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Father furious at wasted year
Parent blasts ‘derisory’ £2,250 damages after authority fails to find school place for his daughter. Jon Slater reports
A father offered £2,250 compensation after a council was blamed for his daughter missing a year’s schooling has criticised the award as “totally derisory and unacceptable”.
Dave Klein said the money was insufficient to make up for what Keri-Dawn, his teenage daughter, had missed.
“How do you value at least one year’s education? It’s priceless,“ he said.
Keri-Dawn quit Aylwin school, a comprehensive in the London borough of Southwark, in summer 2000 aged 12 after complaining that she was being bullied.
She spent two years out of school after refusing to accept a place in a pupil referral unit and rejecting a secondary in a neighbouring borough.
Keri-Dawn eventually won a place at Geoffrey Chaucer School in Southwark with the support of an appeal panel and returned to school in September 2002.
She sat GCSEs this summer gaining three Ds and three Fs and is now attending Southwark further education college.
Jerry White, the local government ombudsman, found Southwark council guilty of maladministration in the way it dealt with Keri-Dawn’s absence from school.
He found that significant failings in the council’s procedure had increased the time she spent out of school by up to a year.
Mr White said Southwark’s failure to inform Keri-Dawn’s parents of the right to appeal against the refusal of other schools to offer her a place until 2002 was likely to have cost her a year’s schooling.
But he also said her parents must accept a substantial part of the blame for failing to exercise their legal responsibility to ensure she attended school. Mr White recommended that the council pay £2,000 to be spent on Keri-Dawn’s education and £250 as compensation for the time taken by Mr Klein in pursuing his complaint.
There is no limit to awards that can be made by the ombudsman but councils can refuse to pay if they believe they have been unfairly treated. Mr White said:”I have to decide what is reasonable for the public purse to bear given that this money will come out of Southwark’s education budget.”
Mr Klein has complained to the ombudsman about the remedy.
“A £2,000 tag on at least a year’s education is incredible – it will buy between 80 to 100 hours of private tutoring, equivalent to two to three weeks at school. Regarding my time, £250 is ok if you value it at £1 to £1.25 an hour. The minimum wage is £4.85.”
Mr Klein wants the officers responsible to be demoted and for Southwark to take action against WS Atkins, the private consultancy business that ran the borough’s education service at the time.
A council spokeswoman said: “We are pleased that the Ombudsman recognised that the parents must take some responsibility for the gap in this child’s education.
Cambridge Education Associates [who now run schools’ services] and Southwark Council have jointly reviewed the processes that had been in place for some time to avoid this happening again.” (TES 29/10/04)
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Governors from Rotherhithe primary school walk out in ‘decisions’ protest
Nearly half of the governors of a primary school in Rotherhithe have resigned, in protest at being asked to “rubber stamp decisions being made by others in private”.
In a letter handed to the council’s education authority, seven of the fifteen governors at Redriff School on Salter Road say: “We no longer feel able to act as a critical friend to Head teacher Mickey Kelly.”
The “decisions made in private” reportedly include negotiations over the controversial Barratt planning application for the Downtown site: 4.7 acres of land adjacent to the school, ear-marked for redevelopment.
The seven resigning governors include the former chair, Ilkan Osman, the vice chair, the LEA governor, and Reverend Andrew Doyle of Trinity Church, Rural Dean of Bermondsey.
The letter complains of the “domineering behaviour” of the head, “the constant undermining of the previous chair of governors” (Ilkan Osman), and concludes: “The trust between the undersigned members of the governing body and the head has been lost by the actions of the head teacher.”
The first outward sign of the fracas came in September when Ilkan Osman, chair and a long tine governor at the school was unseated by a surprise challenger at the first meeting of the school year.
“When Ilkan was there we felt secure,” said one former governor. “He asked questions.”
While property developers Barratt have submitted an application for the neighbouring Downtown site, promising a creche and a centre for the community, governors say the possible management of the community centre by the school was presented to them as a done deal.
