The meeting of the County Council's Overview & Scrutiny Committee today altered recommendations to the cabinet over the proposed secondary school for Swanage & proposals to move St Georges First school in Langton Matravers to a new site.
If the cabinet agrees this decision St Georges school is saved - the option for consultation is to retain the school on its existing village site, rather than merging it with St Marks, which would be redeveloped on the existing Middle School site.
A hard fought victory was also won for the Education Swanage campaigners; councillors amending the recommendation proposed that Purbeck parents were to be offered the opportunity to be consulted on a proposed split site Purbeck school with a site in Swanage as well as the existing one in Wareham.
"This issue has seen members of all political parties working together," said Ros Kayes, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for South Dorset, who spoke in favour of both proposals today, " and it's a small victory for local democracy. But it is really a tribute to the tremendous hard work done by the communities in Langton & Swanage who have refused to be beaten by this consultation. They have rallied support round, conducted research that contradicts that of the officials & really challenged the imposition of these changes. They have fought every step of the way & I am overjoyed at the result for them."
If accepted by the Cabinet the new proposals will go out to public consultation in January. Only one councillor opposed the changes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
18 comments:
Fantastic news for St George's. Lets hope we get to keep all our excellent first (to become primary)schools.
I actually feel bad about this posting, but the original un-sourced post 'got my goat.'
There's nothing on
http://southdorsetlibdems.org.uk/
about this, Echo and Beeb similar, but
http://www.dorsetforyou.com/index.jsp?articleid=392770
Tonnes on there, a few quotes:
"5.8 There is a statutory requirement for every student aged 14 to be able to access all 14
Diploma lines by 2013. Any curriculum offer would have to be structured in such a way that it enables 14-19 year old students to stay in school full-time, or to spend up to 2 days out of school to access Diploma provision. This flexibility cannot be effectively provided in a small 3 or 4 form entry school. There are other curriculum requirements that cannot be efficiently provided on a small site without moving pupils between school sites. These include separate GCSE sciences and more than one modern foreign language. The pupil guarantee will require all pupils to have access to separate science subjects at GCSE.
5.10 The detailed analysis indicates that, if the split site school is to offer the same curriculum as is planned for the single site school in Wareham it would cost £457k per year in additional funding over and above the allocation which the school would receive under the current Dorset funding formula. This would rise to £923k per year if specialist teachers provided all the teaching. This could be reduced slightly by the additional funding given to split site schools. This allocation is currently under review and is not guaranteed. This money would have to come from the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) by reducing the money available to the other schools in Dorset.
5.11 As members know, to finance the rebuilding of The Purbeck School and other secondary schools a bid has been submitted through the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. For the bid to be successful it is necessary to demonstrate that an efficient and sustainable school system is being provided. The additional costs of a split site school are not financially efficient.
5.17 It is recommended that the existing proposal to create a single secondary (age 11-18) school in Wareham, on which consultation has taken place already, is allowed to stand".
5.17 is part of the conclusion and in bold!
Can someone please clarify - and show sources.
Sorry PS
A new Swanage Secondary would be expected to have a 3 form admission
Despite what the Purbeck Review team believe, they are mere officers and not elected to decide these things
The Community Overview Committee got to vote on their proposal today and they saw it for what it was - a biased attempt to ridicule any idea of a secondary school based on deliberately negative assumptions, dodgy statistics and half truths.
So they amended it.
I wonder if the Purbeck Review team will acknowledge this on the website, or perhaps they are just pinning their hopes on Cabinet forcing it through
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/districts/purbeck/4757808.Families_celebrate_after_Purbeck_schools_victory/
Families celebrate after Purbeck schools victory
8:00am Wednesday 25th November 2009
comment Comments (0) Have your say »
By Harry Hogger »
A PURBECK village school is celebrating after being spared from the threat of closure.
Councillors voted yesterday to abandon plans to look at relocating St George’s School in Langton Matravers as part of a major shake-up of the education system in Purbeck.
