Community or Free School?

Dear friends,

We just wanted to update everyone on the public meeting we held last week. It was an amazine evening.

We booked a room for 80 and ended up with 150 people crammed in, sitting on the floors and even queuing outside the room. What a testament to the growing strength of feeling and interest in this issue in our borough.

You can read a full blog post on the event here, but speakers from the platform and the floor made a few key points that it’s worth summarising:

· Free schools are the wrong answer to the problem of supplying sufficient school places because they are not planned according to the real need.

· Because of this and the fact that Free Schools use a disproportionate amount of funding, money and resources are being used in an unplanned and unfair way

· Free Schools are unaccountable to their communities. They are scrutinised by a handful of officials in Whitehall, not us the people who need schools, nor by the taxpayer who pays for them.

· Free Schools are bringing unqualified teachers into our education system at exactly the time other countries are raising the qualifications of their teachers

· If parents want to get involved in education, they can do it by getting involved in their community schools, helping to hold them to account and helping to drive up standards in a collaborative and cooperative way that doesn’t damage other people’s education.

Scores more people signed our petition or signed up to get more involved. Our campaign is growing and we are becoming a progressive force to be reckoned with, bringing together parents, teachers and all who care about our community schools.

A very big thank you to everyone who got involved in getting the message out about this meeting. You made it happen.

Read all about the meeting at our blogsite here.

Yours

Jonathan White

Our Community, Our Schools

So where will this threat to the community schools be located - only a year to go and still no address!!

OASIS ACADEMY

Welcome to the new Oasis Academy in Walthamstow, a brand new secondary

academy opening in central Walthamstow in September 2014. Opening with an

initial intake of 180 Year 7 students, the new school will be a six Form of Entry,

inclusive, non-selective, co-educational school for students aged 11-16 years.

It will be a school which local children can walk to, and where student safety is

paramount.