“I just wish it was all out in the open and wasn’t presented as “This is the only viable one.” It should be discussed,” said a former governor. “He is a good head and he has pulled this school around, but at what cost?”
This week the school was on half term and the ‘News’ was unable to contact Mr Kelly at the time of going to press. A council spokesperson said: “We are aware of the situation and are working with the governors and the school to support them in resolving it.” (Southwark News 28.10.04)
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MP calls for an outdated school hit list
Simon Hughes MP has asked the independent commission currently reviewing primary schooling in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe to draw up a hit list of school buildings that are least able to continue as schools.
Addressing the commission, which includes a parent, a governor, two council officers and a director from the Institute of Education, the North Southwark and Bermondsey MP said: “We need to decide which are the schools which are least capable to carry on and need to be replaced.”
The twenty primary schools in the two districts had a surplus of 845 places this year, but by 2010, with new developments fostering a rising population, the council expects a shortage, rising in each subsequent year if nothing is done.
The commission will look at the possibilities of expanding existing primaries, or moving them to new larger sites, as well as considering new ideas in primary education: longer school hours, same site nursery provision and opening up facilities to the neighbouring community when the pupils leave.
“I have nothing against Victorian schools,” said Mr Hughes, “Some are very well used, but schools on three or four storeys are really no good. Old primary schools will be snapped up by developers to be made into luxury flats. There is no problem in disposing of them.
There is a cross-party consensus on the general unsuitability of Victorian buildings, however Labour Education spokesman, Cllr Andy Simmons, urged caution. “If we flog off schools where are we going to build the new ones?” he said. “Are we proposing knocking down flats, or building on parks? Whether or not we have enough spaces to do what Simon Hughes is proposing is a totally different matter.”
The commission will tour primary grounds and buildings; last week they met with heads and governors; there are plans to consult parents and, not least, pupils themselves on what they want out of their schools. A council spokesperson told the ‘News’; “By taking this action now we are avoiding a shortage of primary school places In the future. Options proposed by the commission will be considered by the council Executive at the end of November.”
Mr Hughes said: “The review was something I suggested to council colleagues that they do, as a better way of planning primary schools provision rather than site provision. The council was also prompted by what happened at Galleywall - it was clear that the decision about that school should not be taken in isolation.
The crumbling Victorian structure that houses Galleywall is a prime example for the panel of the type of building that is no longer deemed suitable for primary education. It is also typical of Bermondsey, where eight of eleven schools date to the nineteenth century. Parents and teachers recently campaigned to convince the council that the school should not be allowed to close.
Rotherhithe fares far better, with eight of its nine schools accommodated in modern buildings – pre-dominantly single storey.
“But it would be wrong to close a school on the basis of a recent history of poor management,” said Mr Hughes. “The parents and children and community would really feel aggrieved that here was a school closing through nothing that they had done wrong.” He gives the example of Grange Primary School – once languishing at the bottom of the country’s league tables, now prospering.
If it were decided that Galleywall should be demolished and rebuilt, he suggests the panel consider temporarily amalgamating the primary with neighbouring Ilderton – “so the parents can stay together, kids can stay together, and guarantee that everyone who wants to has the right to return to the new school.”
But if other Bermondsey school buildings are also considered unsuitable, the panel is considering the prospect that the old brick primaries would be snapped up by developers for stylised high-rent flats. “If we lose a school site we need to start trading for a new one,” said John Russell from the Southwark Diocese Board of Education. “I have had talks with developers and they would be much more interested in giving a site over if they got other school sites that they could use.
Then there is the site at Potters Fields, Tower Bridge. Once a Grammar School, the old building has been bought by Berkeley Homes, but there is a covenant on the building: that it should remain for educational use.
The adjacent lot of land is part owned by the company and the council: both await the results of a public inquiry over the company’s application to build eight cylindrical blocks of flats there.
