Elton Primary School is the school where the SotK Clan and I attended Nursery, although we went to a different school for actual school, as we live next door to one
. Anyway, The school is a beacon to other local schools due to its exemplary activities, staff, administration and parent-teacher liaison. In fact, parents and peers view the school so highly that they are the ones who began this petition and are the most voracious in its completion.
You see, Elton Primary is being used as an example by the government to show what happens when a constituency refuses to academise schools. It is a political pawn in the Michael Gove's great game of educational reform chess - and the children at school are the ones who will truly suffer. To those who don't know, the government are trying to stop funding schools and hand them over to businesses to run, mostly to save cash in my eyes. Now, this will obviously have repercussions - a school is not a business, and nor should it be run like one or by one. This is because a business will always have their own selfish wants before the children's needs; equipment will not be garnered unless cheap enough for the owners, and other such problems will occur. My area, Bury, is one of the only places in the country where the authorities have gone against the government and refused to academise schools which don't need to be. Obviously, this has caused some issues.
The government seem to have been desperately hoping for a loophole, allowing them to forcibly academise the area, and they found one. If a school is doing bad enough in its Ofsted report (basically an assessment of how good the school is, based on all sorts of pointless and irrelevant measures of how good a school is), then the government can make the school an academy anyway. Now, I feel I need to reiterate just how good this school is: not only does it offer a great nurturing environment for children to learn in, it is also the most accepting of special needs children, particularly mentally handicapped or disabled children. The inspection before the most recent was brilliant - only one point on the report fell to "satisfactory" - academic achievement - and the rest were either "outstanding" or "good". It is again important to remember the relatively high number of special needs children at the school - this is why the academic achievement fell low, you can't judge special needs kids against children without special needs, unless, of course, you are Ofsted.
As you may have guessed by now, the school's most recent inspection yielded less impressive results, and I would like to say now that the standards of schooling have not dropped at all; if anything they have increased. It was given an average of a 4 - "unsatisfactory". How this number was gathered from a 4, two 3's and a 2 is beyond me in itself. Closer reading of the report brought up all sorts of, for lack of a better term, bullarmadillo, planted in there by the inspector. Rumour has it that the inspector was a nasty piece of work himself, who was grumpy from the outset and was physically looking to fail the school - he would ring up Ofsted High Command to check if he could fail the school for some small piece of paperwork or bureaucracy they failed to adhere to exactly to the rulebook. Anyhow, they were failed, but the headmaster (who is an amazing headteacher) naturally pointed out all discrepancies with the report and sent it straight to Ofsted. This resulted in a response basically saying "Thanks, but we don't give one".
A followup inspection in a year's time again yielded a poor result, blatant lies, and much more bullarmadilloting. You can come up with your own reasons as to why this happened, but I think it is fairly clear that Gove wants his academies, and Elton Primary is collateral damage for the borough of Bury. As a result, the government are bullying for an academy, harming these children's futures and more problems. If one school can be made an example of, then the rest of my area may also suffer from inadequate teaching due to authorities forcing them into academies. The school have done everything they can on an official level, and were essentially told to, uhm, go away. Therefore the parents have taken up arms against this gross attack on good schooling and a system that was in place for years without complaint. Against injustice and bureaucracy. Against their children suffering due to government pride. All I ask is that you stand with us and sign the petition, and if you feel truly adventurous, like the facebook page. Links are below.
LinksSome are tinyurls as they were like 300 characters long.
Petition:
http://tinyurl.com/pzhgq59Facebook Page:
http://tinyurl.com/nw942xeLocal Newspaper article on the issue:
http://tinyurl.com/pbrmhvfLocal MP's statement (note that he is a career tory):
http://tinyurl.com/q229xloOh, and if this is the wrong place, either tell me where to move it or do it yourself