Campaigners for secondary education in Swanage gained a victory as the committee refused to rule out the possibility of provision in the town.
There was also good news for schools in Wool, with Dorset County Council’s community overview committee backing plans to keep two schools in the village.
With the authority deciding in the summer to move from three-tier to two-tier education in Purbeck, council officers had recommended two options for the future of the four junior schools in the Swanage area.
One involved converting all the current schools to primary schools, while a second option would have seen St George’s merged with St Mark’s School at the site of the existing Swanage Middle School.
The committee was advised to go to consultation for both options, despite the opposition claiming the second option would see Langton Matravers lose its “thriving” village school.
Supporters of the Langton Matravers school made a grand entrance to the committee meeting, with over 100 people taking part in a protest march to County Hall, with children singing songs at the entrance.
Chair of governors at St George’s Sarah Painter told the committee that the school was a “thriving and essential” part of the local community and warned that losing the school would be the “death of the village”.
Campaigners from Education Swanage also opposed the officers’ recommendation to consult on just a single secondary school in Wareham for 11 to 16-year-olds, claiming it would cause irreparable damage to Swanage.
They also wanted to see a twin campus secondary school sharing resources with the Wareham school to ensure some secondary education provision remains in Swanage.
Steve Tooley said: “Throughout this process officers have not changed the view that a town without secondary education is unattractive to families.”
The committee voted not to put the second option for Swanage Schools forward for consultation, meaning only the move to convert the four local schools into separate primary schools will be considered.
Members also voted to amend a proposal to go out to consultation on a single secondary school in Wareham, stipulating that the option of some form of secondary education in Swanage should be considered.
The recommendations from the committee will now be considered by cabinet on December 2.
Mrs Painter said after the meeting: “I’m absolutely overjoyed they have recognised the importance of our rural school.
“We are delighted with all the support we have had and we were able to show the whole village is pulling together.”
I spoke at the meeting yesterday and to be honest I'd expected the report to be taken as read and the officer's proposals to go through, both for St George's and the denial of a consultation on secondary schooling.
Happilly our elected councillors on the committee were open minded, had read the report, had listened to the people of Langton and had read Education Swanage's evidenced response (linked online from http://www.educationswanage.co.uk) and voted accordingly.
Cabinet could still overturn the decisions - no-one is allowed to speak at their meeting, but some of them were listening at the meeting yesterday. I hope that they respect the views of their colleagues on the Community Overvies and that they remember that their officers can occasionally be wrong and that sometimes local residents are capeable of explaining officer's mistakes and solutions to overcome them.
It happens a lot in Swanage...
The minutes of the Community and Overview meeting will be posted as soon as possible on the Dorset For You Website. The Democratic Services Office at DCC are doing their best to get the minutes out into the public domain.
For anyone attending the COC meeting on Tuesday it was an emotional show of democracy in action. All the speakers were amazing and did Swanage and Langton proud. The children from St George's sang their hearts out to the councillors and officers on the steps of DCC. The Community and Overview Councillors supported the communities of both Swanage and Langton, wishing the best for all our Swanage schools. They understood that local 'human scale' education is the best that can be offered to children, and also they supported the view that a school is necessary for a community to thrive, be it village or town. Mike Lovell our local councillor did us proud too, as did Ros Kayes (Lib Dem), Charlotte (on behalf of Jim Knight) and Richard Drax. We could not have asked for more.
We hope that the Cabinet agree with the recommendation that the option to close St Georges should be removed..and an option to consult on a Secondary in Swanage to be included..then the children will perhaps have had their first practical lesson in how democracy should work. They will never forget the experience of marching and singing through the streets of Dorchester, following a brightly decorated tractor and trailor with representatives from community groups sat aloft!!
6 members of Cabinet will decide on Tuesday 2nd December whether to consult on a Secondary School for Swanage and whether the option to close St George's School (option A) should remain. These 6 members do not come from Purbeck:
2 from Blandford, 1 from Charmouth, 2 from Verwood, 1 from Gillingham.
