There are a lot of disappointed parents in Gorton and Abbey Hey who applied to the new East Manchester Academy.  The Academy has been extensively marketing itself right across East Manchester, encouraging applications and yet very few seemed to get in.

I am trying to get a breakdown of allocations, but it seems that the Academy was so oversubscribed that except for people with special reasons to get in (category 1, usually involving special needs which can only be met by that school, of looked-after children, category 2, siblings already at the school didn’t apply this year for obvious reasons), the school was filled up by applicants living within 1.273 miles from the school.  The fact that the distance went to three decimal places suggests the sheer numbers of applications involved.

It is a great shame for many parents in Abbey Hey who for the first time in years were led to believe that they had a genuine choice of schools.  I hope that lessons are learned in future years.

Fortunately, most services seem to be getting back to normal after the big freeze.  If anybody doesn’t find that their recycling restarts this week, please let me know.

Schools came under a lot of criticism by the Leader of the Council for closing during the worst of it, however Headteachers couldn’t win either way.  With pavements not being gritted, in most of the City there was no safe way for kids to get to school.  Many teachers were themselves stranded in their homes and even if pupils arrived safely at the school gate, it was the weekend before the council started helping schools to grit safe paths across their playgrounds.

One other issue needs to be taken into account.  Schools nowadays have to set strict targets on attendance.  If a school is closed, no problem, however a school which has struggled to open but only half of their pupils manage to make it in will find that this will count towards their annual attendance targets.  In other words, they could find themselves in real trouble if the opened when they weren’t certain that their pupils could all get there.  It really shows what nonsense league tables can lead to.  It would have helped if the Leader of the Council had thought about it before criticising schools for closing.

It’s the season of goodwill to all so Manchester City Council decides to call an Executive meeting with the minimum notice, the day before Christmas Eve in the hope that people wouldn’t notice that they are planning to ignore the outcome of the public consultation on the closure of Ewings School and close it anyway.  Ewings is a centre of excellence for speech and language disorders and has truly excellent outcomes for the pupils.  The Council are attempting to justify it in the name of “inclusion” and the fact that some pupils with special needs do better in mainstream schools than in poorly performing special needs schools (which is a bit like suggesting that we should close all secondary schools becaue pupils don’t do very well in the bad ones).  The pupils don’t want the closure, the parents don’t want it, the teachers don’t want it and neither do the teachers in the schools which are expected to receive the pupils from Ewings who are concerned that they won’t be able to meet the very specific needs of these young people.

So that’s a big “Bah Humbug” from the Council too all in Manchester.

The Council Executive Committee met today and decided that Ewing School is to close.  Ewing is a school which caters for pupils with speech and language disorders.  It is an excellent school, which can deal with many rare speech and language problems, has an excellent track record of getting its pupils through GCSE and on into further and higher (mainstream) education.

In my years on the Council there have been many attempts to close Ewing in the name of “inclusion”.  Whilst I am a supporter of inclusion in general, there are individual pupils for whom inclusion in mainstream simply does not work.  Speech and language problems are particularly isolating and the pupils of Ewing have normally previously failed to thrive in mainstream.  There should be a choice for pupils and parents in this situation.

The fight must go on.

Congratulations to everybody who got the grades which they wanted today and commiserations to those who didn’t quite make it.  I always get annoyed when people claim that increased pass rates mean that standards are falling.  When I did A levels, the pass rates (and the grade rates) were fixed to percentages of those taking the exam.  Whilst this made sense for subjects which thousands were taking, it turned A-levels into a lottery for people doing less popular subjects, as their grades didn’t depend on how good they were, but how good everybody else doing the same exam happened to be that year.

The new system makes more sense and is fairer.  So, if you’ve got your A-levels today, ignore those who are claiming that it’s easy to pass nowadays.

Last night saw the “graduation” of another of the East Manchester Teams.  This is a 12-week course which is run by the Prince’s Trust and Greater Manchester Fire Brigade.  They take up  to a dozen or so young people, often young adults with no qualifications who for a variety of reasons might not have done well at school and who are out of work and at a loose end.  The course is a challenging one, focusing on teamwork (an essential part of the Fire Brigade) and involves a whole range of activities including teambuilding exercises, community work, works experience, behaviour management and study.  At the end, they each have to give a speech in front of a room full of strangers and their families (and I know how hard that is to do) on who they are, what they got out of the course and what they want to do next.

The course isn’t easy, some do drop out, but I am always impressed at the abilities shown by those who complete it.  Most are now heading either into work or study and crucially, several now have earned NVQ certificates in literacy and numeracy, which for one reason or another eluded them at school.  It is far from easy to achieve that in 12 weeks.  I find it great to see young people who might have been directionless in the past finding a focus and purpose in their lives and when I’ve encountered people who’ve been on previous courses, they’re still benefitting from the experience.

Well done to the Team and well done to the Fire Brigade and the Prince’s Trust.

It sounds painful, but Wright Robinson are having a Health MOT Day on Saturday 13th June 10 - 3.  Seriously, though it seems to be a day of healthy activities for all age ranges, from kite-making to canoeing.  It’s free, and it should be fun.

Gorton Library are holding an exhibition about Belle Vue from 1st June to 22nd June as part of the Gorton 100.  Saurday (06/06/09) is going to be a “nostalgia fest” with talks and other events.

Lots of people have great memories of Belle Vue, so do come along and share your experiences.

Wright Robinson Sports College is one of the City Council’s flagship Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schools.  Using private finance, the old 1960s building, which had all of the usual defects of 1960s public buildings was torn down and a brand new school and sports facility built.  The new building effectively is owned by the PFI backers and the sports facilities, which are excellent, are made available for public use for a contracted period of time.  As a local Councillor, I fully supported this as it had been clear for years that the previous building, which had not a single classroom which was wheelchair accessible, leaking windows, flat roofs (also leaking) and many other problems was unsuitable for providing the pupils with the right learning environment.  Last September, the new building was formally opened (an event to which as a local Councillor naturally I was not invited) and since then it seems to have been a successful building, the pupils like it and there are many groups and individuals making good use of the sporting facilities.

Today at the Council’s Executive Committee, we were discussing Foundation Schools, a new formula for governance which the Government is keen for schools to try out.  One of the big issues is transfer of ownership of the school buildings and grounds.  I asked what the legal implications are for a PFI school to get Foundation status.  It seems that nobody knows.  I have been promised that I will get an answer when one is available, but at the moment it appears unclear as to who will own what and what the implications are for community use if the schools changes to foundation status.  We live in interesting times.

Wright Robinson Sports College are consulting on whether or not to apply for Foundation status.  This in essence means moving away from Local Council control.  There are pros and cons to this.

The pros are broadly, the school has more flexibility and freedom.  The cons are that the local Council can no longer do much when things go wrong.  (The latter category doesn’t just mean overall standards, but might include exclusions and various situations where people might appeal to their local Councillors to assist.)

I’ll be putting more details on what this might mean later, but in the meantime, I’m very interested to know what local people think about the suggestion.

Wright Robinson Sports College are offering an aquatic holiday camp for kids aged 8 - 16.  The dates and times are:

 Tuesday 26^th May  –  Friday 29^th May 10.00am – 11.00am

11.00am – 12.00noon

13.00pm – 14.00pm

14.30pm – 15.30pm

Please contact the Aquatics Coordinator at WRSC on 0161 370 5121 for a form to book one of these sessions.