London Councils report on the impact of school cuts - why Forest Hill is getting it so wrong

London Councils have just published a significant report called 'Talking Heads' reporting the views of around 400 London school leaders. The research describes how "Headteachers face huge challenges in coping with reducing budgets, recruiting and retaining teachers, and managing teachers’ workload so that they can deliver the best quality education for our schoolchildren".

'Talking Heads' provides a valuable insight into the real difficulties facing London schools which I hope to summarise in a further post. However, on a day when NUT members took a tenth day of strike action to protest at the staffing cuts at Forest Hill School in Lewisham, the report shows that the steps being taken by Lewisham Council and the FHS management contrast with the solutions being reached by other schools. In short, it is more evidence that the Forest Hill staffing cuts need to be reconsidered.

1. Schools are trying to avoid cutting staffing budgets- why not Forest Hill?
No school should have to make damaging cuts to any areas of their budget but the National Audit Office have already warned in their report 'Financial Sustainability of Schools' about their concern that "schools tend to reduce the proportion of their spending on teaching staff before other areas of spending" ... which risks "detrimental effects on educational outcomes".  

Actually, the London Councils report suggests that the school leaders surveyed are taking heed of this warning and seeking to protect teaching staff budgets where they can:

In contrast, Forest Hill School has concentrated on reducing deficits by making staffing cuts while actually increasing its budget on 'professional services' ! It needs to think again.

2. Further evidence that Forest Hill has NOT been spending an excessive proportion of its budget on staffing
Lewisham Council have consistently peddled a line that the budget difficulties at Forest Hill School are due to excessive staffing expenditure. The NUT have been told that FHS spends an unusually high 81% of its budget on staffing. However, the NUT has challenged this figure since the school's own figures suggest it really stands at 73%, according to forecasts provided by the school for 2016/17.

Lewisham Council certainly needs to read the report produced by the London Councils body that it belongs to.  It makes clear that "London headteachers described staffing costs as accounting for around 80% of overall school budgets". 

So this is further confirmation that it isn't the proportion of the budget spent on staffing at Forest Hill that is 'unsustainable', as Lewisham Council claims, but their own mistaken benchmarking claims demanding excessive staffing cuts at the school. It needs to think again.

3. Schools recognise the dangers in cutting planning time - certainly to the levels being considered by Forest Hill

The Report includes evidence of some schools having to cut the school day to make up for reduced teacher numbers. There is a proposal to do this at Forest Hill too, if only for 25 minutes on a Monday, although this is counteracted by plans to teach other lessons after the official end of the school day.

Some schools are also having to look at cutting planning time.  For example, the report  quotes one Head as saying: "Currently our teachers teach 42 periods out of a 50 period fortnight so if we looked to increase that to 43 periods over 50 periods we’d probably save on about three teachers". But Forest Hill is imposing as many as 44 teaching periods out of 50 (22/25 hourly lessons per week). This will leave FHS teachers with one of the highest timetable loadings of any secondary school across London.

Another Head quoted confirms that "a main scale teacher teaches 42"  but then adds "I could have made the teachers teach more, however, their job is tough enough and my worry is if I make them teach more they’re going to leave in their droves and it’s actually going to become a false economy, or they’re going to get ill and then my cover budget goes up. So, I don’t really think that that’s a runner at the moment". Regrettably, that's exactly what is happening at Forest Hill.

Heads know the particular danger that teacher resignations can have to London schools - because teacher recruitment is even harder in the capital than elsewhere in the country:

Sadly, Forest Hill School have chosen to apply this 'false economy'. Teachers are leaving in droves. Those that haven't yet resigned are now being shown their teaching timetables for next year. Many will face teaching class after class without any break in their timetabled day to plan and prepare for other classes. More teachers will leave - and Forest Hill will struggle to replace them adequately. The Council and School need to think again.

 4. Most schools recognise the damage caused by staffing cuts - but Forest Hill parents have been told they will 'herald a new dawn' for the school.
'Talking Heads' states that "Headteachers were unanimous in their support for Teaching Assistants, and described their centrality to improving student outcomes. However, their lack of statutory requirement in the classroom leaves them in a vulnerable position. ... As a final resort, teachers have been lost".

Forest Hill School's 'new dawn' consists of starting a new academic year with 15 fewer teaching posts and 23 fewer classroom and non-classroom based support staff. That can only harm teaching, learning and student outcomes. 

The Council and School need to think again!

London is experiencing a school funding crisis that is damaging the quality of education schools can provide, research commissioned by London Councils has revealed. Headteachers face huge challenges in coping with reducing budgets, recruiting and retaining teachers, and managing teachers’ workload so that they can deliver the best quality education for our schoolchildren.

