In Birmingham Gove has had his way in trashing Birmingham’s once proud Education Service with minimal opposition from the Council. Even the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services in the Con Dem Coalition, Les Lawrence, didn’t support academies and free schools they have gone ahead. Quite a few Labour Councillors think academies are a good idea and some have supported the Nishkam Free Schools. Quite a muddle.
It’s good that the City Council wants to retain some influence on education, but why has it let so much control continue to ebb away. The idea of a co-operative enterprise to maintain cohesion is a good one but it is over a year ago since it was first mooted and although it is supposed to be in place by September there is little sign of an effective vehicle to emerge so far. The Labour Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Brigid Jones, may have good intentionbut she needs a strong officer corps for support. It is not Councillors who are paid to run the City Council, and I know as a former Cabinet Member how important competent and loyal officers are. Brigid’s officers are out of control. I have told her this from my experience as a former governor of Foundry School. When it was forced to become an Academy the Birmingham officers, who should have been supporting the school, came in holding the hand of Gove’s agent, Rob Briscoe, to polish us off. I have heard the same story over and over. Too many Birmingham schools are being handed over to chains of organisations with CEOs taking telephone number salaries. They are paid with our taxes! This is where the money supposed to be for our education service has gone. Even if you like academies you should at least have a say in who your sponsor is. That was denied governors and parents in at least one case with once again Birmingham education officers standing by without offering advice or support. What are they paid for?
I have written to Albert Bore about this, but he has other problems, like raking over the ashes to find if there is anything left to run a Council at all. But he has never been in opposition to private take over of Council Service, he only has a preference for KPMG over Capita.
Once upon a time astute people brought in an educationist rather than a local government careerist to run education. Under Sir Tim Brighouse it thrived. I attended two occasions when HM inspectors looked at the service provided. On both occasions it was accorded high praise, even when Brighouse’s arch enemy Chris Woodhouse led the inspection. How all that can disappear in the blink of en eye is unimaginable. Labour could have seen this coming preparing while still in opposition to do what a number of authorities like Bradford, Liverpool and Cornwall have achieved. What is being done now is too little, too late. Brigid is on her own as she is undermined by her officers. They should be sacked now. Bore is too busy to give it his full attention and he embraces privatisation. Labour Councillors are all over the place. Step forward parents, governors, teachers and other stake holders to regain a democratic system led by the Council. Birmingham Campaign for State Education and the Anti-Academy Alliance will help.
The Socialist Labour Party is totally opposed to academies, free schools and any privatisation of public services.

From what’s been going on in Birmingham I’ve had my suspicions that not all is above board as the wholesale destruction of out prized education system continues apace. It’s a funny old world. Les Lawrence, former Cabinet Member for Children’s Services in the Con-Dem coalition prefers co-operative schools, while the leader of the current Labour administration wants more academies. I suspect the Labour group is divided with a laissez faire approach as a result. I’ve written to Bore warning of the out-of-control mess we’re going to edn up with, but the inscrutable leader won’t say what his personal agenda is. It will be based on expediency for sure. Given the budget imposed on Birmingham I suppose it makes some sort of sense getting a load of schools out of your hair. Has Michael Gove approached Sir Albert one wonders? While that seems most unlikely he’s been busy distributing largesse through his agents. So Rob Briscoe has a budget for his operation “bugger our schools”.
How education is going to be planned and provided in future is anyone’s guess. I’m no fan of academies or free schools but a criticism of free schools so far is that they are allowed into areas that don’t need them, affecting existing schools adversely, while not being targeted on areas of need.
Is Gove unassailable? The exam debacle suggests he is not, and the way is wide open to building the resistance that is apparent to the privatisation of the health service. Otherwise when we wake up the whole of our hard won state education system will have been lost.
Why is Gove not only tolerated but lionised? It’s the ideology that matters rather than his consistence inept bungling. Like Bore in Birmingham you can’t take him at face value, the real agenda is there below the surface.

Following my earlier blog on forced academies in Birmingham, our friend the DFE hit man, Rob Briscoe has gone a stage further. He has suggested that we invite K12 to give us a presentation as a prospective sponsor. A quick check on the internet: who are they? Nothing came up.
K12 is a US based company labouring to get US schools under its auspices. If they’ve been recommended by Mr Briscoe then they must surely have something substantial to offer? Rick Hatcher kindly sent me this:
Profiles of For-Profit and Nonprofit Education Management Organizations: Thirteenth Annual Report – 2010-2011
Gary Miron, Jessica Urschel, Mayra A. Yat Aguilar, Breanna Dailey
January 6, 2012
K12 Inc. runs 49 for-profit state schools in the US.
‘The largest net increase in schools managed was K12 Inc., which experienced an
increase of 14 schools between 2009-2010 and 2010-2011. A medium for-profit
EMO profiled in last year’s report, KC Distance Learning, was acquired by K12 Inc.,
the nation’s largest for-profit EMO in terms of enrollment.
In last year’s Profiles, the total enrollment of K12’s 24 schools exceeded that of any
other for-profit EMO. This year, after the acquisition of KC Distance Learning,
K12’s total enrollment for its 49 schools (65,396) far exceeds any other EMO.’
26 out of 49 K12 schools didn’t meet AYP. AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) provides a crude indicator of the extent to which schools are meeting state standards.
This is a very interesting article about the politics of K12:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/EPSL-0404-117-EPRU.pdf

