As I See It... For What Its Worth

Cumbria County Council has decided that infant schools are no longer the right mechanism for teaching very young children. It may be deeper than this. It may be that the Labour manipulators sometimes called the Government have decided that 'specialism' has to be replace with 'equality for all'. Bearing in mind what has gone on over the past couple of years with all the equality and diversity rubbish that is being foisted on every employer, every state educated child, every consenting adult by this government I favour the view that the County Council are actually doing as they are told by the crooks in Westminster.

So to get rid of separate infant and nursery schools and merge them into the nearest junior schools to create all through primary schools is an expensive undertaking. Ignoring the building costs and the staffing costs there is the huge cost of pretending to be open and transparent. The Labour government beavers away in the shadows but for some bizarre reason it needs to have a veneer of transparency to shield itself from those who see through it. At least I see it that way. It's the only way it all makes any sense.

So the County Council asks the DCSF, the gargantuan Labour Education ministry, for some funding to carry out their wishes. The DCSF being the sneaky shadowy ministry it is informs the County they cannot have any money UNLESS they get some Academies off the ground first. There were no Academies in Cumbria at this time because there was no need for them. The DCSF simply see a county without Academies so they say it needs some. They do not see that Cumbria only has one city and one large town within its borders and is mainly rural in nature.

To get Building Schools for the Future funding which they needed to lay waste to the infant and nursery schools on the request of the Labour government Cumbria County Council had to create Academies. This is where the corruption enters the fray.
There is no financial corruption whereby individuals gain financially from deals or individuals get juicy posts, new houses, new cars, holiday's in the sun at someone else's expense. I have seen no evidence of that.
The corruption is in the democratic process. People get corrupted into going along with whatever is in play or else they will lose their jobs. People are conned into backing something they don't believe in because the alternative would be even worse. Public accountability is ignored, public scrutiny is sidelined and once these safeguards have been nullified then anything can and does happen. The minute any politician large or small says 'well you have a vote' it is clear the democratic process has been utterly sidelined and corrupted.

Cumbria County Council had to build Academies. Naturally this mad Government had to give it some government (taxpayer) money to build the Academies which is really, really mad when you think about it, because the County Council has no real funds of it's own.
Yes we all pay Council tax but the real truth is that all councils get the bulk of their funding from the Government so there is no real need for council tax or rates or any levy raised on the home you live in or the business premises you work in, but I digress sorry.
Moving on
So the Labour Government won't give the County any BSF (taxpayer) funding until it has Academies and that same Labour Government then gives that same County the (taxpayer) money to build those Academies!
See democratic corruption in action.
It is social engineering on a massive scale by a democratically corrupt socialist government. It is frightening because it is on a path to creating a socialist utopia of clones and anyone who does not conform is not welcome. Not that I think the next government will be much different at least the Conservatives and the Lib Dems seem to have a better understanding of business and what it achieves for the people.

Cumbria County Council had to decide where to locate these Academies. Carlisle was the obvious place to build one as it is the only city in Cumbria. Outside of Carlisle the next obvious target in population terms is Barrow. Beyond that the County were really struggling but eventually they settled on Egremont for another. At some point in this process the County Council appear to either have decided on a number or more likely have been told by the DCSF the number of Academies they have to create and that was set at four.
The logical way to achieve this target was to actually create two in Carlisle and two in Barrow.
This is where local politics comes into play.
Cumbria County Council has known since the creation of the county that the people of Barrow and Furness do not see themselves as being part of Cumbria. They see themselves as Lancastrians and I am quite happy to count myself amongst those who see themselves in this way. We resent the interference of those in the north of Cumbria as rightly or wrongly they are perceived as dominating the County Council. So creating one Academy in Barrow is going to be very difficult let alone two.
Carlisle is also the defacto capital of Cumbria so if the County started in Barrow there would be considerable uproar in Carlisle. The end result is Carlisle was chosen as the guinea pig.
At this point it appears that a deal was struck between the County and Kier construction plc for all four Academies to be built by the one approved contractor. I am not sure at all how this unique deal came about. It may really be that the only way to bring in four new Academies within the government's allotted Cumbrian Academy budget was to do a deal with a single approved contractor. Without any evidence to the contrary this will have to stand as the reason why this deal between County Council and Academy builder was done.

