Mick Temple's Blog

SCHOOL’S OUT FOR STOKIES

24-11-2007

The Stirrer’s resident Stokie Mick Temple lives in a city which doesn’t just row about having a Mayor - it’s actually got one. And he’s got grand designs on the local education system. Is the kind of executive control we want in Birmingham?

My blog this week is a very personal one.

The proposed re-organisation of Stoke-on-Trent’s secondary schools has, quite understandably, generated a great deal of opposition. To give some brief background, the children and parents of Stoke have for many generations been let down by a local authority which was so incompetent that central government eventually took responsibility for children and young people’s services away from them and appointed a private company (SERCO) to take over.

SERCO, together with Stoke’s directly elected mayor, Mark Meredith, have come up with a plan that, effectively, favours scrapping all 17 schools and starting over with fewer and larger schools. Along the way, the best-performing school in Stoke, St Joseph’s College, will almost inevitably be closed – St Joes also ranks high in national league tables. Schools which have received praise from Ofsted for the huge progress they’ve made, such as Hayward High School, will also be closed.

We’re promised a wonderful new system in which all our children will have an equal chance to excel. I don’t believe a word of it.

The consultation process by SERCO has come late in the day – and those involved sense that it is only being carried out because they have to. The feeling is that minds have already been made up. SERCO’s expertise lies in ‘streamlining’ – for that, read cuts.

No one has talked to teachers – who have been told they will have to re-apply for their jobs after reorganisation. What a boost to morale! Experienced teachers will be penalised, because they’re more expensive, and many are already contemplating alternative careers.

I’d better declare an interest here – I have two children at St Joseph’s. One is currently in the sixth form and I’ve watched him grow, with his school’s help, into a wonderful young man who is both academically gifted and socially aware. I would say this, but he’s a credit to both his family and his school. My wife is also a teacher in Stoke (not at St Joes or Hayward High).

To get to my point – I live, work and play in Stoke, as does my wife. We have a vested interest in Stoke’s education system being improved. There is no doubt that some schools in Stoke need new buildings and that achievement in some is too low. But throwing out the good along with the under-achieving (root and branch reform, as they put it) will not bring improvement.

For generations, education in Stoke has been run by people who have little interest in whether our children achieve. Education officials who don’t live here, whose children don’t go to school here, and for whom Stoke is merely one stop on their career trajectory, have overseen a malfunctioning system in which teachers have taken the blame for our children’s serial underachievement.

As always in Stoke-on-Trent, the mostly Labour administrations have also blamed everybody but themselves for our education problems. Mark Meredith has an opportunity to leave a lasting legacy – let’s hope he listens to ‘We, the People’, who live here, work here, send our kids to school here, and who genuinely care about the city.