“I feel very strongly that the old grammar school should be used as a school again,” said Mr Hughes. “It’s about the history of Bermondsey, and people feeling it hasn’t been swallowed up by developers. It’s a one off opportunity and if we lose it now…”.
It is believed that Berkeley Homes might be willing to relinquish the site as a key bargaining chip, in return for a site elsewhere. The idea would be to build an exemplary modern primary, with three or four entry classes, in which to house three neighbouring schools – Snowfields, Tower Bridge and Grange Primary.
But Conservative councillor Kim Humphreys said the council should be careful when moving towards larger primaries. “When young children go to their first school it’s important there is an element of intimacy there,” he said.
With a greater proportion of parents in work, the commission is also looking at longer hours for primary school (in sync with government review of 8am-6pm school hours) and nursery provision.
“Where we can, let’s provide council tax payer funded nurseries,” said Mr Hughes. “Where we can provide nursery schools attached to primaries we should try to do that.”
Security, expected to become an ever more pressing issue, would be made easier with same site nursery provision, and Hughes believes entry to primary schools should be linked to nursery schools. Perhaps more controversially, he also believes primaries should be partially linked to secondaries. “If you are trying to build networks and peer support groups then at that age it makes sense,” he said.
Provision of outdoor facilities is being considered as particularly important in Southwark, as of all London Boroughs it has the largest proportion of children living in local authority housing. These facilities at primaries provide so-called “wrap around care” for the community after hours.
“People would be more prepared to use facilities at a primary school than at a secondary school – where the people are bigger, it can be more intimidating,” said John Russell, of the commission.
Speaking at the Cathedral Primary School’s 300th anniversary, council leader Nick Stanton explained the vision: “There is a housing estate there, there and there,” he said, pointing around the school grounds. “So during the day it’s a school, but after school you can keep the whole thing open so that the local kids can play there. We need to be more flexible about the way we think of space.” (Southwark News 28.10.04)
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Peckham kids display safety posters
Children from Gloucester Primary School, Peckham, stand proudly next to their winning designs.
Countryside Properties laid down the gauntlet with an in-school talk on building site safety, finishing in a competition for the best building-site-safety poster.
Cheryl Bruce, 9, won first prize of £175. She said: “I’m happy”, but wasn’t divulging how she planned to spend her winnings. Loan Nguyen, 10 and Kenya Freitas, 6, won second and third prize respectively.
Countrywide Properties are building 189 flats nearby, off Chandler Way, Construction director Mick Hill explained: “We are part of the Considerate Contractors’ Scheme. It’s all about getting involved with the community.” (Southwark News 28.10.04)
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A walk through the corridors of power
Many of the Elephant & Castle students had no doubt taken the number 12 bus past Big Ben before but actually walking down the corridors of power was a rather different experience.
“They live just ten minutes away and yet often it’s a different world,” said Geoffrey Chaucer College teacher, Daniel Syrett, as the group of 13 year olds swept through the gothic lobbies of the Palace. The day before they had seen the Imagination building in the West End and soon an architect from Junior Openhouse would be leading them around the new parliamentary offices of Portcullis House. “Sometimes students can struggle with creating, but watching how professionals work can really inspire them,” Mr Syrett said.
“It’s like an art class but much more interesting,” said pupil Rubab Hussain. “None of these walls are boring. You need to be a real artist to do that. You need a very steady hand for those tiles”, he said, gesturing to the tilers, replacing the intricate floral tiling on the floor of central lobby.
Within 50 yards were arguably the two most important rooms in British history: Westminster Hall, venue for the trial of the gunpowder conspirators, the execution of Charles I and Churchill’s lying in state and the House of Commons, the home of British democracy. (Southwark News 28.10.04)
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St Saviour’s new status
St Saviour’s and St Olave’s have started their second century on their Elephant and Castle site by being granted Specialist Science College status.
