A good website for information on procedures for school closures and opening of new ones

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolorg/index.cfm

You might find the closing a school and creating a new school document they are worth a read.

Lord Adonis confirm's that his original letter will be followed

Many of you who attended the Overview and Scrutiny call in will have heard the statement that the Local Authority would not fetter the Sponsor's ability to run the academy how they wanted. There was a long debate and the result was that Lord Adonis' letter was included in the minutes as part of the other background information.

Since then, SOCK have met with the Council (see this posting for our summary of the outcome) - in that meeting Rodney Chamber said that the plan was to follow the guidelines in the letter.

Since then, representations have been made to Lord Adonis, the result being the following letter, which states that there must is been a misunderstanding, since Rose Collinson has affirmed that the guidelines in the letter will be followed.

Click here to view the letter

That's great to hear - and I think it underlines the fact that the SOCK campaign has made a considerable impact on the shape of the academy, and we intend to continue with our reasoned and reasonable dialog with the council, the sponsors and the many SOCK supporters out there. I am not sure where the misunderstanding was, but the outcome is positive.

SOCK meeting with the University 1st April

Dear Parents

 

We were expecting to have a meeting with Dianne Taylor-Gearing, the principal of UCCA along with Rose Collinson the Director of Childrens Services in Medway.

 

In the event the following people were there

 

UCCA were represented by:-

• Dianne Taylor Gearing
• Professor Mark Hunt, the Deputy Rector responsible for Strategic Planning

 

The Council were represented by:-

• Rodney Chambers, the Leader of the Council,
• Alan Jarrett the Deputy Leader of the Council,
• Neil Davies the Chief Executive Officer of the Council and
• Rose Collinson.

 

This is an indication of just how seriously the Council regard SOCK as the top 4 people within Medway Council turned up at a meeting that they really didn’t need to be at along with the second in charge of the whole University!

 

We had a debrief at campaign headquarters (the Local pub) after the meeting and were very encouraged by the following that we achieved in the meeting.

 

Rodney Chambers made an statement to the effect that no pupils at either school who had joined prior to the September 2009 year intake will be in mixed classes. This means that your daughter will continue in a single sex class until year 10

 

We are now regarded as a stakeholder in this venture which means that we will continue to have an influence on how the merger takes place

 

We have been invited to have a tour around the UCCA campus in Rochester. We will use this as the start of our campaign to influence the culture and ethos of the academy. We want it to be like Chapter is now

 

We felt that we could work with the UCCA staff as they both had expressed an interest in working with SOCK towards building a successful Academy

 

Our meeting had been agreed by all parties as the start of the process and that a series of future meetings will be planned. SOCK will therefore be able to help to shape the future of the Academy

 

We felt that we had finally gained acceptance of the first part of our wish list, no mixed classes, and that we would use future meetings (and the visit to UCCA) to start to influence the culture and ethos of the academy, in particular the style of leadership that would be necessary in order to address Lord Adonis's point about the need to build upon the strengths etc... of Chapter

 

Sorry to go on so much as my wife continuously tells me to “Keep it simple stupid” and I tend to go on and on but I feel that you can skip the bits that you aren’t interested in but for those who want to be fully informed I do need to give all of the details

 

The next SOCK meeting will be at Chapter on Tuesday 22^nd April at 7:00pm. All are welcome

 

Best Regards

 

Shane Hadley

Chair - SOCK