It did not go well in Carlisle.
Although sparsely reported by the Evening Mail there was strong city wide opposition to the Academy creation process in Carlisle from the moment it went public. The people, the democratic voice was sidelined, cowed and in the end simply ignored by the County Council. They road roughshod over some genuine and well argued concerns because they were marching to the orders of a higher authority, the socialist Labour government.
The twin Richard Rose Academies came into being.
The next logical target was Barrow. It was the next biggest population centre, it contained a school that the County had wanted to close for years, Alfred Barrow. Along with Thorncliffe it was struggling with special measures, national challenge, intervention and at Thorncliffe there was some really poor leadership which was depressing results. The County could close both of these schools and merge them into a single Academy but it for some reason it decided against and looked west to Egremont.
I assume, always dangerous but in the absence of hard facts as the democratic process in this country takes place behind locked doors because it really is so corrupt there is no option but assume, that a decision was taken that it would be too risky to take Barrow on without evidence from Carlisle Academies that the Academy schools were a big improvement over their predecessors. Instead the county repeated it's sham consultation process in Egremont and West Lakes Academy came into being.
The wheels then began to come off as Richard Rose Central suffered a pupil protest that ended with its unique and highly qualified leadership team being sacked and the school itself went into special measures after an emergency Ofsted inspection found serious failings. So serious that they have yet to be fixed and the school is still in special measures.

After West Lakes there was now no option but to go ahead in Barrow.  There was no good news from Carlisle to pour oil on the waters so it was a case of bite the bullet.
There had bee a lot of preparatory work going on behind those locked doors.
The decision had already been taken to take Alfred Barrow out of existence many years previously. A cursory glance at Alfred Barrow and Thorncliffe reveals that neither has sufficient land to construct a new Academy on to take the combined pupil population. One school in Barrow did have that land, 62 acres of land and it could easily accommodate a new build school alongside the old. That school was Parkview.
Parkview was a foundation school unlike the two chosen for the block and it was not failing in any way shape or form. There seemed to be no justification for including Parkview other than it's land. So another way had to be found.
That way was through some little known, outside of Academic circles, (yet more democratic corruption) organisation called the Furness Education Consortium. This was made up of education professionals from the Barrow area and was tasked with improving the education of the children living in the area. It was run under the auspices of the County Council and was the ideal 'arms length' vehicle to persuade the wider teaching establishment and a sceptical public that the Academy was the only game in town.
To this end they were very successful. They managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the frontline teachers, the management grade teachers and at the same time managed to cow the objections of those heads and educationalists who could see through it all and raised their hands in objection. The public were 'dealt with' by some compliant socialist councillors.

Through it's reporting back to Cumbria County Council it was able to deliver the verdict that the time was right and Cumbria County Council went public with it's most ambitious merger which would take out three existing secondary schools and force them into one Academy.
There was a big problem though.
Despite extensive behind locked doors lobbying and canvassing none of the big companies in Furness were in the least bit interested in running a school. Neither were any of the smaller entrepreneur led companies, which showed the Barrow Business Consortium was a total fabrication. Without sponsors the County Council would have no school. Even the government couldn't get round this obstacle.
In desperation, even though they knew it wouldn't play well in Barrow, the County Council turned to Messrs Tinkler and Scowcroft the multi-millionaire sponsors of the Richard Rose Academies. It was a massive gamble but they had to take it as there was no other option.

What happened next is really unclear because again this is a corrupt 'behind locked doors' democracy so nothing is ever discussed openly before a decision has been taken. But at some point someone said 'why not try for the educational establishments' as sponsors?
What is clear that around this time the government realised that there aren't enough businesses interested nationwide and also there are not enough interested faiths to run their Academy schools so it relaxed the rules so anyone with 'good intent' could be a sponsor of an Academy and they also withdrew the sham of a £2M financial commitment which few businesses had coughed up anyway.

At some point the County Council approached Furness College, The Sixth Form College and the embryonic University of Cumbria to see if they would be willing to take part in a unique opportunity. Or perhaps as all of the establishments are controlled by the County Council they were simply told to sponsor an Academy in Barrow who really knows? Either scenario is believable but I favour the latter.
Again it didn't go well.
Because the County had already asked Mr Scowcroft and Mr Tinkler to be involved so they had to push ahead with a joint business and education sponsor blend.
They didn't reckon on Dave Kelly who refused point blank to be an equal sponsor with Mr Scowcroft with the end result that the Barrow Academy would have three educational sponsors and no business sponsors.

The County Council then rolled out its expensive and pointless public consultation exercise which it had perfected with the help of the CN Group Research who crunched the numbers on behalf of the County Council. Even when that public consultation revealed that the people of Barrow who could be bothered replying didn't want to lose a single secondary school, let alone three, all the County did was hijack the silent majority and used their apathy as justification for the chosen course of action.
They played up the fact that Barrow's Academy was to be education led without a businessman or woman in sight.

Then they hit another seemingly insurmountable problem.
Despite advertising for the post of principal at a pay grade of £100K and a 'lakes location' nobody of 'sufficient calibre' came forward to apply for the job, allegedly. This left the project in crisis. Without a principal in post the school couldn't be created.
So the post was re-advertised with an extra £35K in the pot and an 'enhanced package'. This attracted a few applicants and a principal was duly appointed. Now there appeared to be nothing to stop Cumbria County Council from fulfilling its promise to the DCSF so it could get it's BSF pay off so it could comply with another DCSF aka Labour policy.

