In the autumn of 2017 following the release of the Daley and Jackson plan for education, with Cramlington’s Wayne Daley bragging that he would sack Northumberland teachers to bring in London based staff from their bedsits to improve results, a rebellion from educationalists and parents from the West of the County calling themselves Stars marched on County Hall in Morpeth to halt the plan.
The Councils Tory Leaders, Peter Jackson and Wayne Daley, may have said some of the right things to quieten the mob but their stall of the Jackson-Daley plan lasted four weeks until their next cabinet meeting.
A leaked email to Councillors and MP’s not marked confidential has exposed the outcome of their plan on the West of the county with Daley blowing over £40m of public capital finance to build a monolithic memorial to his time in office, namely the ‘Hexham Academy’ a school the Council now has no formal links with.
Councillor Jackson therefore had to spend equivalent amounts in Ponteland sacking the fixed price contractor Labour had brought in to develop the school and leisure complex and increasing spend massively to beat off any criticism that his mate supported Hexham above Ponteland.When this mess is linked with the four year Cllr. Wearmouth build project still ongoing into year five at County Hall in Morpeth on an unending and growing unknown and unaccounted for budget you can see why an incoming Labour administration have said they will begin a professional investigation and audit into this half baked vanity project.
Astley, James Calvert Spence and Holywell schools left to deteriorate.
The financial mess they placed the education service in across Northumberland was felt badly in the west of the County as the leaked e-mail reproduced below states but also in Seaton Valley who were due to have a new build of the creaking, damaged by mining subsidence 1960’s designed Astley High School and the ancient by County school standards Holywell first school and in Amble where urgent repair work was required which was left to deteriorate further and now requires the urgent development of a new school.
East Harford, Cowpen and Kitty Brewster lose out!
This uncontrolled spend by Jackson and Daley, sanctioned by the duo’s pal Nick Oliver from Corbridge not only stopped school projects, halted urgent repair works to schools right across Northumberland, but put back other infrastructure projects which required capital finance County wide, such as the Cowpen relief road in Blyth, the entrance gateway roundabout for East Hartford (a major road safety project) and has led to the acceptance of lower quality design by the Tories for projects such as the reopening of the AB&T Northumberland line where disabled and family access to stations and at road crossings linked with those stations has been largely ignored.
Deciding who has the biggest balls and who can spend the most on their pet projects are some of the reasons why Northumberland County Council has had six heads of finance in four years and why the NHS is looking to break the link with Social Services in September this year. Without a change of administration in County Hall privatisation and thus greater costs to the aging client will be the outcome of the financial mess the Tories have left. Please read the email below and see how others view the situation we the public are being left with.:
Dear Guy
Is this really fair?
Supporters of Bellingham Middle School willingly giving up their free time on a Bank Holiday to brighten up the front entrance to the School.

Bellingham Middle School has had to rely upon a charitable donation of paint and the goodwill and efforts of supporters of the School. More paint and effort are still needed.
The question is, why is this necessary at all when Northumberland County Council has around
£40m to spend on two schools in Hexham?
and furthermore, when NCC spent
£5,000 in Spring 2019 on the cost of the Hexham Courant webpage wraparound below (according to a Freedom of Information request), just to promote HMS and QEHS as the
”Ambition for Education in the West”.

Why is Bellingham Middle School
(BMS) being treated less favourably than Hexham Middle School
(HMS). If HMS is the
”Ambition for Education in the West”, then all schools should be resourced equally.
Or does this statement apply only to the ambition for educational standards?
The DfE’s end Key Stage 2 SATS outcomes for 2018/19, indicate that Bellingham and Haltwhistle Middle schools both had higher Progress scores than Hexham Middle School
– See Page 4 .
Hexham Middle School Average Progress Scores are
lower than both the national and LA Average Progress Scores, yet in 2018, the Council planned for the closure of both Bellingham and Haltwhistle Middle schools from September 2019, on the grounds that it was in the best educational interest of children in these areas.
Something feels very wrong when a Local Authority invests millions in a school with sub-LA and national average progress scores, and promotes that same School as the
“Ambition for education in the West”, whilst at the same time engineering the closure of rural schools where children are achieving better Progress Scores.
- 2 –
As my local MP, and an MP who has campaigned for fairer funding for schools, I would like to see you campaigning for a fairer deal for Bellingham Middle School, and for the children living in the School’s vast rural catchment area
(which has not changed). They have been dealt an unfair hand by the dishonesty and stealth of the current Tory Council
– by the portrayal of the School as underperforming and unpopular in 2018; the invalid statutory proposals of 10 May 2018; the failure to grant the School the right to appeal on 10 July 2018; the introduction of primary schools from September 2019; and the removal of the long established free school transport to BMS for children from the outlying villages from September 2020
– all of which flies in the face of the DfE’s statutory guidance. This Tory Council does not conduct the required consultation with those most affected, and is imposing its own preferences with impunity.
For the children in Haltwhistle it is already too late, their Middle school has been closed and the best opportunity that they had of achieving their potential at end Key Stage 2 has been lost, since not one Primary school in this area has a sound track record of success at end Key Stage 2. The life chances of these children will undoubtedly be affected by this, and when coupled with the fact that they can no longer walk or cycle to school in years 7 and 8, their health and well-being will be compromised too. Not to mention the adverse environmental impact caused by having to travel the extra 9 miles each way to/from Haltwhistle to Haydon Bridge High School every school day
– even if electric vehicles are employed, the 50% of pollution said to be attributable to the tyres and brakes cannot be avoided.
