Secondary Education (Skelmersdale)

Rosie Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main, for this debate on the future of education provision in Skelmersdale.

High-quality education unlocks choice and opportunity for our children and young people. We strive for the best education that we can possibly get for them. Skelmersdale is a town with a population of 36,000. Secondary education provision consists of one Catholic high school and two non-faith high schools. Lancashire county council is consulting on the possible closure of Glenburn sports college, which is one of the two non-faith schools and the only school located in the town centre. The proposal is for a phased closure of the school by 31 August 2016 and for pupils to be offered a guaranteed place at the other non-faith school, Lathom high school.

Glenburn faces possible closure for several reasons. It has only 850 pupils on its roll, and numbers have been falling for several years. The school budget this year fell into deficit, in part because of the falling numbers on roll. Attainment is below the national floor target. Added to that, the school is in special measures, and we await the outcome of the most recent Ofsted inspection on 25 and 26 November.

No one is ignoring that situation, but let us place Glenburn sports college in the appropriate context. Education professionals tell me that the school’s profile is disproportionately skewed towards the lower ability levels, which means that reaching the required national floor target attainment levels will always be a challenge. Lancashire county council’s own report states that

“Glenburn Sports College has more than twice as many pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds than any of its neighbouring schools.”

Furthermore, in the Ofsted inspection report of March 2014, we find:

“The proportion of students who are supported at school action is much higher than average…The proportion of students known to be eligible for support through the pupil premium is much higher than average.”

Glenburn sports college’s catchment area draws children from some of the most deprived wards in the country. I hear from parents and pupils, however, that Glenburn provides caring, emotional and pastoral support to create a positive environment for many children, including those who have been turned away by other schools and those from vulnerable homes with disruptive family lives, for whom school is their safest and calmest place. Children at the higher ability levels are also supported by Glenburn to achieve and to reach their exam results targets, and they have done well.

The school faces attainment and finance challenges, but it is important to understand the context in which it operates. Lancashire county council appears to have been somewhat opportunistic in the timing of its decision to deal with secondary education provision in Skelmersdale.

Parents are angry that the county council does not appear to have provided the support needed since Glenburn was placed in special measures, nor has it been given the time to improve its performance or for the intervention in years 7, 8 and 9 to show in the attainment levels. Other schools in the county have also faced deficit budgets, but they have been given time and support while addressing the financial position. This is the first year in which Glenburn has had a deficit, but no real help has been available.

That action is required is accepted, but the nature of the action being considered by Lancashire county council is opposed. The council’s approach to reorganising secondary school provision in Skelmersdale is fundamentally flawed. Proposed provision has the potential to fail present and future school pupils of Skelmersdale unless a different course of action is taken. The closure of Glenburn sports college simply appears to be the cheapest and easiest option; it is not necessarily the right option. I believe that it is not the right option.

Falling pupil numbers in Skelmersdale and throughout West Lancashire have resulted in the need to reduce the number of school places. What is shocking is that under successive and different administrations at county hall, the education authority has failed to deal with the impending situation, to deliver a proper structural solution to secondary education provision in Skelmersdale or to address the quality of that education provision. Of the 2,600 children of secondary school age, some 650 are educated outside Skelmersdale. That level of outward migration every day prompts the question of why parents choose to send their children to other high schools in West Lancashire on such a scale. It cannot be a surprise to those who are supposed to have been looking after those pupils and the level of education in Skelmersdale over the years.

It is recognised that Skelmersdale can support only one non-faith high school, but that is where the county council’s approach is fundamentally flawed. Lathom high school, the receiving school, also has a falling roll. In fact, as the education authority acknowledges, in two years’ time Lathom is likely to be in a similar situation to Glenburn, with about 450 pupils on roll.

The proposed closure of Glenburn only works, therefore, if a significant number of its pupils transfer to Lathom high school. If they do not, the viability of Lathom will become questionable in two years or so. The county has already acknowledged that it got its sums wrong when it excluded Up Holland high school from the calculations. If Glenburn parents choose to send their children to schools other than Lathom, it is not inconceivable that Skelmersdale could be without a non-faith school within three or four years.

Allied to that, the Minister knows that if a school is closed, it is a requirement that pupils go to a better- performing school. Lathom high school, however, is a school requiring improvement. Is that good enough for him? Lathom faces its own challenges to improve performance. In fact, had the authority acted in previous years on numbers or finance, Lathom might have been the school under threat.

