisation in the Stowmarket and Stowupland areas. The consultation marks the first stage of the statutory process and the Council should take into consideration any comments received during the consultation before deciding whether or not to publish statutory proposals. Should the Council decide to publish statutory proposals, there will then follow a six week representation period in which further comments and objections can be submitted. Again, the decision maker should take these into consideration before arriving at a final decision on whether or not to approve the proposals.

If proposals are published, may I suggest that you again put your concerns to Suffolk County Council during the representation period, so that they can be taken into consideration.

It may be helpful to add that the Department has no prescribed view on any particular pattern of school provision. Rather than being prescriptive about how the school system is structured, the Government wants a system with the flexibility to respond to parental demand and in which teachers and professionals are trusted to make decisions on what is best for their area. This could, therefore, lead to some areas having Middle schools, while others do not: it will depend on what is considered the most suitable type of provision for that particular area.

     The Department has no plans to phase out middle schools as a matter of national policy or

     remove support from three-tier systems where they exist.

     

     I hope you find this information useful. 

Yours sincerely

Miss T Vaughan

Public Communications Unit

I Hope you all find the responses interesting, I have been talking to lots of parents that feel similar to me and hope that the Local Authority listen to us and only continue with this SOR when the correct funding is available and when we are not going to affect our childrens' education. 

Recently there has been lots of press about the fact that Suffolk has taken a tumble ( Massive Slide) in the county ratings, in my opinion some of this must be to do with the SOR affecting results. If the county could get some funds together through the "Raising the Bar" initiative, then maybe we can find some common ground with the LA and get some movement, but until funding is available to get this SOR right then I will stand against it.   

raise this with me.

Only a couple of days to have your say......

This post is to let you all know that there are only a couple of days to have your say on the SOR. It is important that everyone has their say and lets the County Council know that we are all interested in getting the education system in Suffolk right for our children!!!!

Also I have had some more responses from my second letter. Please see below:
As you can see Cllr Graham Newman has now responded, but I have still heard nothing from David Ruffley MP. Neither of the High Schools have responded and as I had to right to the PM and DPM I am still waiting for a response.

Dear Mr Waters

Thank you for your letter concerning Schools Organisation Review which I have passed to the officers who are co-ordinating responses to the current consultation.

May I assure you that all the plans consulted upon recognise the fact that extra school places are going to be needed in the Stowmarket area, should some or all of the proposed housing developments come to fruition?

The question of using Stowmarket Middle School as a sixth-form centre has been considered in some detail as the plans to move to a 2-tier system have been developed, although this was not thought a desirable arrangement by a number of key stakeholders.  Thus this potential option was not included in the final consultation as a preferred solution.

Yours sincerely

Graham L Newman (Cllr)

Member for Felixstowe Coastal Division

Cabinet Member for Education & Young People

Suffolk County Council

Tel: & Txt: 07545 423823

E-mail: graham.newman@suffolk.gov.uk

Dear Mr Waters

Thank you for sending me a copy of your original letter concerning SOR, and for your “in principle” support of moving to the two-tier model of education in the Stowmarket area. I’m grateful to you for reposting this e-mail as I was away at a Conference when your previous communication was sent, and hadn’t caught up with some correspondence which I could only view on a Blackberry at the time.

I note your concerns about “split site” working at Stowmarket High, and have had these registered as a response to the consultation.  Although I was unable to attend the public meeting at Stowmarket High, I was aware of this concern from those I did attend at Needham Market, Bosmere and Cedars Park. Other than the general comment I made in my e-mail to you last night, I have nothing further to add at this stage.

Yours sincerely

Graham L Newman (Cllr)

Member for Felixstowe Coastal Division

Cabinet Member for Education & Young People

Suffolk County Council

Tel: & Txt: 07545 423823

E-mail: graham.newman@suffolk.gov.uk

Dear Mr Waters

Thank you for your email and attached letter.

It will be included with the other responses we receive. My initial comment would be that while young people will be expected to take part in some form of education or training until they are 18, this is not expected to lead to growth in school sixth forms where A levels are offered. The growth is expected to be in FE colleges, apprenticeships etc as most young people for whom A levels are the right option are already doing them.

Regards

Phil Whiffing

New Ideas and Letter to the PM!!!!