London is experiencing a school funding crisis that is damaging the quality of education schools can provide, research commissioned by London Councils has revealed. Headteachers face huge challenges in coping with reducing budgets, recruiting and retaining teachers, and managing teachers’ workload so that they can deliver the best quality education for our schoolchildren.

London is experiencing a school funding crisis that is damaging the quality of education schools can provide, research commissioned by London Councils has revealed. Headteachers face huge challenges in coping with reducing budgets, recruiting and retaining teachers, and managing teachers’ workload so that they can deliver the best quality education for our schoolchildren.

London is experiencing a school funding crisis that is damaging the quality of education schools can provide, research commissioned by London Councils has revealed. Headteachers face huge challenges in coping with reducing budgets, recruiting and retaining teachers, and managing teachers’ workload so that they can deliver the best quality education for our schoolchildren.

London is experiencing a school funding crisis that is damaging the quality of education schools can provide, research commissioned by London Councils has revealed. Headteachers face huge challenges in coping with reducing budgets, recruiting and retaining teachers, and managing teachers’ workload so that they can deliver the best quality education for our schoolchildren.

Why Forest Hill School needs more staff

The NUT has produced a leaflet to explain why our members at Forest Hill School - boosted by members transferring from both other teaching unions - are taking three days of strike action this week:

38 posts cut by September - what kind of ‘new dawn’ will that be for Forest Hill students?
Teachers and parents opposed to the £1.3 million staffing cuts at Forest Hill School have tried everything we can to persuade Lewisham Council and school management to think again.
We’ve written letters, held meetings, marches and strikes but still they refuse to accept that these cuts will damage education. Instead, they claim they ‘herald a new dawn’ for the school !
Next term will still see the same numbers  of pupils, with the same range of needs, coming to Forest Hill. As always at FHS, staff will do their best to support every pupil but, as things stand, there will be 38 fewer staff to do so.
The restructuring means 23 support staff and 15 teaching posts will have gone. What kind of ‘new dawn’ is that?
It’s time for the Council and School to  admit that cutting these posts means  cutting education. They need to think again for the sake of Forest Hill students.

These cuts can be stopped
As we explain in this leaflet, at least some of these staff cuts can be easily reversed. All it needs is for those in charge to stop digging their heels in and start to do what’s best for education.
So join us in demanding they:
●    Admit these cuts damage education
●    Admit they have cut too many staff
●    Use the options available to them to at least reverse the worst of the cuts so that Forest Hill students have the            education they need in September.

The NUT is striking to demand that at least some of the staffing cuts are withdrawn at Forest Hill
Our demands are very simple. We want assurances that the school will put in place a plan to recruit:
1. More staff to reverse the most serious cuts, especially to SEN and pastoral provision. Cuts to learning mentors and teaching assistants are already leading to cuts in   support to some of the students who most need that help.
2. More teachers to allow a reduction in teacher contact time. The new timetable will halve the amount of time teachers have in the school day to plan, prepare and  mark books, contact parents and speak to students.

The Council and School have got their figures wrong. Too many staff have been cut.
Lewisham Council’s mistakes have already had a bad outcome for one local school, Sedgehill School. Now their mistakes could also damage education at Forest Hill too.

Councillors keep giving the excuse that Forest Hill was spending too much of its budget on staff and that’s why cuts had to be made. When we questioned this, we received a written   reply saying that FHS spent 81% on staffing. But the School’s own consultation document shows this is untrue. It shows staff costs at £7,540 K from a £10,126 K total expenditure - or 74.5%. This is actually less than the 76% the National Audit Office say schools typically spend.

The School has swung the axe at jobs ahead of other savings. Worse, spending on some non-staffing headings has gone up! Budget forecasts have shown the allocation for ‘professional services’ going up by £300k alone since Xmas. We’ve asked why - but we’ve had no answer.

Why is the issue of workload and timetable loading so important to NUT members ?
Everyone involved in education knows that long working hours are the main reason why schools struggle to recruit and retain teachers. Forest Hill has shown what happens when you threaten to make workload even worse - teachers leave. At least 23 teachers have resigned for the end of term. Add all those leaving, e.g. through redundancy, and nearly ⅓ of teachers will be going.

The Head is telling parents that he has met workload concerns by having an early closure on a Monday (although it now seems some will be teaching classes after school on other days!) - but those 25 minutes won’t make up for losing 3 hours of non-contact time during the school week.

Think about a teacher with a class of 30 boys. Giving each book just two minutes of marking uses up a full hour. But teachers have lots of classes. They will have to do even more work after school. That’s not just a problem for teachers. As the Department for Education has warned Heads: "Teachers forced to mark work late at night and at weekends are unlikely to operate effectively in the classroom". Workload is an issue for parents, students & teachers. That’s why we are asking for extra staff to provide at least some additional timetable release for teachers. 

