Of missing newsletters...

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that more than half of class-based teachers have left my previous school this year. Interestingly, this has not been mentioned on any social media linked to the school, nor does it feature in any newsletters on the school’s website.

In fact, the traditional end of year newsletter has yet to appear on the school’s website (see picture below). It could be an oversight, I guess – but one cannot help but be a little dubious. In previous end of year newsletters, the head had very little to say about the departure of staff (especially those who had had the audacity to question their poor leadership). Maybe this year’s exodus has proven too difficult to whitewash.  And where would they even find room for any other messages once they had said all those goodbyes?

It is a small wonder that neither the council, nor the governing board seem to consider that haemorraging teaching staff is in any way problematic. Staff retention is surely an essential consideration to both organisations. Teacher retention, wellbeing and job satisfaction have everything to do with how a school is managed and how the head copes with the pressures to improve the school. 

An over 50% churn of teaching staff speaks volumes...

Onwards and upwards

The MAT campaign is over for me. We lost. We lost well.

However, I cannot function properly without writing. It is a way for me to process my messy mind: a way to funnel my anxieties and make sense of the world.

For years now, especially since my nervous breakdown in 2019, I seem to be stuck in a fight or flight state. It tends to be more fight than flight these days to be honest. The blog helps anchor me.

I was wondering what I could write about, and then bingo: it came to me… Obviously: what better way to move away from recent events than to write about my previous school which is so rich in happenings... 

It would appear that things have not exactly improved as far as work conditions go in that hotbed of toxicity. In fact, rumour has it that over 50% class-based teachers are leaving this July. This has been reported to me not by a little bird, but a whole flock of them...

While it is true that staff retention is a real issue at the moment in England’s schools, two thirds of class teachers leaving a primary school in London may be pushing it a bit.

If I may be so bold: it may be that the head teacher there is not so appreciated by their staff. And that maybe, just maybe, the governing body and council may still be turning a bit of a blind eye to the whole situation. No pattern there. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Ignorance is bliss. Yada, yada...

One thing for sure, my lovely readers, is that I will be looking into this with great interest…

Response to social media remarks

Since the decision of the Federation to academise, a group of concerned stakeholders have created a group called Protect Prendergast. If preventing the conversion to a MAT is not possible, they are trying to ensure that academisation is done in a just manner. Their campaign has provoked a number of rather provocative comments on social media.

Below are my personal responses to some of these accusations and attempts to dispel some of the misconceptions that have arisen.