The specialist status is recognition of the quality of the school’s science teaching and will mean extra funding to further facilities and science expertise at the girls’ school.
Simon Hughes, MP for North Southwark and Bermondsey, was at the school for the formal launch of the new science college and said: “This is great news. London and Britain could not have got to where they are today without our scientists. And Southwark, with people like Michael Faraday, has a proud tradition too. Some of the best scientists in the world are women and it is a great career opportunity.”
Headteacher, Dr Irene Bishop, said the launch had been a great success and that it meant the school could move forward and build on past achievements. “For our girls, it means that we can offer them even greater opportunities for learning and success,” she said. “We are also looking forward to sharing our expertise in a variety of projects with the local community.” (Southwark News 21/10/2004)
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Every little helps!
Months of collecting Tesco vouchers paid off for the kids of five Southwark primary schools as local MP Simon Hughes presented them with free computer equipment.
“I am very pleased to be back at Tesco’s to support their Computers for Schools,” said Mr Hughes, on his visit to the Old Kent Road store. “This is a community commitment that has stood the test of time,” he said, before asking the children what a computer could be useful for. “Rubbing out without making a smudge,” one youngster replied succinctly, raising a smile.
St Joseph’s, Galleywall, St James’ and Grange primary schools have all benefited this year from the programme, which has distributed over £84million of equipment since starting eleven years ago. (Southwark News 21/10/2004)
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Princess Anne at school’s birthday
Princess Anne and Borough children unveiled a 250 kilo bronze sculpture outside their school’s front porch on Thursday, to mark their primary’s 300th birthday.
Cathedral School of St Saviour and St Mary Overie was founded in 1704, in a dark cramped alley in London Bridge, possibly as a reaction of a string of misfortunes – plague, fire and a great storm – that were interpreted as signs of divine displeasure.
Three hundred years on it is one of the most successful schools in Southwark, and to celebrate its anniversary, sculptor Gerda Rubenstein created a bronze cast of a boy and girl, among the figures three zero zero.
“How do you represent 300 years,“ she said, “without a sign or a label? I took a boy and a girl of mixed race, and the numbers in the sculpture just got bigger and bigger, almost like a climbing frame. The boy is talking with a book in his hand – he’s not talking Shakespeare – he’s too young – and not Harry Potter because that may not be around in a few years. He’s reading the poet who lived next door to here: William Davies.”
The poet is the author of the lines: “What is life, if full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare?”
Mrs Rubenstein said: “That’s very relevant now with the speed of life today.”
Admiring the sculpture, Princess Anne said she thought it was “Interesting.”
“Well, you are welcome to stand and stare at that,” she told children.
(Southwark News 14/10/2004)
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Cathedral’s Primary Colours
The children are stood behind a line waving flags, making a tremendous racket. Her Royal Highness Princess Anne steps out of a black car, and walks down the line beside Sylvia Morris, head mistress at Cathedral School of St Saviour and St Mary Overie, writes Will Pavia.
“She said something about my clothes,” said Elsie from year five, who is dressed for the occasion in Georgian school uniform. “I thought she would be kind of young, because a boy in our class told me she was young. But she was older.”
Before Elsie and her classmates, children have been attending Cathedral School for three hundred years. Last Thursday, the tercentenary, the school crowned a week of celebrations with the royal visit, a new brass sculpture, and the publication of a book: Cathedral Children, written by Ruth Sylvestre, with help from Ms Morris, who went through the school’s formidable archives to dig up accounts of naughty children, drunk masters and outbreaks of measles over three centuries.
The school was founded in 1704 – on the back of what looks like a national outbreak of fear and guilt.