Imagine trying to integrate pupils from Glenburn into Lathom high school while at the same time addressing existing performance challenges. Then add to the mix moving pupils from a town-centre school to a school right on the edge of town. The Minister should bear in mind that Skelmersdale is a new town, built on Radburn principles, with a labyrinth of subways instead of pavements. Children will face a 45-minute walk each way, with no identifiable safe routes, and many will have to walk to school because bus fares will be prohibitive in price for some Skelmersdale families, while other children will have to walk if they miss the school bus, because the school is not on a bus route. Closing Glenburn will also place uncertainty on the relatively new and popular community sports facilities, which have hosted many groups and users since the borough council demolished the one and only sports centre and failed to provide a replacement.

Some Glenburn parents are already seeking secondary school places other than at Lathom. That is happening now. I have had reports of parents of Lathom high school pupils seeking to remove their children from the school following the announcement of the consultation and the proposed solution. Even before a decision is made, the logic of moving Glenburn pupils into Lathom high school to prop up its falling roll is starting to crumble.

The proposed solution is fundamentally flawed, just as the process for making the decision is fundamentally flawed. From the outset, the management of the announcement and of the consultation process has not built trust and confidence. In fact, it has nurtured distrust and cynicism among parents. I will give a few examples of why parents are not filled with confidence about the process, beginning with the announcement of the consultation. It just so happened that the consultation on the possible closure was announced when parents were choosing their preferred school options, which made them think twice about making Glenburn their No. 1 choice. There was an Ofsted inspection right in the middle of the consultation period. Competitor schools actually took out advertisements in the local newspaper after the options closing date, hoping to sweep up the children from Glenburn. I have heard reports that county council officers told parents at the consultation hearings, to which people could go only if they made an appointment, that they would not be undertaking the consultation if the decision to close the school had not already been made—I paraphrase, but that is what the parents understood that they said. Not enough consultation books were made available to primary schools, families and the wider community.

There were only four questions in the consultation document. It asked the consultees, first, for their category; secondly, for their postcode; thirdly, whether they agreed or disagreed; and, fourthly, the reasons for their view. It was difficult to get the council cabinet member for education to meet the parents. When he eventually met 20 of them, he told them that they would have to come forward with alternative proposals for future school provision if they wanted to stop the county council proposal. That was not stated explicitly anywhere in the consultation document, so the parents did not know that they could offer a different solution.

I understand—this is a recent development; in fact, I heard about it only today—that the concerns about the transport, which I have mentioned and which were raised during the consultation, might delay the decision from March to late spring or early summer. I want the Minister to understand that the decision, which came out of the blue, has caused great instability, has affected children’s health and well-being in some cases, and has increased the pressure on staff.

I say to the governing body, the local education authority and the Minister that we need a pause. The governing body, the local education authority and the Department for Education must to work together. We need time to properly consider how best to serve the interests of Skelmersdale schoolchildren now and in the future. Perhaps the answer is to build a new school—preferably on a town centre site so the children can actually get to school—but, whatever the decision, we need to invest in the future of those children, and not run away or choose the quickest and easiest option. We cannot allow education bosses, whether in county hall or Whitehall, to gamble with the future of the children in Skelmersdale simply because it is the easy option.

I am pleased to have secured this debate. When the Minister wrote to me on 3 December, he declined to meet me because education provision, apparently, is nothing to do with the Department for Education. My constituents—those parents—do not understand that for one minute. The lack of accountability in the education system adds to the confusion and lack of trust when tough decisions have to be made.

I come to the nub of the issue. The Department for Education says that the decision must be made locally, but the local authority tells me that it must act as directed by the Department for Education. The parents and I were told that the governors decided to pursue the closure option, but I was also told that they were presented with a fait accompli and had no real choice because of the pressure from the LEA and the Department for Education. I have made freedom of information requests for much of that information, but I am still waiting. If I carry on waiting, my requests will end up with the Information Commissioner. Somebody is not telling the truth.

I have raced through my argument to try to get in as much as I can, but I will end on a simple message to all the participants in this farce: I believe they are all responsible and accountable. My constituents and I are angry, and the pupils are upset. I cannot believe that this is in the best interests of pupils. Education is about helping pupils to be the very best they can be. It is often referred to as value-added, but what value is added by playing pass the parcel with children’s lives? This is about their future, which is the only one they have got. We need some investment from the county, the Department for Education, the governors and the school. Everybody must get together to invest in those children. Do it now, otherwise a whole generation will be lost, and that is not right or fair.