We aren’t asking for the ‘impossible’. Here are some ways to find additional funding:
1. The school budget forecasts include a £100,000 figure for emergency ‘contingency’. Use it!
2. Redirect money from rising non-staffing budgets towards reversing some of the staffing cuts.
3. The School has had to find an additional £0.5 million from its own budget to pay the costs of redundancies. The Council could be (we think by law should be) meeting these costs.
4. There is increasing pressure on the Government to find additional funding for schools. The Council could postpone some of the cuts while the national school cuts campaign continues.
5. As Greenwich Council has shown, there are clear mechanisms open to the Council to reduce funding pressures, particularly by agreeing to extend the time that it has set for the licensed deficit to be repaid from the school budget and/or by directing specific funding towards FHS.

Parents and Striking Teachers to protest at DfE on Tuesday 20 June over school cuts

Please see below both a press release and a statement to parents from the NUT in relation to the ongoing dispute at Forest Hill School in Lewisham.

The ninth day of strike action will take place on Tuesday. NUT General Secretary Kevin Courtney will be attending the picket line outside the school in Dacres Road, SE23 from 8 am.

UPDATE: PHOTOS FROM THE DAY: 

PRESS RELEASE:

A group of school-age parents with their striking NUT teachers take their picket line to DfE offices at 10.30am today to tell Justine Greening to stop underfunding all schools and release emergency funds for Forest Hill School, an 11-18 boys school in Lewisham, south-east London.

Nationally, schools are facing the largest real terms cuts for 30 years (i) and there is strong evidence to suggest that expenditure levels directly impact pupil performance (ii). Locally, Lewisham Council instructed Forest Hill School (FHS) to recover an estimated £1.3 million pound deficit (iii) and a further £1 million cuts are scheduled to be made by 2022 (iv). 2017 savings are being made through staffing cuts which has caused 23 administration and classroom support staff posts to be cut and 15 teaching staff posts to be cut (v). In response, FHS NUT members have been on strike for 9 days so far this academic year.

All FHS teachers face increased teaching workload and a pay cut for many responsibility post holders. 23 teachers, many of them with more than 15 years experience at the school, have decided to resign rather than go through redundancy procedures or accept proposed changes. As a result, staff turnover will involve at least a third (30%) of teaching staff this academic year. This is before further planned changes to the national funding formula (vi).

The parent action group have held two public meetings, both with over 100 attendees, indicating the level of frustration with what they believe could be destructive changes to an otherwise excellent school. Parents have questioned why the school should prioritise the annual near £1 million pounds (vii) payment on its Private Finance Initiative contract above retaining experienced staff. Parents and teachers both claim that the success of the school, particular an inner-city boys school, is dependent on stable relationships built over time. They argue that these proposed changes, particularly increased workload and reduced non-contact time, will erode space for those vital relationships which many call the “Forest Hill spirit”.

Phil Beadle from Channel 4’s Unteachables and a FHS parent said:
“Parents, staff and the council all agree that the education of the boys at Forest Hill is paramount. As parents, we believe these draconian cuts can only have a negative impact on the educational outcomes of the boys and on the lives of profoundly valued members of the community: our children’s loved and respected teachers”

Saraid Dodd, NUT rep at Forest Hill School, said: “We are chanting ‘not our deficit, it’s our school don’t mess with it.’ Our students deserve better than this. We are striking to defend our school and to make clear to local and national government that we believe the value of education goes beyond numbers on balance sheets.”

Martin Powell-Davies, London NUT representative said: “Schools are already struggling to retain good qualified teachers due to workload. DfE should help Lewisham Council and all financially struggling schools to secure funding to protect good education for all pupils.”

ENDS

Notes for Editors:

Photo call at 10:30am at Department for Education Offices Sanctuary Buildings, 20 Great Smith St, Westminster, London SW1P 3BT

For further information contact Martin Powell-Davies of NUT on: M.Powell-Davies@nut.org.uk

i “Long-run comparisons of spending per pupil across different stages of education”, Chris Belfield, Claire Crawford and Luke Sibieta, The Institute for Fiscal Studies, 27 February 2017, https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8937

ii “The Effects of Resources Across School Phases: A Summary of Recent Evidence”, Stephen Gibbons and Sandra McNally, London School of Economics, 2013, http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1226.pdf

iii 9.4, “Application for licensed deficit for Prendergast Ladywell School and Forest Hill School”, Lewisham Council, 9th November 2016, http://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/documents/s46348/Schools%20Licensed%20Defict%20Forest%20Hill%20and%20Ladywell.pdf

iv “Forest Hill School”, Institute for Fiscal Studies (author of data), School Cuts campaign (publisher), http://schoolcuts.org.uk/#!/schools?chosenSchool=2094289

v “Your child’s future is at stake”, Martin Powell-Davies, 22nd April 2017, http://www.mpdnut.com/2017/04/your-childs-future-is-at-stake-who-will.html

vi “Forest Hill School” Ibid

vii “Forest Hill School in deficit...”, Martin Powell-Davies, 7th March 2017, http://www.mpdnut.com/2017/03/forest-hill-school-in-deficit-how-do-we.html

STATEMENT TO PARENTS

As an NUT group, Forest Hill NUT members agreed to withdraw strike action for the main exam period and in the hope that management and employers would agree proposals that would allow us to settle the dispute without further strike action. Sadly, there has been no such settlement and all parties have not agreed to meet with us as we have requested, so we are continuing with action.