You zee, its best that people from long ways away makes these ere decisions on our behalf, 'cause see they knows whats best for us snah. Uz local people ere in Szwanage dont ave a clue snah, we ave no idea about usn community, its them that knowz best see. We peasants this zide of that bridge, knowz nuffin snah. So good on they gentlemen in chamber fer makin good dezizion on our bearf !
As the county funds whatever arrangement it makes it is perfectly reasonable for the decision to be made at county level at the very lowest.
The original ‘Future school provision in the Purbeck Area’ consultation document published last January recommended retaining St Georges School and converting into a primary school. So it is only right that they should be congratulated on this vote of confidence from our elected Councillors. There are I’m sure a number of valid arguments for retaining the school.
However, am I the only one who has concerns over the way young children are being used in the campaign? Personally I don’t think it is at all right to march these kids over to Dorchester on a normal school day (why weren’t they in class?) to participate in a protest of this nature. The fact that the Cabinet will meet in ‘closed session’ when the hard facts of the matter can be fully scrutinised has to be a good thing.
29/11/09
Half a day isn't going to ruin anyone's education and it's a valuable lesson in democracy - namely that what matters most to councillors and MPs is media coverage
'Personally I don’t think it is at all right to march these kids over to Dorchester'
They didn't walk all the way! Only about a mile, with parent's consent. They enjoyed singing to the officers and councillors on the steps. These children are our future, and as last poster says, its their first lesson in democracy. This may mean 50 (ish) children being engaged in local politics. How can that be a bad thing?
'The fact that the Cabinet will meet in ‘closed session’ when the hard facts of the matter can be fully scrutinised has to be a good thing.'
Cabinet meetings are open to the public.
The 'hard facts' are that children just like these could be denied a school in their own community.
It's good to remind DCC of this because the bean counters who work for them forget what their statistics actually relate to.
While I understand that some people may find it awkward that some children were not at the desks of their threatened school for a morning last week, I do think that there's a good point in the last post about the need for those making the decisions to see the people that their decisions will affect, especially just before a vote.
Regarding the comment about cabinet meeting and scrutinising the 'hard facts', this makes an assumption that the Community Overview Committee didn't do this. Listening to their comments on the day, they'd clearly read the officers' arguments and the counter arguments from the community, and they sided largely with the community.
Th Cabinet and the COC are made up of elected members whose role it is is to scrutinise officers' recommendations, and both are as capeable as each other I'm sure. Officers have worked hard to be more inclusive this time around, but they don't always get it right first time, as was the case with the first consultation.
Rousing stuff. Campaigns to preserve our much loved institutions – particularly schools – always seem to galvanise public opinion.
An earlier posting noted that retention of St Georges School was recommended in the original DCC consultation document. I am therefore struggling to understand why its future should now even be in question especially as by all accounts the school is over subscribed. The only thing I can think of is that the majority of its pupils live in Swanage and therefore outside its core catchment area of Langton, Worth, Kingston and Harmans Cross. Does anyone know if this is the case or not?
The majority of students at St George's come from the catchment. There are also children from Swanage and also from the West of the catchment. 75% of the new intake come from the catchment. I hope that clarifies the situation for you.
The Purbeck Review of Schools has, according to DCC, been about 'surplus places'. DCC are looking to shut schools in order to reduce these so called 'surplus places'. In the first instance the proposal was to merge Swanage First School and St Mark's on the middle school site. When Swanage First launched a successful campaign to stay on their site DCC moved on to propose merging St George's and St Mark's on the middle school site. So, St George's have also launched a campaign to stay on their site. The DCC cabinet meet tomorrow to decide on the consultation for Swanage in the New Year. The Community Overview Committee recommended they vote to consult on all the first schools staying open as primaries and for Swanage to be able to consult on a secondary school for the young people of the town if the middle school closes. Thank you for your support and do come along to the meeting in Dorchester if you can, 10am, County Hall.
Many thanks for this Helen. I wish everyone involved all the very best.
Post a Comment