	Comments	Responses
1	The push for MAT conversion was not kept from stakeholders for the past three years: it was governors exploring options.	It literally was an option ‘secretly’ explored for years before 'consulting' and ignoring staff and parents.
2	Teachers’ would have reacted badly if they were asked to contribute ideas to sorting out governance issues on top of their workload. It is not our job and it is why governors are elected.	It would have been nice to have been asked and even nicer to have been involved. And the old ‘that would be an abdication of the GB’s responsibility towards the school and thereby its staff’ is hardly a powerful argument.
3	We were never prepared to get on board and were all anti academy from the start.	It would be a little odd if this were not the case. Even if people had been, the Governing Body did not do enough to convince stakeholders. Moreover, the way staff were treated and information was presented in a one-sided way was hardly going to win people over.
4	The working party wasn’t secretly removed.	No, it wasn’t: there are no secrets here. The offer was just taken off the table from one negotiation to the next. It seems as if this practical suggestion by the NEU was never seriously entertained and was never therefore seriously an option.
5	An independent review was conducted coming to the same conclusion.	It may have been independent in name, but it was written by a governors’ lobby group and only interviewed governors. See previous post for more detail.
6	The strikes were never-ending	Twelve days is not never-ending. More importantly, the strikes would have ended earlier if the governors had come back to the table. They did not, and took their time, arguably because they wanted the resignation deadline to pass and because they were potentially negotiating a deal to get the government to pursue the council over PFI costs.
7	The head teachers were all involved and fully supportive.	They were involved and supportive of the conversion campaign. Staff concerns and well-being did not seem to be a priority.
8	We are bitter.	This is pretty dismissive of our position. We are furious, upset and feel betrayed.
9	The schools and children are back in a stable environment.	They are not, certainly not back to the way it was beforehand. Staff are not happy. Some have already resigned (see point 14). More will. Statements such as these show a lack of awareness of the atmosphere at all three schools.
10	The strikes are what damaged the children.	The strikes took their toll on all of us. However, this is another reductive and partisan argument: what caused the strikes? A number of parents have reached out and reassured me that their children are absolutely fine. Yes, they have missed some learning but it has had no long-lasting ill effects. If the plans had been released at a different stage in the term, then the process would not have coincided with exams. You have to wonder why the GB chose the timetable they did.
11	The vast majority of parents are thrilled, relieved, jubilant the strikes are over	It would be interesting to conduct a neutral poll to see if the vast majority of parents were jubilant in the face of actions which have caused such anger and upset among the teaching staff. Moreover, while parents are happy strikes are over, this does not collate with them being happy the schools are to academise or that teachers’ morale is low. Most parents want children in schools where teachers are happy, as was the case before March.
12	We need to move on from the extreme overreaction to a status change and prioritise the children in the schools by returning to a stable environment.	Not an extreme overreaction in our view but a justified position on a significant change with serious implications for children’s learning and wellbeing. We should not really have to point out that as teachers we entirely centre children’s needs; as educators we understand what academies can be.
13	The responses and objections from other parents were collated, and fed back to the school and the governors. They responded reassuringly every time and sacrificed time explaining the process. They were helpful and transparent.	Of course they took time to respond in a reassuring way. That was part of their tactical brief. They went to great lengths to justify their reasons and used all the comms tools they could. This is not transparent and helpful – it is purely PR.
14	The best way to support Prendergast Schools now is to let them get on with educating our children.	“Them?” We teachers are the ones responsible for the majority of the educating. When teachers leave, this creates disruption to learning. Over thirty teachers have resigned this year[1]. Many support staff have too. What is more, there is a distinct possibility that these numbers could have been higher had the final decision to impose academisation come after the resignation cut-off date. Again, it seems that the timetable was carefully selected.
15	With the decision having been made, it is time to move on for the sake of the students and the schools. We need to let this go and move on. It is not in the best interests of the kids to keep fighting. We need to focus on making the MAT work in the best possible way.	The strikes are over now. It is not disruptive for a group of people to continue to make arguments against the Prendergast conversions. It doesn’t affect the children. Furthermore, we did not choose to become a MAT. We won’t have any say in the academisation process. We have no power. The GB alone bears the responsibility to make it work, and this starts with repairing relations with staff.
16	We are a tiny minority with very extreme views.	Neither tiny nor extremist. Most the staff did not want to convert into a MAT, and an overwhelming majority of consultation responses were anti-MAT. Please look at the numbers.
17	It seems that the NEU supported the decision to proceed with the MAT application.	It was not supported by the NEU. The vote was a choice between striking and the federation becoming a MAT in Sept 23 (from which point strikes would become illegal) or accepting the MAT and have a place at the negotiating table re T&Cs. Hardly a thumbs up from us…
18	There really isn't anything to discuss. It's becoming an academy. Just wait and see, instead of ripping into it.	There really is a tremendous amount to discuss if there is to be authentic healing and persuading staff that the GB have their best interests at heart. What sort of advice is ‘just wait and see’? We are professionals who take our jobs and responsibilities seriously.
19	Our academy is going to be different: it will keep the Prendergast ethos. Staff will be treated exactly the same. Children will thrive.	There are no guarantees this will be the case and there is no going back if it is not. It is irreversible. Most schools claim to have everyone’s best interests. Our Federation probably does. However, becoming a MAT takes away many actual contractual guarantees, and this makes it easy to change things at a whim: it is textbook. Sadly, many current staff that came from academies and can vouch for how their schools changed very quickly -for the worse- once converted into academies.