The year before the country had been hit by what is still regarded as the worst storm ever to strike this temperate isle. It started in the tropics, raged across the Atlantic and unleashed itself on London for six hours. Bricks, tiles and chimneys flew, ships were blown off their moorings and smashed to pieces downstream. Forty years before, when plague ravaged the capital, some of the more morbid types around Borough had expressed the opinion that it was a punishment sent from God. Then, in 1666 there was The Great Fire, followed a year later by a fleet of devilish Dutchmen sailing up the Thames, bold as you like, and burning English ships.
After the Great Storm even the more happy-go-lucky sort were admitting that something was up; that some work of charity had to be done before the Almighty was consumed with wrath and finished off the lot of them. On gifts of money, 56 parish schools were founded in 1704.
Cathedral School began “unhappily in a dark alley” in “cramped quarters near Angel Court”, catering for 30 poor boys. Two years later, in 1706, St Saviour’s Charity School for girls was set up. The money came from Dorothy Appleby, who had earlier bequeathed £21, a Mr Benjamin Sterry, a haberdasher, John Collett whose sons had both died before him, and a rich widow by the name of Elizabeth Newcomen, whose name would be given to a nearby street. She wanted boys to be given “new suits at Whitsun, an overcoat in winter, a cap and boots, “and girls “a blue serge dress, a petticoat, a cap and boots.”
The boys and girls were schooled seven till five weekdays, and on Saturday mornings, until they were fourteen. Then the boys would be placed in an apprenticeship with a master craftsman, to learn trades such as oar making, fishmongering, or ship making, paid by the trustees of the school.
The trustees started paying the craftsman directly after one boy, Dave Dorrell, simply went to work for his father, who pocketed the apprenticeship money.
Discipline was a big issue in the early days. A boy called Thomas threw a dead cat at the daughter of one of the trustees. Another boy stole candles – yet another was reprimanded for ‘singing ballads’. Meanwhile a headmaster, one Mr Morton was found to be arriving late, not supervising the boys, and sending them on errands. Another head was found drunk at work by one of the visiting trustees.
The parents needed to be told what was what too – around 1786 a committee established a set of rules for them. They must return all the Sunday clothes in a bag on Monday, they should stop their offspring playing unlawful games in the street, and in particular, stop them ‘strolling about’ on Sunday.
The school struggled with debts, as did several headmasters there, one ended up in the marshalsea Debtors Prison, another, the unfortunate Mr Gregg, died in poverty as he struggled to support his family.
But the school survived, moving in 1908 to a building on an old prostitutes’ graveyard by Union Street, now known as the Crossbones Graveyard.
By this time the school fell under the London County Council. Children were taught history, geography and reading, with special attention to “the growth and character of the British Empire.” In assembly they sung the national anthem, and “other patriotic songs” before marching past the flag. The imperial pride was tempered in the following years, with two world wars.
Frances West was a pupil at the school before the Second World War, and returned last Thursday. “I was at the school from the age of three,” she said. “I was thirteen when the war started. I didn’t know then that it was an old grave yard.”
For Frances, arriving at the school’s present premises on Redcross Way brings back a double dose of memories.
She was born and grew up in a tenement where the new school building now stands.
When war broke out, the school was uprooted and moved out of London, before relocating again to Talgarth, near Brecon, in Wales. “The Mums were saying ‘You will be back in a few weeks,” she said. “Little did we realise it would be a few years.”
She still writes to the Welsh family she stayed with, and that is how author Ruth Sylvestre tracked her down. Now 78, she has returned to talk to the children of her old school. She smiles shyly, as we wait for Princess Anne to unveil the new sculpture, marking the 300 year anniversary. “I’m the missing link, “she says.
Cathedral Children with illustrations by current pupils is available from the school, priced £12, a pound of which goes to a charity of the children’s choice. (Southwark News 14/10/2004)
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Walworth Kids wonder at Science
Walworth School pupils will be working with professors at King’s College London on a pioneering new project to modernise science teaching through the use of the latest Nobel prize winning research.