Positive and negative news

The intervening weeks have brought a positive change – a General Election result that makes it me likely that we can persuade a weakened Government to reverse school cuts – and should therefore persuade the Council to relax their demands on FHS. However, they have also brought the sad confirmation of what we have been warning all along – that a failure to act on jobs and workload would result in many staff voting with their feet to leave. We have been informed that 23 teachers have resigned for the end of term on top of 5 teacher redundancies and 3 temporary contracts not being renewed. Together with support staff, that means over 50 staff will have left this year.

Forest Hill needs more staff

The NUT’s figures show that the cuts package has been based on a faulty analysis from the start. It was argued that FHS spent disproportionately more on staffing and therefore staffing budgets had to be disproportionately hit. This was never the case. That mistake needs correcting by agreeing to restore some of the staff cuts. 

We are seeking assurances that the school will recruit:

1. More teachers to allow a reduction in teacher contact time

2. More staff to reverse the most serious cuts, particularly to SEN and pastoral provision.

We want to continue to go above and beyond for our students. Good education relies on strong relationships. We can’t reverse those resignations now, but we can keep putting pressure on the council to improve our conditions to prevent further resignations next year and allow us to give our students the quality of education they deserve.

The Local Authority and School CAN act to provide additional staffing

Up to now, the Council and the School have both insisted that it has no room to manoeuvre. We have shown that this is simply not the case. For example:

1. The school budget forecasts include a £100,000 figure for 'contingency'.

2. While staffing has been cut, a number of non-staffing payments are being increased significantly. This could provide scope for redirecting budgets.

3. The School has had to find an additional £0.5 Million from its own budget to pay for redundancy costs. NUT Solicitors have now written to the Council to challenge this decision

which we think is based on an unlawful Council policy.

4. There is increasing pressure on the Government to find additional funding for schools. The Council could postpone some of the cuts while the national campaign to reverse school cuts continues.

5. As other Councils have shown, there are clear mechanisms open to the Council to reduce the funding pressures on FHS, particularly by agreeing to extend the time that it has set for the licensed deficit to be repaid from the school budget.

6. Other Councils have also supported schools through directing funding towards them for specific purposes. Lewisham Council could also do the same.

Forest Hill - 10 financial questions that need to be answered

Sadly, unjustified accusations have been levelled at Forest Hill NUT members over the last few days. Yet the people that should really be being questioned are those who are refusing to act to provide the additional financial support that Forest Hill School needs.

These dedicated teachers, who work so hard to support FHS students, are being accused, at worst, of striking without any thought as to how it might damage children's education. On the contrary, they are seeking to prevent the lasting damage that will be caused when a school is told to make £1.3 Million of staffing cuts and then also find the £0.5 Million that has to be paid out when you make so many staff redundant. 

Others, perhaps with more sympathy, are telling NUT members that, while their campaign is understood, it has to stop because they are fighting a cause that cannot be won. Parents and staff are being told that there is nothing that can be done, that the Council and School have no room for manoeuvre, and that the cuts simply have to be made.

The NUT does not accept that nothing can be done. Firstly, we believe that something HAS to be done both to make sure that posts are retained to support the most vulnerable pupils and also to address the very real danger of a teacher retention crisis at the school.

Secondly, we believe, from the sadly limited financial information that we have so far been provided, that something CAN be done. We have produced a factsheet and question sheet based on the information that we have been given.

So, instead of simply repeating the mantra that 'there is no alternative', we would like the Council to answer the following ten questions:

a) Why have the cuts fallen so heavily on the staffing budget? 

1) The National Audit Office has recently warned that reducing the proportion of spending on teaching staff before other areas of spending increases the risk that "schools will make poorly informed decisions that could have detrimental effects on educational outcomes”. So why have the cuts at FHS fallen so heavily on the staffing budget?

2) The answer provided so far from the Council has been that the percentage of budget spent on staffing at FHS is 81%. However, our calculations suggest that the real figure is 75%, slightly lower than the NAO report as the national average. Can the Council check their calculations and confirm the actual proportion of expenditure being spent on staffing?

b) What cuts can be made to the non-staffing budget?
 
3) The school budget forecasts include a £100,000 figure for 'contingency'. Rather than put money aside for the future, shouldn't it be spent on addressing the immediate problems?