So more developments today, well from me anyway. I have had some further ideas due to the announcements in the local press of more housing to be built in Stowmarket and I have had no responses from Mr David Ruffley MP or Mr Graham Newman, Portfolio holder for schools in Suffolk. So I have sent another SOR response letter to the original addressee's and a copy of both letters to the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and the Education Secretary. We will see if I get any response!!!!

Copies of today's letter's follow:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have also had some further thoughts about the way Stowmarket and Stowupland could organise the school structure over the next few years. With the school leaving age being raised from 16 to 18 how about having the old Stowmarket Middle School building as a 16-18yr sixth form college taking all the 16-18yr olds from the potential three high schools I proposed previously. This may again mean some modest investment to allow further education to be carried out on site.

With more housing developments being approved within the Stowmarket area there seems to me to be a need for more and more school places if we are not going to cram the children into classes like sardines.  I noticed in the local press this week that the District Council have now agreed more homes on Gipping Way and the further extension of Stowmarket on the Chilton Leys Development, these amount to somewhere in the region of another 1200 homes that local schools will have to provide places for. I would like to know if the County Council have taken all these extra numbers into consideration when they have been planning the school review in this area.

Letter to PM and Deputy PM:

 Dear Prime Minister

During the last couple of months I have been compiling correspondence to lots of individuals within my local county council (Suffolk).  Whilst I have had lots of nice responses from council workers and schools, I have not received responses from my local MP Mr David Ruffley or the Councillor who holds the Portfolio for schools in Suffolk Mr Graham Newman.

This is the first time that I have ever undertaken any sort of correspondence with any political party or council and I have found the whole experience quite frustrating and disheartening. So I decided that I would write to you and ask you to look at the correspondence that I have sent to them and to see if you could tell me why I have not received a response.

 The correspondence that I have been sending is all to do with the Schools Organisation Review that the county council is carrying out in the Stowmarket area. For fear of repeating myself I have sent copies of my original letters for you to read and perhaps comment. I have also written to the Education Secretary.

Any Comments from readers would be great please.

More responses and more thoughts.

It's been a few days since I set this blog up and I have had another response from SCC and below is the response:

Good morning Mr Waters

Thank you for taking the time to structure your thoughts and detail them in a letter. I agree with Paul that the third High school is an interesting option. Thinking as a parent and professional I believe that an effective secondary education model must build on the successes at the primary phase with clarity and consistency. This can be achieved in many ways. You’ll be aware from the consultation meetings that the cabinet will consider all comments and arguments for and against the proposals.

Yours sincerely

Alex

Alex Bedford

School Organisation Review Adviser (Primary)

Learning and Improvement Service

Paul's Road Centre, Ipswich IP2 0AN

Mobile:                07545 422445

Office:                  01473 583483

email: alex.bedford@suffolk.gov.uk

Achieving Excellence Together

I have also had some further thoughts about the way Stowmarket and Stowupland could organise the school structure over the next few years. With the school leaving age being raised from 16 to 18 how about having the old Stowmarket Middle School building as a 16-18 yr sixth form college taking all the 16-18yr olds from the potential three high schools I proposed previously. This may again mean some modest investment to allow further education to be carried out on site.   Comments or further ideas are welcome and I will submit some final ideas to SCC before the closing date in November. Cheers,  Alan.

Comments please.......

Your comments would be appreciated on my ideas in the letter below. So far I have had these responses:

Dear Mr Waters,

Thank you very much for the copy of your letter which as you say does make very good reading and a lot of sense!

All the way through this process we have been challenging the LA to do things properly in terms of finance, provision and resources. We have, as Middle Schools, said that we will happily support the proposed move to two tier, but only if it is done correctly. As you say from the LA presentations, this is not the case.

Anything we can do to make the LA aware of this [though I am sure they know really!] cannot do any harm, but in the end will ultimately fall on deaf ears!

Thank you for your support and for taking the time to write to the LA.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Cresswell

Head Teacher. (Combs Middle School)

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Dear Mr Waters

Thank you for copying me in on your letter to the reorganisation group.

I Hold weekly meetings with my chair of governors and will bring up the up the issues you have raised concerning the Upper school as well as your positive comments about our school,this week.

Yours sincerely,

Russell Clark.