Over the coming six months pupils will work alongside the professors at one of the world’s leading teaching hospitals to design new teaching resources, which link state-of-the art medical technology to key concepts for GCSE science. The hope is that more young people can be encouraged to continue studying what is all too frequently seen as a fusty subject.
Recent figures show that the number of students taking science A-levels fell by 6.5 per cent last year – a problem compounded in areas like Walworth where stereotypes perpetuate the notion that inner-city kids can only flourish at music and sport.
“There’s a real risk that we will lose out,” said Professor Derek Hill, an ex-Southwark pupil who is now leading the programme.
“The UK economy really relies on science and engineering, from fields as diverse as computer game design to healthcare. So we want to encourage young people to see the exciting side of science.”
The project certainly seems to have caught the attention of the fifteen pupils selected to take part. “It’s much more interesting than the normal science classes,” said 14-year-old Michael Launchbury. “It’s more visual. The images in the body are very surreal.”
“I think it is proberly the best teaching aid that as a teacher I could hope for,” said Ms Alam, fresh back from having her group for a team-building weekend to a science centre in Cardiff.
“Many of the concepts of the medical imaging are those concepts at the centre of the curriculum: electricity, waves, radioactivity and maths,” said Prof. Hill before talking the assembled multitude through a journey of the human body as revealed through digital imaging.
The camera whirled and twirled its way through arteries and down colons, into lungs and around the brain cavity.
Yet this wasn’t a camera. It wasn’t virtual reality either, instead it was a visual created by computers combining hundreds of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging} scans which can take a ‘slice’ through the human body without making so much as a scratch.
The MRI scan has “undeniably revolutionised healthcare,” said the professor. A view shared by the Nobel committee who awarded its inventor, Sir Peter Mansfield, the Medicine prize last year. Sir Peter, who studied as a boy at William Penn School in Dulwich, is being held up as an example of what youngsters from Southwark’s traditional community schools can achieve if they aspire. “Able inner city kids have the potential to do very well in science but they seldom realise that.”
“Perhaps we can even come up with a backyard Walworth invention,” said Agyemong Jones with his eyes sparkling. (Southwark News 7/10/2004)
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Making her mark
St Michael’s pupil Katy Hatchards will be making her mark on Bermondsey as her winning design was picked by Berkeley Homes for a new development at the back of the school.
Eighty pupils at the secondary school competed to produce a detailed drawing of what they perceived to be the most practical and architecturally sound design for a funnel for the Tempus Meridian development at Bermondsey Wall West.
The ‘News’ attended the prize-giving last week to hand over Berkeley Homes’ prize of £70. The second and third placed pupils received a cheque of £40 and £30, with ten more getting £10 each.
Katy’s winning entry for the funnel, which will be used to mask a ventilation shaft for the underground car park, came with specific weather material and height requirements. Her steel sculpture with coloured lit glass will be a focal point of the development which comprises 42 studios, one and two bed-room apartments and penthouses. (Southwark News 7/10/2004)
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Denimstration
Pupils arrived at a Rotherhithe school on Friday wearing jeans beneath their blazers and ties.
The “denimstration”, (no mouth and all trousers) at Bacon’s College was to raise money for genetic research to cure childhood illnesses, as part of a nation-wide Jeans for Genes Appeal.
Doris Fergus, head of science at the college said: “Students and staff, they all pay a pound for the privilege, and we’ll be doing other collections around the school. The money gets divided up between eight different charities.”
Students and teachers from science, maths and design and technology departments later joined forces to create a giant double helix of DNA from denim. A small part of the genetic code can be responsible for disorders such as haemophilia or neurofibromatosis.
“I’m wearing Quicksilver jeans,” said Louis, from year nine, who stepped reluctantly out of a maths class to pose for the ‘News’. “I like it, although it would be better if we could wear whole outfits.”
His friend Charlie interjected: “It doesn’t look that strange with the school uniform. The girls look a bit more strange.”
Proceeds go to charities including Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. (Southwark News 7/10/2004)
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