Integrity

Some of you who have been reading my blog from its inception will know that the one virtue I hold dearest is that of integrity. The following resignation letter is a shining example of integrity.  To say that it made me feel proud to have fought the good fight with this passionate person would be a huge understatement. She is a Prendergast parent, who also happens to be a teacher, and I am lucky to now count her as an extremely supportive friend. It puts across the emotions we have been through so eloquently. Thank you Emma xxx 

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Dear Mr Coogan and Mr Hussain,

I’m writing to you to explain my decision to step down from my involvement with Friends of Prendergast Vale, including my position as Chair. This has been an incredibly emotional decision for me to take and I thought I should let you know the reasoning behind my thinking.

My involvement with the PTA at this school started in 2009 when my daughter Molly started at Lewisham Bridge Primary. I joined a healthy and active primary PTA where parents were campaigning against Lewisham Bridge closing. Despite what Andy Rothery says, it never failed an Ofsted inspection. In fact, the final Ofsted inspection graded many areas ‘Good’ including Leadership and Governance. I know as I was interviewed by the inspector as Parent Governor and Chair of Standards Committee.

As I’m sure you know, parents and staff lost the long and exhausting fight against becoming part of the Leathersellers’ Federation. Mood and morale was very low amongst parents and staff and for this reason I joined a small group of parents to become the founding members of Friends of Prendergast Vale. It was very difficult to get parents involved. The school was unpopular; many Lewisham Bridge families had left and most secondary pupils hadn’t listed the school anywhere on their list of preferences; failing their Ofsted inspection only increased this. People did not want to attend this school. Situations worsened after a few years when a pupil was stabbed on site. 

However, FoPV continued working hard to raise staff morale by coordinated shows of support such as ‘bake for staff’ days and group emails to let them know they were valued. We established yearly traditions such as the photo booth for prom, year 6 leavers t-shirts and reception families bowling trips. We also created a calendar of fundraising events helping to create the Summer Fair and the Primary Christmas Fair as well as raising money through estate agent boards and the summer raffle. At last, people started wanting to get involved and we hoped to expand out into supporting more events.

Then the Governing Body put in an application to form a MAT. Again, there was huge staff and parent opposition and we fought together –again- to protect our school. Thankfully, a group of Hilly Fields parents managed to find a legal loophole that prevented the MAT and school remained in current status. This proved good news for FoPV as parents, buoyed with the involvement and success of the anti-MAT campaign, got involved with FoPV. Staff told us they felt good and began to reach out to us for support with projects. We led several street art projects across various sites, buying Library Books on a yearly basis, Eco Schools project, musical instruments, second hand uniforms and of course our award winning Bleep Test fundraiser with the PE department.

In 14 years of involvement with the school, I had never known so much collaboration between staff and FoPV or had experienced such actively involved parents as part of our team. On top of this new parents were attending each FoPV meeting and more and more parents were getting involved. Around this time both of you came into post which lifted spirits even further. Mr Kamya had been incredibly unpopular with parents - most of whom had seen him as a barrier to engagement. Mr Coogan, you seemed genuine about wanting to engage with parents and work together for the benefit of all. I had never felt so positive about the future of Prendergast Vale. We were finding out more about the Leathersellers and worked in partnership with them to match fund our fundraising. I even attended two events at Leathersellers’ Hall representing FoPV.

Then everything changed with the announcement of plans to re-attempt to form a MAT. Morale of parents and staff nose-dived; the battles I mentioned earlier were too recent and only just healing. Myself, I am not a fan of the academy system but attended the consultation and was slightly reassured by what I heard. I felt that l if there was going to be a MAT, maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea: it sounded like the leadership and governance valued to views of stakeholders and wanted to engage them in the process. I wondered if, unlike the previous academisation attempt, this could end up boosting engagement as parents felt listened to and valued; I was keen to share my views and participate in the consultation.

However, it became clear that the consultation seemed more of a box-ticking exercise than a genuine outreaching to explore views in the community. The response to the consultation was overwhelmingly against forming a MAT - yet it seemed that nobody cared about this. We could feel staff’s pain as they felt no option but to take industrial action.

Next the Governing Body/Leaders sent appalling letters to parents that seemed to be deliberately attempting to turn parents against staff. Parents were divided and feeling like they had to pick a side. They were either ‘team staff’ or ‘team governing body’. Parents rowed with each other on social media and in the streets. Both staff and parents received vicious personal messages via social media accusing them of inciting teen suicide and worse. I had never felt such divide and hatred in our community. Not only were parents speaking this way to each other, they were also speaking this way about staff who taught their children and members of the Governing Body. As if that wasn’t bad enough some governors took to their own personal social media accounts and seemed to actively be fanning the flames of divide between the communities.

