Fears rise as plan to turn five Hackney primary schools into academies gets thumbs-up

Quest for the best: Executive Principal Greg Wallace
Concern is growing over the decision of five Hackney primary schools to opt out of local council control and adopt the academy system, meaning they will have more control over their affairs, including their finances.
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has voiced concerns over the impact the Best Start Federation schools gaining academy status might have on special educational services for the remaining 48 primary schools in the borough.
Traditionally, a portion of the funding for the 53 council-run schools has been fenced off to pay for special services – such as the Traveller Education Service – available to all the schools.
Mark Lushington, NUT press and publicity officer, said: “It is very important to have effective local services.
“What you are looking at is basically a depletion of what the local authorities are able to deliver. It becomes increasingly difficult if a school is doing their own thing.”
However Greg Wallace, executive principal of the Best Start Federation (BSF) – consisting of Woodberry Down Community Primary School, London Fields Primary School, Whitmore Primary School, Mandeville Primary School and Burbage Primary School – said the concerns were unfounded.
“You’re not taking something that isn’t yours; the (Special Educational Needs) funding is linked to the pupils that are in your school.
“As part of the conversion process we’ll review all the contracts that we have and we’ll buy what’s best for the future of the school.
“It might be that that’s from The Learning Trust or it might not be.”
Cllr Rita Krishna, Cabinet Member for Education, said: “If the schools become academies there will be a reduction to central budgets, however this is not significant and will not impact on our services to the other 49 schools in the borough.
“The Learning Trust has a very successful traded service with our other academies and we would expect this to continue with the Best Start Federation.”
Starting off as head of Woodberry Down in 2001, Mr Wallace turned around the fortunes of that school so successfully he was drafted in to help the other underperforming schools.
Each has seen overwhelming improvements since coming under the BSF umbrella, with London Fields and Mandeville – the first to join the federation in 2008 and 2009 – now judged by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’.
Just three years previously, London Fields had been a ‘special measures’ school, meaning that education provisions had been considered inadequate.
But the NUT claims that too much pressure is being placed on new teachers to achieve the high expectations of the BSF, referencing the high turnover of staff each time a school has joined the group.
Mr Wallace argued: “At the point at which the schools joined the federation, all of the schools were not succeeding. They were in special measures, they had some of the worst test results in the country.
“Our job has been to improve schools that were seriously underperforming and we’ve taken action as necessary to secure a good education for the children.”
Penny Smith, Head of School at Whitmore Primary, where staff took industrial action over work/life policy two months after it was taken over, added: “A new team formed in September 2011 and it has been very stable since then.
“I don’t work in the evenings and weekends and to my understanding my teachers don’t, and I wouldn’t expect them to.
“They’re a very diligent team and I think if you’re bright and you manage your time effectively then the workload is very manageable.”
Mr Lushington claimed that the autonomy the five schools will now have over their finances, curriculum and the terms and conditions of staff was “freedom bought with taxpayers’ money”.
“It’s a massive centralisation of power under Michael Gove who seems to think the best thing is to go ‘back to the future’ and the 1950s.
“I think what you are looking at is the softening up for privatisation. It’s the softening up that we’ve seen with the NHS.”
But Mr Wallace countered: “The reason we’re doing this is that, given what’s happened in the past five years – which has been of real benefit to Hackney children – it makes a lot of sense to extend that beyond Hackney.
“We’re not doing this to be secretive or to put people to disadvantage. If that was the case, then why would we have done everything we have done to date? “It’s for each school to make itself successful or not. I can only be responsible for the schools that are in the federation,” he added.
The NUT represents its members interests. Quite often this conflicts with the interests of children particularly poorer children. London Fields was a very bad school before Greg Wallace came along. The Head was difficult to performance manage and even harder to sack. Similarly bad teachers were letting down the poorest children. No doubt they all had a myriad of excuses for their failures such as the children have English as a second language or the children are poor or many of them have special needs. Well greater autonomy for schools has meant Heads can sack under performing teachers more easily, they can increase the life chances of the poorest children and they can lead their schools in the best way possible for the children. Academies have created a no-excuses culture. As the article points out the schools are now flourishing having done everything the NUT advises against doing!
I worked at Mr Wallace’s schools and i saw first hand how teachers were over worked. They were not “forced” to work very long hours, but they the teachers had no choice to work long hours. This also resulted in the high teaching staff turnover that occurs at the end of every school year in all his schools. They dont enjoy it and in turn leads the pupils to suffer by not having consistency throughout their primary education.
Hold on here, who is to blame in giving Gregg the job in the first place. The Head runs the school ,so why did we need an Exec? I cannot believe his boyfriend would over charge for his services and its the norm in Hackney to look after your own, isn’t it? Contractors would never over charge schools for work, would they?
Heads should roll in Hackney, but that just means one thing, big pay offs and cushy jobs to go to. Well done Hackney. The Council attract the worst for the top jobs like flies round a dog turd.
I am fascinated by this story, especially the comments. In your other two articles about the BSF more recently, the comments are closed. Why is this?
I too would like to know why the comments on the two Greg Wallace articles have been closed. Especially since people had so much too say and it seemed they were finally finding an avenue to air their concerns and views.
Please re-open the comments or help us too find an alternative so people can continue the discussion and share experiences.
We need to unite and share concerns about Okoruwa, Brady, Belk and Wood.
Hackney education is not safe … [Deleted by moderator] … Many stories have already been shared but when we are all back in September we should utilise our unions to gather more examples of HLT corruption.
I agree, I think thankfully finally people were able to share their stories and experiences and it would be real shame if this was not utilised to bring about change at HLT. The real concerns aired about Okoruwa, Brady, Belk and Wood and the amount of corruption being exposed needs to be investigated. But we need to find an avenue for people to keep continuing the stories.
I wonder if one of the comments made by Leonard Lloyd means that he will be setting up a website.
Are the unions willing to host a page where people can air their stories?
In the light of the comments facility being closed on the Hackney Citizen article about the suspension of Greg Wallace, I have set up a simple, open access blog so that the discussion may continue.
It can be found at the following address:
h t t p : / / d i s c u s s t h e t r u s t . b l o g s p o t . c o . u k
Thank you for setting up http://discussthetrust.blogspot.co.uk/
INVESTIGATE HLT WHERE ARE YOU?
PLEASE JOIN THE NEW BLOG AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO SO.
WHERE ARE I DO NOT TRUST HLT, HACKNEY TRUTH AND INVESTIGATE HACKNEY?
PLEASE COMMENT ON THE NEW BLOG.