This is a letter that one of the parents of Castle that attended the meeting last night has drawn up, some of you may have already had this but I URGE every single you at Castle School or any of you that may have an interest in the school over next few years to read this and get behind the school. As Becky has said any queries please contact her via her email or she is also on facebook. Becky has been through this within her own job role. Many thanks *********************************************************************************** 17 July 2014 Dear Fellow Parents As you will no doubt now be aware Castle School has been graded 4- “inadequate” by Ofsted. Having attended the meeting to discuss this tonight I feel that it is vital that all parents should be made aware of some of the implications for our school and our children. It appears a cynical move by Ofsted to release this report on the last day of term when parents will have no opportunity to discuss the report’s findings with the school. At the meeting it became clear to me that the report has been written in a negative way for a specific reason. Yes there are things the school needs to improve upon but my personal experience and those of many parents I know bear no relation to Ofsted’s findings in fact I was beginning to think they’d got their schools muddled up. Unfortunately it seems that it is far worse than that. There is a clear agenda to push our school towards becoming an academy. If a school receives an Ofsted judgement of 4 it can be forced to become an academy, the governing body will be replaced and an academy need only have 2 parent governors. In short our school ceases to become a school for our community and becomes a school belonging to and run by someone else. The idea of an academy is that rather than being funded by the education authority the school receives funding direct to them, our schools are being turned into individual businesses, or independent school funded by the state. In my view it is a way of privatising state education. An academy has the right to control every aspect of the school and its staff, its admissions policies, its curriculum and the length of the school day. Becoming an academy may involve becoming part of an academy trust or being sponsored to become an academy often by organisations which have no educational experience. By becoming an academy the school also loses the support of the Local Education Authority and has to source and pay for the services it currently provides. I feel passionately that we as parents should stand together to fight this divisive move to change our school into an academy and I will be meeting with David Laws in the coming week to lobby against this. I have signed the petition organised by the teachers asking for a full and open consultation on any move to become and academy- why should we have this forced upon us without open discussion? I would urge you to do the same. Castle Primary School is the heart and soul of our local community, it may be bruised by cynical political manoeuvring but if we work together we can ensure that it recovers and that its heart, developing our children as individuals, remains strong. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, should you wish to speak to me about any of the issues I’ve raised or have any questions please feel free to email me - [email protected] Yours Faithfully Becky Hurrell
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 15:56:31 +0000
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