However a large group of parents belatedly woke up to what was really going on and formed themselves into a parents group supported by a smaller group of already committed parents and grandparents who had seen through the scheme from day one and campaigned tirelessly for the parents of Barrow to open their eyes.
This must have worried the County Council as the signing off on the funding agreement had allegedly been delayed by a court action in Camden.

What the County Council didn't see coming was the pupil protests the biggest of which was at Parkview. The kids had organised themselves to try to save their school as the adults involved appeared to be unable to stop it from closing. They contacted the local paper about the shocking treatment of their teachers, by the Academy company and its contractors, which left many teachers in tears and unable to teach.
They then informed the school head that they would be protesting on a specific day between specific times and he agreed they could protest as that was their democratic right provided they returned to school when they said they would.
Then the real babies got involved with County Councillors and Civil servants entering the school to try and prevent this protest from going ahead. They held behind locked door meetings (corrupt democracy yet again) with the head and deputy heads of the school and even spoke with the protest leaders. The head was forced to try and prevent it through an emergency whole school assembly but the pupils had had enough and they walked out of school.
Despite the the majority of the teaching staff supporting the protest they were warned by civil servants that if they joined the protest they would be disciplined and so it was just the kids who took to Parkviews fields to try and save the school. The teachers and support staff went as far as they thought they could without being disciplined, the car park.

This was followed by a parents meeting outside the town hall where 250 people turned up and found out that Terry Waiting's town square folly was a really cold place when the wind blew. But like the pupil protest the parents protest was ignored by the County Council and the Camden case failed and so the DCSF moved very quickly to allegedly sign off on the twin site funding agreement and Parkview, Alfred Barrow and Thorncliffe went out of existence.

The County Council had expected a fight and they got one. It was a very close thing and if the teaching staff hadn't been conned and cowed by the civil servants and the sponsors the outcome could have been very different but the past is where it belongs in the past.

So where is the Academy School today?
Well the Company formed to run the school has lost one of it's directors and it will have lost a second by the end of this month. As these directors of the company are also the sponsors of the school this is a poor state of affairs. Even worse these directors are also governors. The governing body has never been convened and so the school is being run, allegedly, by a temporary governing body whose make up isn't made clear as Furness Academy Limited is a private company  so it doesn't have to reveal anything about the way it goes about it's business and it doesn't.

What has really happened is that Barrovian parents have been forced by the socialist government to hand over responsibility for the education of their children to a wholly state owned but private company that is not in any way publicly accountable. As it is a private company it can teach their customers (the kids) anyway it's directors see fit and if parents don't like it they can always remove them from the company's school and place them in other publicly accountable schools, private schools or educate them at home.
The directors do not have to inform anyone about anything they are doing and they are not accountable to any higher authority other than the DCSF.
All local accountability and scrutiny has been removed.
The County Council has been forced to create this school and hand it over to this private company and it now has no say whatsoever in the running of this school.
If you go and ask the County Council for any sort of assistance tough luck because all they will say, quite rightly, it's a private school we cannot intervene.

So who do you go to if you have an issue with the education this school is providing for your child or your children?
The theory is you go to the principal.
He is the top of the tree in terms of school management. He is the responsible person in the school and he is also the Chief Operating Officer of Furness Academy Limited.
If he is unable or unwilling to solve your problem the theory states you then have to go to the board of governors.
As it stands at the moment this board does not exist. There is a temporary board in place but no-one outside of the company and possibly the school management seems to know who is on this temporary board nor is it clear what powers it has.
What is clear is that the principal is a member of this temporary board and as he has already failed to deal with your grievance there is little point in going to the governors temporary or otherwise.

The final solution, as the theory goes is to meet with the sponsors.
Not a sponsor but the sponsors. The sponsors are actually colleges and a University but as they cannot speak or communicate in any form it is three people who are chosen to represent the sponsors who actually do the work on behalf of the sponsor.
At present there are two sponsors representatives who are also directors of Furness Academy Limited. Along with the principal and CEO they run the company that runs the schools at least that's the theory.
You can take your grievance to the sponsors representatives and they are supposed to help you sort it all out.

If that fails then in theory you can take up the issue with the directors and CEO of the company but as these are exactly the same people you have already dealt with there is no point in dealing with them because although they may wear a different hat they are still the same people with the same viewpoint.

At this point the only course of action open to you is Ofsted or your MP.
You can lodge your grievance with Ofsted where an anonymous civil servant will decide if there is anything to bother an Ofsted inspector with. If they decide there isn't the ultimate course of action is writing a letter requesting a meeting with your MP and there you really are in the lap of the gods.

