Councillors voted to oppose a primary school’s plan to become an academy shortly after the local authority maintained school’s governors voted in favour of the move.
West Blatchington Primary and Nursery School governors have voted to join the Pioneer Academy despite opposition from Brighton and Hove City Council.
Pioneer, a multi-academy trust, runs 15 schools including Moulsecoomb Primary School, in Brighton.
Before the council’s Children, Young People and Skills Committee meeting at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Monday 6 March), the council wrote to governors.
The letter raised concerns about the quality of education and the risk to the school’s Reading Centre which “could move”.
The letter also said that a government measure requiring all schools to become academies by 2030, in the Schools Bill, had been shelved.
Green and Labour councillors supported the “strong words” in the letter although it came in for criticism from the Conservatives.
Green councillor Sarah Nield criticised the consultation period, saying that the Department for Education recommended that it should be long enough for interested groups to give “an informed response”.
Five weeks, including the week-long half-term holiday, was not enough, she said, adding that little had been done to reach all sections of the school community.
In particular, more should have been done to consult the disadvantaged and families where English was an additional language – almost a third of the school population – and no public meetings had been held.
Councillor Nield quoted a resignation letter written by a governor, Tim Hodges, who is also a Conservative candidate in Hangleton and Knoll in the local elections in May.
She said: “We are not the first to raise the alarm at what is happening here and the alarm has been raised across the political spectrum.
“One of the governors who has resigned from West Blatchington is, in fact, a Conservative candidate, his resignation letter expressing what he calls his ‘last-ditch hope that the ludicrous and ill-conceived plans to academise the school can be aborted’.”
Councillor Nield added: “Unions representing staff at the school also sound a warning about the brevity and the lack of balanced views and options presented in this consultation – as do our own officers.”
Mr Hodges told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that he was not opposed to academies but was not happy with the way that the process had unfolded at West Blatch.
The school has previously defended the duration of its consultation, comparing it with consultations carried out by the council. It also sent the council a comprehensive report about the outcome of its consultation.