4) While staffing expenditure is (we believe) being disproportionately cut, there are a number of non-staffing headings that are being increased significantly. These include ICT, the PFI Unitary Charge, 'bought in professional services' and 'professional services'. Just these four items total over £1.5 Million. Is it really not possible to cut some of these costs instead of cutting so many staff?

c) What assumptions have been made about staffing costs and future income?

5) Even though this is being legally challenged by the NUT, Lewisham Council are insisting that the cost of making so many staff redundant has to come from the school budget. Can Lewisham Council confirm that the cost of these payments is nearly £0.5 Million and can the School show where these costs appear in the budget forecasts? 

6) It appears from what the NUT have been told that the budget forecasts for staffing costs assume that the problems facing all schools - of income not meeting the actual costs of NI, pension and pay - will continue. Yet all three of the main parties have, to a greater or lesser extent, suggested there might be some additional expenditure on schools after the General Election. Whatever happens, the campaign to oppose school cuts is gaining strength. Why not postpone some of the cuts and then allow parents, staff, unions, school and Council to all work together to demand these national promises are kept?

d) Why not act as a responsible lender and restructure the loan repayment or use the other powers under your Scheme of Delegation to support the School?

7) Lewisham Mayor and Cabinet agreed last November that, as long as a recovery plan making £1.3M staffing cuts was put in place, they would loan Forest Hill School £879k to be paid back over a five year period in order to cover the school’s immediate budget shortfall. To support a school in similar difficult circumstances, Greenwich Council has just agreed to extend the loan repayment for one of their maintained schools from five to seven years. Why can't Lewisham Council do the same?

8) Greenwich Council also supported this school through directing funding towards it for specific purposes. Lewisham's Scheme of Delegation also states that "the LA is authorised to make sums available to schools from central funds, in the form of allocations which are additional to and separate from the schools’ budget shares". Why can't Lewisham Council act on this provision?

9) Lewisham's Scheme of Delegation also states (when discussing who pays for redundancy costs under Section 37(5) of the Education Act 2002) that "costs incurred by the LA in respect of the dismissal of any member of the staff of a maintained school shall not be met from a school’s budget share for any financial year except in so far as the authority have good reason for deducting those costs". So what good reason does the Council have for making Forest Hill School pay £0.5 Million in redundancy costs itself?

10) The Scheme of Delegation also states that  "any amount payable by the governing body to the local authority may be met out of the school’s budget share for any funding period if the governing body is satisfied that meeting the amount out of the school’s budget share will not to a significant extent interfere with the performance of any duty imposed on them by provisions specifically of section 21(2) Education Act 2002 (conduct the school with a view to promoting high standards of educational achievement)". Are the Governing Body satisfied that these significant staffing cuts will still allow them to carry out this duty to promote such high standards?

Forest Hill Cuts - NUT challenges Council and School to a public debate

• £1.3M staffing cuts are severely damaging Forest Hill school
• Teachers and parents challenge Headteacher  and Lewisham Council to public debate
• Strikes to be withdrawn during exam period

Parents speak in support of NUT action - voices not heard in today's South London Press coverage

PRESS RELEASE - 19 May 2017

Martin Powell-Davies, NUT London Regional Secretary, said:

“The NUT, with the support of the Forest Hill Parents’ Action Group, has spent the last two months campaigning, leafleting, lobbying councillors, holding rallies and meetings, and also having to take eight days of strike action. All of this has been done to try and persuade Lewisham Council to recognise the damage that £1.3 million of staffing cuts is going to do to Forest Hill School and to act to prevent that damage.

Unlike other employers who have acted to resolve similar disputes and provide additional financial support, for example as Greenwich Council have done in relation to Plumstead Manor School, Lewisham Council have remained intransigent. As a consequence nearly 40 posts will be being cut from the school from September cutting vital support for Forest Hill students.

No teacher takes strike action lightly. Forest Hill NUT members have been striking because they know that cuts to jobs and working conditions mean cuts to the education of the Forest Hill boys that they have put so much time and dedication into supporting.

Teachers know that the next few weeks when external exams are taking place are particularly important for students. That is why Forest Hill NUT members had already voted to withdraw strike action notified until 15^th June and have informed the Headteacher of their decision.

However, teachers know that the lasting damage will be caused by the £1.3 Million staffing cuts, added to by the budget cuts having to be made to pay the £0.5 million in redundancy costs that have resulted from losing so many teaching and non-teaching posts at Forest Hill. That is why they are certainly not ending their campaign, and will return to strike action if necessary.

NUT members do not wish to return to strike action but neither are they willing to sit by and see both the Council and, regrettably, the School Management, denying the damage being caused, failing to answer to the financial decisions they have taken, and refusing to reconsider their proposed cuts. NUT members are also angered that, while the School management can present their arguments directly to students and parents, NUT members views are being misrepresented or simply not heard at all.