Some governors were in WhatsApp groups where parents spoke hatefully about staff. Not only did they not intervene, they only chipped in to conversation to deliberately escalate anti-staff feelings from parents. Governors told parents staff were ideologically opposed to MATs and that they were not prepared to listen or engage. Anyone who engaged with staff on picket lines etc. heard a different view. Staff had felt blindsided and untrusted in the process. For me this mirrored how I felt as a parent. Another aspect was that leadership and governance appeared so determined to undermine industrial action that they were prepared to break strikes through offering unsafe provision to students and without meeting the most basic of safeguarding duties of care.

We then had a glimmer of hope as it seemed there could be a chance of re-engaging stakeholders through a working party to explore other governance options as solutions for the issues raised. Given that parents had never been told there were any issues with governance or that school desired to expand the federation (I don’t think staff were aware either), this seemed like a good solution. We hoped that even if converting into a MAT was the best option then the community could be bought together. There was talk of exploring alternatives as a cross stakeholder group and, if none were found, that we could work together to create a MAT that we could all be proud of.

We were frustrated we had to wait so long for the next ACAS meeting and were confused that the GB wouldn’t meet before or during half term. However, for me it became clear that what the GB had to say they didn’t want staff to find out until it was too late for them to resign, i.e. not before the end of half term. Not only had all options of a working party, collaboration and re-engagement with stakeholders been removed from the table, but the government had stepped in at the request of leaders and governors to push this through in a manner that frankly sent the message to the whole community: “We know what you think and we don’t care, we’re doing this anyway.”

I know that neither of you were not instrumental in this. In fact, I will say that any letters that came specifically from Vale rather than the Federation tended to be worded more sensitively and have a kinder tone.

However, you both stood by and allowed other leaders and governors to tear our community apart. Zoom sessions by leadership and members of the governing body were just inflammatory, providing continually changing information, denial that events took place even when parents were well aware had happened; a willingness to send federation wide letters that undermined staff and turned parents against them and each other; a failure to call out and discipline governors that fuelled parental abuse of staff.

You failed to stand up for your staff and you failed to stand up for your parents. Being the most neutral party wasn’t enough to prevent the destruction across the federation from also ripping the soul out of Vale.

Throughout my time as a parent at this school I have championed the school. When parents didn’t want to choose this school I would be the first person telling them about the great experience we have had: how my children’s actually teachers always went above and beyond; how we were lucky enough to have Place 2 Be; how Vale valued all families, not just the ones who were guaranteed top grades.

I’ve been out in the community and on social media telling anyone who would listen that Vale is a great place for kids and has great staff that seemed to be really valued. Everything has changed. A leadership and governing body that chose to railroad an ideology at the expense of everything is not something I can stand with. We could have got on board with the MAT if we had been brought on the journey. We could have been united across the differing view around MATs.

Instead the people in charge decided that creating the MAT, come what may, was worth sacrificing everything for. Staff were treated appallingly, some have already left, some were tricked into not resigning by the pretence of engaging with a working parting and delaying the ACAS meeting. Teachers who have been at the school even longer than I have been a parent tell me morale has never, ever been as low as it is now. When you consider what they have been through, that is really something. Parents are divided, not only between each other but in hating either the staff and/or the GB. If this had happened despite leadership and governance’ best efforts, I would be throwing myself into reuniting the community right now. However, I cannot get behind working with schools that have deliberately inflicted this pain on their own communities.

I cannot even recommend the school any more as I don’t think that people who think this is an acceptable way to lead an organisation should be involved in working with children. Moreover, I don’t think I can hand on heart say anything other than “look elsewhere” when I am asked if I recommend Vale. We had planned that [my son] would be attending the Prendergast Sixth Form in September 2024; he won’t be doing that. In fact if [my son] wasn’t going into year 11 in September I would be looking to move schools.

I do feel for you both, being relatively new in post and in this situation, particularly as much of this was not your doing. In spite of this the fact remains: you did not do enough to prevent it. If Paula Ledger, Niall Hand, Andy Rothery and the current GB want to do anything to help rebuild the community the only option I feel they have is to stand down. They will not be able to rebuild bridges that they themselves have torn down for a personal vanity project and ideology. They will never be trusted again by parents or staff at Vale or across the federation of schools.

I apologise for writing such a long letter but hope you can understand that my feelings are so strong I was left with no other option.

Heartbroken.

Emma Gray