Headteacher. (Combs Ford Primary School)

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Dear Mr Waters

Thank you for copying me in to your response. Please excuse the brevity of my reply, as we receive many responses.

Your paragraph about the third high school in Combs is particularly interesting and I am sure will be discussed further.

Yours sincerely

Paul Calver

School Organisation Review Adviser (11-19)

Learning and Improvement Service

Children and Young Peoples Service

Suffolk County Council

Paul's Road Centre, Paul's Road, Ipswich, IP2 0AN

Tel: 01473 583527

Mob: 07557 536957

Email:paul.calver@suffolk.gov.uk

Achieving Excellence Together

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Dear Mr Waters

Thanks you for your detailed and thoughtful response.

I will discuss it with colleagues and may well take up your offer of further discussion.

Regards

Phil Whiffing (SOR Project Lead)

My letter response to the SOR in Stowmarket and Stowupland

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have decided to put my response to the Schools Organisation review for Stowmarket and Stowupland in writing as I have quite a few comments, suggestions and observations from going to two of the parents meetings at Combs Ford Primary School and Combs Middle School. I have a vested interest as a parent of four, soon to be five children who will go through the school system in this area. I currently have two daughters and a son in the school system. My eldest daughter is in Yr 6 at Combs Middle School; my youngest daughter is in Yr 3 at Combs Ford Primary and a son in Yr 1 at the same school. My two daughters have their opinions of the school change and I will add some of their comments at the end of this response.

I would like to start off by saying that I have no problem with the fact that the county wants to change from a three tier system to a two tier one. I feel that the statistics and the national curriculum do make it necessary for this change to happen and as I went through my schooling in a two tier system I am familiar with it and have no objection to the system. I do however have a problem with the way that the system is to be implemented at second tier (High school stage).

I would like it to be known that the way that Combs Ford Primary School needs to add two new year groups to the school seems in principle to be very workable. I am happy with the way all the information regarding to the primary school has been presented and the school team seem very confident that their new structure will be a great success and I whole heartedly agree.

My issue comes over the suggested solution for Stowmarket High School.

 Firstly I have a problem with my children walking the two miles through the town centre to the High school. They are not as confident as I was at their age and I believe that there are a myriad of distractions that will happen by having to walk through the town centre, I know I would have been distracted by shops and such when I was that age. I also have a safety concern as the roads that all the children from this end of town will have to walk are very busy around the times that they will need to cross them. I am not in a position where I can afford to give my children bus money every day to use public transport and as we are a one car family the only option is to walk. For my wife to walk my children both schools would be currently impossible because of the primary and high school start times. We had moved into the east end of Stowmarket specifically due to the fact that there was schooling available from age 4-13 a short distance from our home. Thus allowing the age that our children would have to walk to high school, to be higher.  Would it be possible to look at staggered start times for the primary and high schools to allow parents to walk both sets of children to school?

My next issue is with the split site suggestion. I feel that the Yr7 & 8 students using the Walnut Tree Walk site will just feel that they are at middle School and get very confused over which days they are at which site, due to the one day a week at the Onehouse Road site. They may also feel isolated from the rest of the school even with spending one day a week at the other site.  I also feel that there will be problems with children having the wrong books, homework and PE kits at the wrong sites. I also feel that some students will use the split sites as an excuse to be late, not hand homework in and cause disruption at school. I feel that the use of the split site solution is not in the best interests of our children and that perhaps the council should look at freeing up some of its reserve of £166 million to invest in the correct infrastructure for our children’s education. This year has been all about ‘Inspiring a generation’ with the Olympics and I feel with the split site solution we could ‘lose a generation’ here in Stowmarket by not doing this reorganisation correctly!