 

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[1] An apology here: the figures I mentioned are not out of the ordinary – in fact for most Federation schools they have gone down. A similar picture for support staff.

Processing

Things have sunk in a bit now. We teachers and union members have had a bit of time to process this painful period in our schools’ history. Things have not yet returned to normal, but then again they probably will not. Good people have resigned: people I count as dear friends. I suspect a lot more will this time next year, if not before. Morale is low; everything is still raw.

A large swathe of people seem to think that NEU/GMB members are happy with the way the MAT industrial action ended. It would appear that people genuinely believe that we are satisfied with the outcome of talks between the governing body (GB) and the unions. This is simply untrue. We are distraught and angry. We feel betrayed.

Below is my attempt to unpick the past few weeks.

___________________________

On the 6^th of June, we (union reps) were sent a National Governance Association Report on current and proposed structures for effective governance. This, I presume, was to try to convince us that becoming a MAT was the only way to alleviate undue stress and workload on the GB. However, to put this into perspective: the National Governance Association aims to represent all school governors and trustees in England. Not staff. Not parents/carers. Not the community at large. What is more, this "independent review" was carried out by a person who actually sits on the board for several MATs.[1]

On the 7^th, we were informed that the GB had received Academy Orders for the three schools.

On Friday 9^th June, NEU and GMB reps met at ACAS to negotiate with members of the Federation’s governing body. I was on a Year 6 residential trip but was able to join online – initially. 

When I say negotiations, it turned out to be nothing of the sort. In fact, the decision that the school was going to become a MAT was imposed upon us.

There had been a long pause between this session at ACAS and the previous one. We had been told that this delay had been due to strike action: the heads had been far too busy teaching and sorting out logistics around the industrial action to meet with us beforehand.

Between these two sessions, we discovered that the board had had ministerial support to push academy orders through. Nick Gibb had written directly to our national NEU leaders to show his anger at the industrial action. The DFE allegedly confirmed that Nick Gibb had also written to Leathersellers to urge them to continue with their plans to academise the Prendergast schools. This was reported by Charles Thomson from Newshopper who also revealed that the school would no longer talk to him directly; he had ‘been asked to send all press enquiries for the schools to a communications agency (...) hired to promote academisation.’

Anyway, the true nature of the meeting soon became clear why when the members of the Governing Board entered the room (including all 3 school heads for the first time). Once they had sat down opposite us, they read from a script. I do not know whether this been written by all of them together or for them by one person. Its basic message was simple: due to the strikes, children had lost thousands of hours of schooling, their results had potentially been jeopardised, so the GB had decided to go through with academisation in September 2023. This would make industrial action illegal. The fact that the strikes had been caused by the way staff and other stakeholders had been treated, ostracised, insulted, smeared, etc. was not mentioned. The fact that this project had been under discussion for the best part of three years before the consultation period was not mentioned.

I left the meeting shortly after that. It was too triggering. I found out later in the day that my colleagues had thankfully managed to get some significant concessions: namely delaying the academisation until January 2024 and ensuring that for the time being terms and conditions would remain for all existing and new staff. However, the previous offer of a meaningful working party had disappeared. It appears now that it was never a genuine offer – merely something to wave in the air until government support was guaranteed. Interestingly, one of the governors stated that they had not sought such support. However, that is purely academic: they were more than happy to take advantage of it.

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[1] "I am currently a trustee on the board of a two secondary school MAT. Until recently I was the Chair of the trust board of a primary phase MAT, working with the CEO over a five year period to grow with MAT from a single school to a group of seven academies. During that time two schools moved from good to outstanding and the MAT sponsored a school in special measures.” This person carries out reviews of governance in academy trusts and helps schools through the academisation process.