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Foundry School is in the Winson Green area of Birmingham, an area of transition and deprivation. I have been a governor there for some 20 years, but now it looks like the end of the line. A few months ago the school emerged from special measures in what everyone considered a remarkably short time. This was after enormous effort on behalf of the school leadership, staff and governors. Our euphoria has been short lived after one Mr Driscoll came to school and returned is to special measures.
To come out of special measures meant that the school must have made tangible improvement, however by the time Mr Driscoll arrived there had not been time for results to kick in. The other aspect is that schools in special measures are open to being forced into becoming academies. At least that is what we are being told, but when challenges have been made it seems it ain’t necessarily so!
Mr Driscoll was followed into school by one Rob Briscoe (I keep confusing the two) who came with local authority reps in tow to meet the Governors. The first thing Sue Twells, a Birmingham officer, mentioned was that Foundry could be considered for closure. The debate turned to us making a case against school closure with the academy status issue lost from sight. Sue Twells had already told us that we could not avoid becoming an academy, at which point I responded that it sounded like we were being bullied. The current Cabinet Member for Children’s Services in Birmingham, Brigid Jones, had sent a letter to all school saying that no school would be forced into privatisation, so why were City officers saying something different?
As for Mr Briscoe, he was somewhat impressed with the arguments that governors made in support of Foundry. As a result he kindly arranged a meeting with a possible sponsor. At least it seemed a kind thought at the time. We learn a little, since Mr Briscoe it turns out is not an inspector, but is employed directly by the DFE as a hit man whose job it is to bring in the academies.
Governors were treated to a presentation by two gentlemen from Oasis Academies who are interested in taking on around 9 Birmingham primary schools. The governors were all impressed by the sales pitch, particularly on their expressed concern with community involvement. The outcome was for an attempt to get an immediate decision that we would work with Mr Briscoe to become an academy sponsored by Oasis.
The next day I began to search out Oasis Academies on the internet. It was full of glowing reports of their secondary academies. That[s not what I was looking for however.
I found an independent reference to their primary school, Shirley Park, in Croydon. The report tells us that the school did significantly worse than the state school it replaced, and is one of the 200 worst performing schools in the country. Croydon will not allow it to take over any more of its schools.
Results for secondary academies were also poor, with Oasis being second from bottom among the private bodies setting up chains of schools across the country. State schools are narrowly beaten by just one chain when GCSE and equivalents are recorded. Mr Briscoe, why are you recommending ours school joins a group which can’t demonstrate good performance, particularly when you have expressed concern about Foundry’s performance? (I was interested to hear that at least one Birmingham head teacher had marched him off the premises!)
The Chair of Governors made it her business to invite union representatives to speak to governors. The euphoria around Oasis has now worn off and when we learned about the possibility of co-operatives. where schools link with high-performing schools, we felt we needed to explore alternatives which were not put to us previously.

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Michael Gove is fast losing his department as his officers depart leaving a vacuum of experience and expertise. Never mind in Gove’s world the less know about education and learning the better. A source close to the department said: “There are persistent rumours of the tensions of working with this Government. Civil servants are told ‘we’ve already made our minds up’. They have no input into the process.” (source The Independent).The last people this government wants to hear from are practitioners working on the ground, as in other areas. As in the health services every teachers association is fundamentally opposed to this education blitz.
Experiments in setting up Academies – that’s very much what it is – are not going the government’s way. Not that the opposition cab say much because it is they who beagn the push to them, if not the so-called Free-Schools which are moving further and faster away from accountability and democratic control. Public money is being fed to the private sector. It they don;t work there will be nothing left to rebuild another service. Now in Birmingham the desperate Gove is forcing primary schools with Montgomery Primary School to the fore. Angry parents and teachers are mounting a vigorous campaign with the Birmingham Anti-Academy Alliance.
It will not only be government departments that are cleared out, but as new rules come into force pay and conditions change – considerably for the worse, so there is the prospect of an exodus of well qualified staff here too. The new panaceas will be able to bring in anyone they like. Retired army personnel seem to be sought after so we are likely to see something akin to boot camps emerge.