If money is that great an issue that we have to try and find a solution that is second rate, I see the current proposal as about fifth rate, then I would like to see if a suggestion that I have talked about with other parents would be considered, I know this has come up in both meetings I have attended and was brushed under the carpet quicker than an offending pile of dust, but here goes. The suggestion is that instead of having two larger High schools in Stowmarket, why not have three smaller community high schools. The current Stowmarket High school serving the west end of the town, the current Stowupland High School serving the outlying villages to the north and a new high school based on the current Combs Middle School Site serving the east end of the town and the villages to the south. I know there have been suggestions that the building in its current form would not be large enough and would not have enough specialist facilities, but if you are creating three smaller high schools then the money that would have be put into building the new teaching block at Stowupland and using the Walnut Tree Walk site could be used to extend the current Combs Middle School site and provide those extra facilities. I understand that some work would also have to be done by the council to redraw the catchment areas but this piece of work would be well worth it if we get a more sensible solution to the high school issues within this reorganisation.  At the meetings when this suggestion was put forward, there was resistance to the idea from the panel as they believed that smaller high schools would not be able to offer a broad range of subjects.  The high school I went to had around 160 pupils in a year and still managed to offer the usual English language, English Literature, Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, IT, DT, PE, RE, PHSE, two modern foreign languages and a few other subjects that I forget now and as a parent these are the subjects that interest me for my children. I would like a school that offers a good range of core subjects attained at a high level not a large range of subjects attained at a moderate level. Once my children have attained their core GCSE’s or whatever the equivalent is at the time, then we will look at what career they want and look at Sixth form or college depending on what they feel they want at the time. Now if my calculations are correct and as an area we need to provide 480 places per year, then if we had three high schools then we would have 160 places in each year at each school, leaving some room for growth at Stowmarket High as the town expands that way. The current middle school site has approximately 21 teaching rooms and I figure to house the extra students it would need approximately 26 teaching rooms, leaving a deficit of 5 teaching rooms, which could be built in a new block on the current site and linked by a covered walkway. The other knock on effect of this all would be that the conversion from middle to high school would allow the school to keep many of its excellent teachers and provide stability for the children already currently there and would also make negating any dip in exam results even easier. Further to this I have looked at the Stowmarket town master plan and the plans for Chiltern Leys. One of the options on those plans is to move and build a new high school site even further west in the new development, making the distances across town to the school even further. This would make having a high school at the east end of town seem even more viable to all the parents I have talked to.

I also understand that the Church of England Diocese of St. Edmundsbury is interested in the Combs Middle site to set up a Voluntary aided school. I would like to ask the council how much money would the Diocese be giving to the council for the use of the building and who would pay for the conversion work that would be required on the school and the provision of the temporary accommodation for a reception class, as mentioned in the consultation booklet? I ask this because if the council has set aside money for this then I would think that that money could also be used to create better facilities on the Combs Middle school site, should it be used as a high school.

I feel that the use of the Combs Middle School site as a faith voluntary aided school in an age where everyone is encouraged not to run cars around and to actively walk or cycle would not be prudent and would lead to increased car congestion on the Lavenham Park estate as a faith school has a much wider catchment than a traditional school would have.

As promised at the beginning of my response here are a few of my daughter’s comments, all of which are genuine after my wife and I explained the proposals without our views aired to her.

“It will be really difficult to remember which books to take to which building.”

“I wouldn’t know which site to go to.”

“I would be scared to walk through town, it would be busy”

“I want to be at a school that is closer than the high school”

               

                When I explained to my primary school daughter the only thing she said was “how are they going to fit all the classes in my school”. It may therefore be prudent for the schools to show their pupils how they intend the new setups to work.

I hope that my comments are helpful and will be given due consideration during this review process and I look forward to seeing some of my questions answered shortly.

Yours sincerely

Mr Alan Waters

The beginning......

I have never created a blog before, let alone got involved in local council policies, but I suppose there is a first time for everything! I started getting involved with the Schools Organisation Review (SOR) as soon as the meetings where announced for my children's schools here in Stowmarket. As I started doing more and more research into the SOR, I started to find I was getting some strong opinions about the proposals that Suffolk County Council (SCC)were putting together, so I have written a letter to the SOR teams at Stowmarket and Stowupland that holds my opinions and ideas. So far I have sent this to the following people:

Mr Phil Whiffing                        - SOR Project Lead               - SCC
Mr Graham Newman                - Portfolio holder for Schools  - SCC
Mr Alex Bedford                      - SOR Adviser                       - SCC
Mr Paul Calver                         - SOR Adviser                        -SCC
Mr Keith Penn                          - Headteacher Stowmarket High School
Mr Mark Cresswell                   - Headteacher Combs Middle School
Mr Russell Clarke                     - Headteacher Combs Ford Primary School
Mr David Ruffley MP               - Local MP for the St Edmundsbury constituency

The next post contains a copy of the text I have sent to the above people, you may leave your comments in the reader comments section.