No self respecting politician, Tory or otherwise, could possibly condone the educational and environmental damage already inflicted upon the rural families in Haltwhistle. If the same were to happen to Bellingham, the impact would be even worse. Just as in Haltwhistle, none of the primary schools created from September 2019 have any track record of success at end Key Stage 2
- they have never had to help children do this before and are just as likely struggle as the small rural schools in Greenhead and Henshaw. Additionally, the impact on children’s health and well-being would be even worse as year 7 and 8 pupils would be confined to even longer daily journeys between Bellingham and either Hexham
(17 miles each way) or Haydon Bridge
(23 miles each way) and the environmental polution would be virtually twice that resulting from the closure of Haltwhistle Middle School.
What happens to rural children appears to be of no importance to this Tory Council
At a meeting with the Governing Body of BMS on 5 March 2018, Andy Johnson, Project Leader for the 2018 Phase 2
“consultations”, related “An example we have done with other schools in this situation is close Belford Middle School and they became Belford Primary School.”
– It was implied to the governors that BMS would be unviable in 5 or more years’ time. There was no evidence to support this.
An FOI request confirmed that no viability study had been conducted.
At the time BMS had a surplus revenue balance of
£92K and no record of any deficits. The decision to build the new Middle/High schools in Hexham had yet to be confirmed, so how the impact of having a new school in Hexham would affect pupil numbers at Bellingham Middle School was an unknown, yet a comparison was being made with the situation at Belford Middle School.
It has not gone without notice, that the new Middle school in Hexham has been built with significant spare capacity.
It seems likely that this Tory Council, by its damaging actions against Bellingham Middle School, is now aiming to render the School unviable so that it can fill up some of the the spare capacity at Hexham Middle School with displaced pupils, regardless of the implications for their health and well-being and the adverse impact upon the environment caused by the additional travel.
The DfE recognises that it is not good for children to have to travel long distances to school.and Sparsity funding is awarded accordingly to small rural schools to help them provide local education.
In 2018, the voice of the minority group that comprises the rural communities in the Bellingham Middle School catchment, were ignored by Northumberland County Council. As a Tory MP, you have the power to influence this Tory Council, and for once do something to redress the enormous discrmination exercised by the Council against this minority group, and against Bellingham Middle School.
Is it too much to ask that Bellingham Middle School be treated in the same way as the Middle schools in the Hexham and Prudhoe Partnerships, where children resident in a Middle school catchment area enjoy free school transport to their local Middle school, for the full 4 years?
- 3 -
Arbitrarily, and without any consultation, bending the free School Transport Policy to deny rural children in the BMS catchment area their rightful 4 years continuity of good education in their catchment Middle is indefensible. It is morally and ethically wrong, yet this Tory Council has done just that.
With your legal background and school related experience, I trust that you fully appreciate the damage being done
– no-one is in any doubt of the Council’s motive for this action. It is in retaliation for the successful appeal made to the Adjudicator, which undermined the Council’s authority. The appeal was made by an insignificant minority group, but the Council knew that it would still be possible to engineer closure of BMS if it could starve the School of pupils
– creating primary schools and subsequently withdrawing free school transport would serve to render the School unviable, which is what the Council did, albeit in contravention of statutory guidance.
It would be difficult to think of a more cruel way to damage a good school’s viability, and stifle both the educational and socialisation progress of the affected children, regardless of all the statutory guidance which required consultation with those most affected, and regardless of any adverse impact that this might have on the lives and future life chances of the affected rural children.
Additionally, NCC
(Councillor Alan Sharp, Director of the North Pennine Learning Partnership Trust) failed to ensure that the ownership of Bellingham Middle and First School land and buildings transferred to the Governing Body of the two schools when the Trust dissolved in May 2019
- a serious
"administrative error" that is not easily, if ever, able to be corrected.
Transfers were successful for Haydon Bridge High School and Samuel King's School.
You have been repeatedly requested to challenge the Council on the vengeful actions made in response to the Adjudicator’s ruling that the School should remain open. It must be clear to you by now that BMS is a good school, that serves our remote communities well and it is the only school in our remote area with any experience at all of delivering the full primary curriculum and successfully and helping children to achieve the expected standard or better at end Key Stage 2. Children are happy in this school and there is room for more of them.
The Council’s creation of a mixed economy of primary schools alongside BMS, has done nothing to improve educational provision
– to quote the Council’s own Report of 10 July 2018, education professionals believe that
“a mixed economy causes confusion and threatens the viability of small rural schools”.
The Council has caused confusion and is threatening the viability of our small rural Middle school.
There is however still time for you to use your influence with the Council, and remind them of their legal duty to support good schools, respect parental preference, and restore free school transport to Bellingham Middle School
(as a matter of urgency), in line with the same Policy as applied to children living in Middle school catchment areas in the Hexham and Prudhoe school partnerships?
Also, that if the Climate Change Policy is to be taken seriously, then children should enjoy 4 years continuity of education in their local Middle school, rather than have to face the prospect of having to
travel a long distance to school for years 7 and 8, as per the Council’s stated preference.
I trust that this time, you will seriously consider the issues raised here and that you will emphasise to the Council, that rural children should not be placed at a disadvantage simply because of their post code, particularly when there is already a high level of deprivation of services and amenities in their post code area.
These rural children together with BMS have a right to a fair deal.
Finally, in view of the the Council’s evident discrimination i) in favour of Hexham Middle School and ii) against Bellingham Middle School and the children and families in its rural catchment area, I would be grateful if you could advise upon the likelihood of success, were a legal case be brought against the Council for compensation to support BMS and to provide better resources for the children and families in its vast rural catchment area.
I would appreciate a positive response from you by 30 April 2021 at the latest. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further clarification in the meantime. The Progress Scores and Overall Outcomes for 2018/19 are provided for reference.
Yours sincerely
No comments:
Post a Comment