schools

Headington Headlines #49

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 6 – 12 February —

New timetables for bus routes 8 and 9 were announced, with a start date of 19 February. It’s claimed they allow more time for buses to get onto the Green Road roundabout in the mornings, and that they will schedule more buses on the Barton (8) route.

Two local schools are on the list of 10 Oxfordshire primaries to be converted to academy status under a government schools improvement policy. They are St Nicholas Primary School, Raymund Road, Old Marston and Bayards Hill Primary School, Waynflete Road, Barton. I blogged about an astonishing interview about the proposals with the County’s Cabinet Member for Scools Improvement, Melinda Tilley, and there’s a comment on the blog in support of St Nicholas’ School.

Consultation on two big Council planning documents opened this week: the Sites and Housing Development Plan Document (SHDPD) and the Barton Area Action Plan (BAAP). The documents can be downloaded here (SHDPD) and here (BAAP). You are constrained to comment in the format required by the Council. I have extracted the OX3 sites in the SHDPD into a handy annotated map to make it easy to see what the document has to say about them(*). I hope to write more on the Barton plans over the next few weeks.

Local Councillor @RuthWilk and Highfield Residents’ Associations’ Patrick Coulter met County officers at a site meeting to discuss the Lime Walk/All Saints’ Road junction and other road works in the area. Ruth’s report is here.

A 15-year old girl was sexually assaulted in Quarry Road on Monday. The police are appealing for witnesses and information.

The Masons Arms (@The MasonsArmsHQ) is looking for evening and weekend bar staff. No experience required.

Lazy Gamer, @LazyGamerUK, a new computer games and comics shop is due to open on London Road (opposite Domino’s Pizza) on Friday 17th. Their website is still under construction.

This map shows the location of some of the places mentioned in this report.

My favorite Headington-related tweet this week:

(*)The extracts from the SHDPD in my annotated map are taken from the version that went to the full Council in December. I haven’t checked to see if there are any material changes.

Active topics on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week:

  • New Lime Walk and All Saints junction “improvements”
  • London Road – closure of cycle lane
  • Leak/blocked drain at St Andrews Road/ Dunstan Road junction

I try to cover news from the OX3 postcode in Headington and out as far as Barton, Sandhills and Risinghurst (see map). To feed into next week’s summary you can comment on this article, or tweet either with the hashtag #ox3 or @mentioning @TonyOX3.

Oxfordshire Academies

TonyOX3

There was an astonishing interview on Radio Oxford on Tuesday evening. Melinda Tilley, Conservative Councillor and Cabinet Member for School Improvement on Oxfordshire County Council was being interviewed on the James Cannon programme about the planned conversion of ten County primary schools to academies. This is a coalition government initiative which they hope will improve failing schools.

However, Ms Tilley’s first comment was that “we don’t really know what’s gone wrong” with our schools. Strange, given her job title, and it immediately begs the question that if we don’t know what’s wrong, how can we expect to fix it? Next she was asked if academy status would improve the schools. “Probably”, she replied, “we have to do something”. Could she guarantee the schools would improve? “I’m not going to guarantee that … it’s not my job”, she said. Doesn’t academy status mean the County loses control over the schools? “We don’t have any control now, really”, was her astonishing response. “There’s not much point in your job then, is there?” asked the interviewer. Her reply, “I’m just waiting for the music to stop .. [something about finding another chair] .. No, not really.”

She strongly implied without saying so in so many words that this was a government action forced on an unwilling County Council. In The Oxford Times she is quoted as saying “The Government has set out the method through which change will occur at these schools. We therefore need to move on from that decision and focus our energies on making the change to academy status happen as smoothly as possible.”

So to summarise: the County cabinet member for School Improvement doesn’t know what’s gone wrong and why Oxfordshire schools perform so badly; doesn’t have any ideas what to do about it; believes the Council doesn’t have any control over the schools they run; is being forced to implement a controversial government policy in which she has no faith, and admits her job is just about meaningless. Jaw-dropping stuff.

I should point out I don’t know whether converting these schools to academies will improve the education of their pupils or not. I’m not an expert and I haven’t sought out what evidence there may be which might help reach an informed decision. Nor do I know why the schools perform so badly – it really isn’t my job, and my uninformed opinions aren’t worth anything. But for a responsible member of the Council to admit to such a level of ignorance and incompetence is astonishing.

You can listen to the interview for a few more days on BBC iPlayer – scroll to 1h06:00. The full list of schools is in the Oxford Times