Forum Topic

Merging education departments

Was interested to see that H&F and K&C are merging education departments. Totally in favour of the reduction in bureaucracy particularly in schools where it often serves as a dead hand to blight children's educational prospects but it does occur to me that a problem may occur if the two Councils don't remain Tory. Can you have a merged department serving two political masters?The assumption is that H&F will remain Tory but is that necessarily a given in the longer term?

Andy Jones ● 5422d4 Comments

What is the legal situation in regards to this merger? How is this democratic and why will my childrens future be at the mercy of an elected authority that nobody in this borough voted for and vise versa. Is this Tory council now through these actions hammering in the last nail into the coffin of our discredited first past the post electoral system?

Dan Baldwin ● 5402d

Presuming that both K&C and H&F are going to be broadly in favour of academies and would encourage local schools to go down this route then the number of LEA controlled schools in the area will fall significantly. There are already a relatively low number. Although I think this is a good thing and will lead to a general rise in the standard of education the worry would be that the remaining LEA schools will be the only ones that accept children who will have been excluded elsewhere.With the current vogue for trying to resolve behaviour issues within the school this will inevitably mean in a poor classroom environment for the children at LEA schools. For the academies programme to be a success in the broadest terms one thing that must happen is that a large increase in Pupil Referral Unit places should be put in place with existing LEA heads given more discretion to remove disruptive children.

Paul Corcoran ● 5416d

If more local schools become academies then the LEA would shrink anyway so some consolidation makes sense. Don't think that there is too much difference between Labour and Tory on education any way. The academies were a Labour idea.

Ellen Kearney ● 5418d

"Totally in favour of the reduction in bureaucracy"Bring back the ILEA, I say.[there's also nothing wrong with bureaucracy, in fact it's inherent to our way of life now.  It's the *quality* of it that's important, not the *quantity* and too many of these rationalisations and mergers are the kind of thing that looks great on a bean counters Powerpoint but end up with a lot of managers looking for someone to kick and too few staff.  Yes, I'm speaking from bitter personal experience]

Tom Barry ● 5421d