That’s why the NUT has challenged the School to agree that, in the interests of a clear and open debate and to make sure parents are fully informed of what is happening at their children’s school:

•          A statement from the NUT is sent out to parents via the school’s official written channels outlining the NUT’s position

•          A member of the Senior Leadership Team attends a parents’ forum, preferably to be held at the School, and debates with representatives from the NUT and the FHS Parents’ Action Group

Forest Hill parents, staff and students march to Lewisham Town Hall

Today, Thursday March 30, NUT members at Forest Hill School were left with no choice but to take their third day of strike action to oppose the damaging cuts to staffing and curriculum at FHS. 

After another lively protest outside the school on Mayow Road, a delegation of over fifty staff, students and parents marched with their banners along the South Circular Road to Lewisham Town Hall to hand in a petition of hundreds of signatures demanding Lewisham Council act to support the school. 

 
The march included two teachers still facing the threat of compulsory redundancy, teachers presently leading on PSHE and EAL support respectively. The loss of their posts illustrates the damage that the proposed job cuts will cause. Unless further financial assistance is found, there will be no teacher at FHS specifically to support EAL students and PSHE will only be covered in tutor time rather than being taught fully in separate lessons. 

The longer that the dispute continues without the Council acting to resolve it, the greater the ongoing uncertainty will affect students and staff alike. Regrettably, that will mean more teachers looking to leave Forest Hill to find posts where they will not see their time for preparation and marking slashed and their workload increased even further as a result. Lewisham Council urgently need to act to support the school.

Staff have been encouraged by the support given by some Labour councillors, including several who signed the NUT petition when they were lobbied outside the Council AGM earlier in the week. However, as things stand there has been no official change in the Council's line that it will not act further to assist the school, not even in meeting redundancy costs - despite the clear advice from the DfE being that this should be the Council's responsibility. 

NUT members therefore agreed that they have no choice but to call on their Union to issue notice for further days of strike action after the Easter holidays and that request is now being put to the National Union. 

In separate disputes, NUT strike action also took place today at Parkwood Primary in Hackney and by members of the Inclusion Team, also in Hackney, both against similar threats from budget cuts.

FHS strike: Staff and parents demand Lewisham Council acts to stop cuts

There was a tremendous turnout of staff, parents and students outside Forest Hill School (FHS) this morning to support NUT members taking their first day of strike action against damaging cuts at FHS (see pictures below). Yet more staff were gathering support from commuters at Sydenham and Forest Hill stations.

The key message from today's protest was for everyone to meet again - with even more friends, neighbours and colleagues outside Lewisham Town Hall to:

LOBBY LEWISHAM MAYOR & CABINET
from 5pm, Wednesday 22 March
outside Lewisham Town Hall in Catford,
London SE6 4RU

Sadly, the Council seem to be trying to wash their hands of this dispute even though they are the employer of the many staff that are being made redundant; even though they will remain the employer of all the staff who will be left to support the same number of students with fewer colleagues and so an even greater workload; even though they need to take responsibility for the education of local children that will be damaged as a result of these cuts.

Some councillors are even saying that acting to support the school would be 'illegal'. This is rubbish. The protest was told how Greenwich Council is agreeing to provide additional funding and extend loan repayments to support one of its schools facing similar funding pressures.

Education legislation also makes it clear that the expectation lies with the Council to take responsibility for the cost of the redundancy payments for those support staff who have already left plus those teachers who have opted for voluntary redundancy. That money alone could help prevent any further compulsory redundancies and allow FHS to recruit staff to address some of the additional workload that is otherwise going to be forced on to remaining staff.

So JOIN THE LOBBY TOMORROW. Tell Lewisham Council to stop pretending that defending education in one of their schools is 'illegal' and to start carrying out their responsibilities to one of its community schools.

A parent speaks up in support of teachers' action

Forest Hill School in deficit - how do we protect education for its students?

A community standing up for its school

Last week's packed public meeting to discuss the deficit crisis facing Forest Hill School (FHS) in Lewisham showed the determination of the local community to defend their school. 

The fact that over 120 people attended at short notice was a credit to both FHS staff, who had worked so hard to publicise the meeting, and to the parents and students who attended in such large numbers to stand up for education at their school.

At the end of the meeting, a group of parents formed the Forest Hill Action Group to organise a campaign. As an immediate step, they have been writing to the school asking for parents to be properly consulted over the cuts proposals.

NUT members, who had already won a legal ballot for industrial action, then met this week to confirm their request for the Union to issue notice for three days of strike action before the end of term, action to be taken if ongoing negotiations fail to produce an acceptable solution.

One of the parents present at the meeting, Phil Beadle, immediately wrote a post on his blog listing the threats facing Forest Hill boys as a result of the proposed cuts, ending with this rallying cry: "I call on parents in Lewisham and wider to do the same as the parents of boys at Forest Hill School are doing: to applaud their children’s teachers’ strike action and to stand alongside them on the picket".