Furness Academy Limited will be down to one director, one sponsor representative and one sponsor governor by the end of February. It has made no announcement about this perilous position, it has not told anyone who if anyone has replaced the University sponsor representative in fact as a company it is saying nothing about anything. It doesn't have to because it is at the end of the day a wholly government owned private company.

This for me personally is the root cause of all the frustration, issues, problems, anger that appear in the comments on this blog. The DCSF, the County Council, the sponsors and the principal have made some massive promises to the children and parents. These promises are not being kept.

If this were a private company reliant on the efforts of it's owners, managers and workforce to earn profits to pay wages and dividends then things would have to change pretty quickly or else their customers would take their custom elsewhere and the company would go out of business as it wouldn't be able to service it's debts.
As it is some sort of strange socialist Labour invention it doesn't have these commercial pressures. The treasury hands over its annual budget no matter what happens in the marketplace and the company is free from all commercial constraint to spend this budget as it's directors and CEO see fit.
If they make a commercial mistake it doesn't have any impact because next years budget, doled out by the Treasury, will always be higher than the one they have just spent.
In actual fact this company is operating beyond its capacity.

Nothing that happens in the real world affects the socialists world in which this company operates other than the possible impact the parlous state of the country's finances may have on the new build. The fact the one site build is now back on the scene suggests that money is tight to say the least.
Other than financial considerations though the way the Academy Company has been set up means it is judge, jury and executioner which answers only to the DCSF.

Going forwards what is clear to all except Gordon Brown, John Hutton, Edward Balls and John Woodcock, is that there will have to be massive cuts in public spending in the next financial year and for many years to come to try and pay down the enormous debt that is still growing with every passing second no matter which political party is in power.
The people who will actually take the decision about the one or two site option and measure whether the school has been a success or a failure will still be in their posts as they are civil servants employed by the state. The ministers who are involved may change so all we can hope is that these new ministers and MP's can wrest control from the civil servants and devolve decision making back down to a local level and by local I mean town and city level.

We need to remember that Richard Rose Central Academy is in special measures, West Lakes Academy missed the drop by a whisker and has had to sack it's principal. Richard Rose Morton Academy seems to be serving its customers well as it has been nowhere near special measures and Furness Academy is... well no-one outside of the company or the school really knows where it is in delivering an improved education over its predecessors.
The Academy company directors or CEO will only speak through the Evening Mail or MC2 and they constantly talks things up.
All that is known from some of the comments on the blog, on the Evening Mail's comments boards and the parents group & others pages on Facebook is that there are many problems withinthe school. Some are petty, some are serious but by refusing to acknowledge them in public the sponsors and directors of the company are making things worse.

I have asked many times on this blog for success stories from pupils, parents, staff, managers, sponsors and sadly none have been forthcoming. There may be a lot of reasons for this not least of which is most people are unaware of this blogs existence. But the fact there has been no success stories at all not a one suggests that they are thin on the ground.

The future of secondary education in Barrow is far from certain.
Just by running the numbers it's clear that the Academy is 'over manned', as it were, by around 500 children. The company directors have said that they have to get down to 1200 pupils in two years time so that leaves around 500 kids going to other schools in the area or into other forms of education.
Some will go to Dowdales, UVHS and probably Queen Elizabeth Grammar school in Lancaster as parents try to figure out what is best for their children.
Still others will have no option but to send their children to Walney or St Bernards as the Academy will be full simply due to the numbers.
Walney and St Bernards are having extra classrooms built to accommodate these 'surplus' Academy children. Children within the Academy catchment area will be forced to go outside of the Academy to find a school place because the Academy is choking off its intake to get the numbers down.
How this will play with parents remains to be seen but it is going to happen.

The success or failure of the Academy in its first year of operation will decide how many parents of existing Academy children seek alternative schooling for them but assuming a lot want to move their children they may not be able to as the remaining state schools barring Walney are full, or nearly full and St Bernards is full.
If the Academy is successful then the numbers of parents wanting to move their children will be much lower which makes the Academy company's job of getting the school down to a population of 1200 becomes all the more difficult. It has effectively put itself in a no win situation.  Or more accurately it has been put into a no win situation by this government.

There is always the alternative of home schooling for some but not for all. In many families one or both parents work, that is assuming each family has two parents in it which many don't. In other families the children look after the parent(s) and are still expected to go out and get an education. There is no easy answer for any family.
The same is true of direct action to make things become more open and transparent so parents and children can make informed choices based on what is best for their personal circumstance. During the Parkview protests there were few parents who turned up to support their children because the children protested during their morning break when most parents would be at work. Few employers would be willing to give their staff time off to support a school protest.
The same was true of the parents protest at the town hall. There were only 250 people there and that included children. Parents were still at work.
This is how the DCSF, the County Council and the sponsors are able to maintain things the way they say they should be. Unless people stand up for themselves and for each other the powers that be can get away with anything.

It doesn't have to be like this.