Guest blog from 'Deleted'
Another 25 teachers at Copland have been notified that they are on a new redundancy hit-list for sacking at the end of the summer term. This follows the dozens of staff who have already been sacked since last July when Brent Council sent in an Interim Executive Board (IEB) to run the school (down).
Why is the Copland IEB now being called the Copland Lie EB?
In the autumn they said there would be no forced redundancies. Just weeks later they are ‘consulting’ (telling) 25 staff that in the (new) next stage of ‘staff reorganisation’ (sacking), 14 of their ‘posts will be deleted’ (14 people will be sacked). You can apply for ‘voluntary’ redundancy (ie sack yourself and get a bit of compensation) or wait for the school to sack you. Whichever way, it’s forced, it’s compulsory and it’s the sack.
What do the Lie E.B give as their reasons for the sackings?
They say they’ve got more teachers than they need. Well, they would have really, wouldn’t they? It’s a measure of the Lie E.B’s success in practically closing down the 6th form and producing an Austerity Curriculum for the rest of the school. Since last July they’ve scrapped all the 6th form vocational subjects, loads of successful A level and GCSE subjects, got rid of support teachers and mentoring staff and the latest statement from them scraps Business Studies, effectively scraps Yr 7,8 and 9 Information Technology and gets rid of Art. They turned away good potential 6thForm students last August when they told them at the last minute they’d have to go elsewhere as they’d scrapped their subjects. They’ve narrowed the school’s curriculum offer to make it so unattractive that only 40 parents put Copland down as first choice for Sept 2014 (even less than Michaela ‘Free’ School, and they don’t even have a viable building).
Then add to that the continuing flow of inept and embarrassing decisions (scrapping Sports Days, charity events, prize-giving evenings, progressive student associations, etc etc) which have produced columns of print in the local and national press, campaigns on social media, and disbelief among current and former students and staff. So, dismantle the curriculum, halve the intake and, hey presto, you’ve got too many teachers!
This is called ‘vision’.
It’s basically the same technique as the Tories have used against the NHS. Regard the institution and its staff as the enemy. Run it down, highlight all its defects. Cut staff, provide worse services to the point where no one will want to bother to fight to save it. Then flog it off to a chain.
But isn’t Copland becoming an Academy in September? Won’t they need teachers?
Of course, and no one believes that an academy chain intends to run a school with no subjects and no decent curriculum offer. After they’ve thrown away all this experience and knowledge in this year’s sackings they’ll start advertising for new teachers, with all the expense and waste (and risk) that entails. But the new staff will be young and cheap and obedient, advised not to talk to other staff out of their rank and not to join the union. They’ll be on short-term, hire-and-fire contracts and staff turnover will be high. In a few years’ time they’ll all be agency staff and many will probably be on zero-hours contracts. Most will give up teaching in less than 5 years. This is not a prediction; it’s already happening. This is Gove’s ‘future’ (with the acquiescence of the Copland management, it’s imported IEB, Brent’s Michael Pavey and Mohammed Butt). And it’s what Copland staff are resisting.
Ok. But the ‘no compulsory redundancies’ promise was only a small untruth and maybe was meant only to refer to the last sacking round, no reason to call the IEB the Lie EB is it?
Yes, because the last sacking round was supposed to be the final sacking round (apart from a Leadership cull which now seems to have been postponed until next year). The proposed review of TLRs has not appeared and these new sackings have come out of the blue.
But there’s something else. The sacking letters Copland staff now regularly receive have always referred to financial reasons for the sackings and regularly trot out the excuse of ‘the accumulated budget deficit which is currently in excess of £1.5 million’.
2 points about this:
The ‘budget deficit’ dates from the time when the recently-convicted –in-the- courts (and earlier-knighted-by- the-Queen) ex-Head Davies ran the show. Brent Council only acted to stop his activities after being embarrassed into intervening by union action, have never made any attempt to retrieve the alleged £2.7 million taken from the school and did not even seek costs at his trial. (Why not? The judge didn’t know either. Choose your own conspiracy theory).
More importantly, this is what Ark Schools, in a written answer, told Copland staff would happen to this deficit when the school becomes an academy in September 2014:
It is normal practice for the deficit to be set to zero by the local authority when a school becomes an academy.
Copland staff should not have to rely on outsiders like Ark Schools for information affecting their futures which their own governing body should supply them with. It would appear that, at the date the current sackings take effect (end of academic year 2013/2014), the deficit will be ‘set to zero by the local authority’. So in August, yet more Copland staff will lose their livelihoods in order to reduce a budget deficit which will not any longer exist. The IEB’s reference to the ‘accumulated budget deficit’ as a justification for dismantling the school and sacking the majority of its staff is therefore disingenuous, an obfuscation.
Or, in plainer English, a lie.
I EB? Or Lie EB? Or does it just amount to the same truth-twisting thing?