The determination to defend education at FHS is clear - but what's the nature of the crisis - and how can it be solved?

Plans to cut £1.3M in staffing costs will seriously damage education at Forest Hill School

Why is a well-loved school without a falling roll facing a budgetary crisis? It's quite right that parents are asking for answers. Trade unions are entitled to budgetary information as part of legal consultation over redundancies - but some of that information is given to us confidentially. That's why the figures I am using in this blog are from public sources - with links to documents that you can read for yourselves. 

Luckily, some of the key information is in a document presented to Lewisham's Mayor and Cabinet last November. 
This explains that:

• The school overspent its budget at the end of 2015/16 financial year by £129k.
• During the 2015/16 financial year the school operated an in-year deficit of £463k and avoided a larger year end deficit by spending its reserves.
• The budget recovery plan shows the school in deficit at the end of 2016/17 financial year by £879k.

Although the document does explain that "following national changes, the school has had to face a reduction in the Post 16 funding of £150k", it does not explain further as to why the school has been consistently spending more than its income. The blunt facts are that any reserves have now been spent and FHS is now facing a huge deficit.

It's worth noting that this is not the first time that Forest Hill has had these kind of difficulties. A similar report for a December 2010 Mayor and Cabinet meeting stated that "During the 2009/10 financial year it became apparent that the school budget would significantly overspend. The school had overestimated the income they were likely to receive". So why wasn't the Local Authority paying more attention to FHS finances? After all, the November report states that "The school was audited in February 2016 and had a satisfactory assurance" !

The plans to address this deficit are devastating - even if only hinted at in the November 2016 Report:

• The recovery plan is built around reducing the teaching complement by reviewing the delivery of curriculum, considering contact time, reviewing management structures.
• In total the staffing costs within the school will reduce by £1.3m

£1.3M equates, with on-costs, to around 15 teaching posts plus a number of support staff who have already lost their jobs. As the report itself says, "Forest Hill School is not affected by roll numbers since it is virtually full in all year groups". Fewer staff for the same amount of pupils can only mean one thing - worse education. The 'review' of the curriculum and management structures will surely mean cuts to subjects and expecting teachers to carry out extra work previously allocated to now redundant colleagues. 

"Considering contact time" will mean cutting the numbers of non-contact periods that teachers use to mark, plan and prepare lessons to an absolute minimum. Given that teacher workload is recognised as being the main driver of teacher resignations and recruitment problems, this step alone seriously threatens staff morale and stability at Forest Hill School.

The document claims that the "benchmarking data indicates that the teaching costs at Forest Hill are £125 per pupil above the average for similar size schools within Lewisham ... so the reductions in staffing being undertaken are reasonable". However, is national benchmarking (also referred to in the report) a fair comparison given that Inner London salaries are higher than the national average? Even the Lewisham comparisons don't appear to add up since multiplying £125 by the number of pupils at FHS comes to nearer £1.3K than £1.3M!

Who is responsible? 

Parents understandably want to know why the school is in this financial mess. A maintained school is a community asset, not a secret commercial venture, and so small wonder calls from the floor of the public meeting for the school to 'open the books' were applauded. 

At a Sydenham Labour Party public meeting a few weeks before, Councillor Paul Maslin had bluntly made clear that, in his view, school governors and management were to blame. Whether connected or not, there have certainly been recent governance and leadership changes and the new Headteacher, Mike Sullivan, has been left with the unenviable task of dealing with the deficit. 

However, Lewisham Local Authority have a clear responsibility for financial oversight of maintained schools as well as, for example, being responsible for the original negotiations of Forest Hill's expensive PFI contract. They must also shoulder some of the blame and must certainly now take responsibility for finding an educationally acceptable way forward.

Of course, that apparent lack of proper auditing is fundamentally another consequence of government cuts to Local Authorities. As the National Audit Office pointed out back in 2011, "some local authorities are reducing their capacity to monitor and support schools’ financial management, at a time when some schools may need it most". Things will have only got worse since then.

My own view is that putting too much effort into apportioning blame for the causes of the crisis could be wasting energies best used on finding a way out of the mess - and a way out that doesn't make the FHS boys, who definitely weren't to blame, pay the educational price for others' errors. However, answers to the 'why' might certainly help with the 'how'. 

It's also in the school's own interests to be open and transparent. Otherwise, in the absence of a proper explanation, some parents will inevitably suspect that something more untoward has gone on - even though I was at pains at the public meeting to explain that there was no evidence that I was aware of that  anything fraudulent had occurred.

Regrettably, rather than being open, the school has instead been sending out letters that try to deny a crisis even exists! Trying to pretend that 'less is more' will satisfy nobody. Describing the loss of perhaps fifteen teaching posts and a demoralising restructuring of responsibility payments as a way to achieve a 'reconfigured curriculum' and a 'refreshed leadership structure' will only add to staff anger. 'Maintaining the quality of our offer with a declining budget' is something which just cannot be done.

Cuts to a school like Forest Hill will also inevitably have an impact on Equalities. Lewisham's own report from last November points out that schools like Forest Hill "like most in Lewisham, have high proportions of BME pupils and have promoting equality and social mobility as part of their mission to improve children’s lives". The report confirms that the Local Authority has a Public Sector Equality Duty - but what will the Authority be doing to carry out those responsibilities in this case? Where is the Equality Impact Assessment?

Is this about Fair Funding and Government Cuts?

The situation at Forest Hill has arisen before the emerging national crisis over school cuts and the additional new threat that the proposed National Funding Formula could make things particularly difficult for London schools. This hasn't caused the problems at FHS - although it would, of course, make things even worse if major cuts are inflicted on a school that's already in serious financial difficulties.

However, many schools, including FHS, have already been suffering from a declining income in real-terms as budgets have tightened. The National Audit Office have recently pointed out that 60% of secondary schools nationally were already spending more than their income in 2014-15, 15% of them being already in actual deficit. So Forest Hill is far from alone in facing a crisis. 

The link between the Forest Hill campaign and the wider 'Fair Funding for All' campaign is that FHS illustrates all too starkly the threat facing nearly every school if the Government is able to get away with its wider school budget cuts. A successful campaign at Forest Hill can also embolden others to stand firm on the cuts that may face them too.

What about the PFI?

When the school ran up a deficit in 2010, some of the blame was certainly attributed to the high costs of the repayments for the rebuilding of the school under the Private Finance Initiative. While the contractual detail remains unclear, publicly available documents show that the Grouped Schools PFI project that the Forest Hill rebuild belonged to had a capital value of £54M. However, the total costs of the unitary payments over 30 years adds up to over £200M! 

A recent Lewisham Schools Forum paper confirms that Forest Hill School is spending over 10% of its Individual Schools’ Budget on PFI payments. Whether or not this is a primary cause of the budgetary crisis, it surely offers at least a partial solution? Rather than demand that FHS cuts its staff and pupils' education, shouldn't Lewisham Council be demanding that the profiteering PFI firms take a cut in their payments instead? 

So what is the way out of this mess? 

Whatever the cause of this crisis, the real issue is how to solve it. NUT members are clear that cutting staff, increasing workload and worsening the curriculum offer no real solution. Instead, those threats risk destabilising the school, driving away staff and parents alike, and making a bad situation even worse.

The NUT will be demanding that education is protected by maintaining non-contact time to allow staff to properly plan and prepare lessons; that there should be no compulsory redundancies; that any changes to posts and management structures must allow a full curriculum for students and manageable responsibilities for staff in charge of those curriculum areas.

While the NUT hopes that a negotiation at school level can help address some of these issues, a resolution may well also require finding the additional funding needed to protect staff numbers. Here's how that could be done:

a) Extending the licensed deficit
 
Section 48 of the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998 specifically allows for Local Authorities to make provision for schools to set a deficit budget. There is nothing 'illegal' about such an arrangement. Lewisham Council have already agreed a deficit budget for Forest Hill School, providing a loan of £879k to cover the school’s budget shortfall in the first year of the recovery plan. The loan is to be paid back over a five year period. This loan could be increased to help reduce the impact of the cuts proposals.

b) Writing off some of the debt

The problem for FHS is that, before such a loan is approved, the Local Authority demands that the school agrees a recovery plan showing how it will be able to pay back the loan over the agreed timescale.

But this puts FHS in an impossible position. The Governing Body faces the same kind of dilemma as the Government of Greece! Not only do they have to reduce costs but they've also got to find additional savings so they can pay back the loan as well. As the school already has almost full pupil rolls, they can't recruit more pupils to boost income. The loan may help temporarily but its terms are still a recipe for severe cuts for years to come. The answer has to be to write off some of the debt.

The provisions for doing this already exist within legislation and Lewisham's own Scheme of Delegation (the same scheme that makes clear the auditing powers that perhaps the Authority should have been operating more stringently).

c) Cutting other costs

The NUT will be asking for full budgetary details to see whether there are other ways to reduce costs that don't damage education in the ways that the school is proposing at present. With PFI payments making up over 10% of the school budget, then that has to be one cost that needs to be looked at. Perhaps the Council or the contractors will have to meet the shortfall instead.

Staff and students shouldn't be paying the price for financial cuts and mismanagement at Forest Hill School. The NUT hopes that, alongside parents, we can build a big enough campaign to make sure that doesn't happen. We hope FHS Governors will put their responsibility for Forest Hill boys and the local community first and join us in opposing these cuts.