Last updated 10:38, Friday, 18 July 2008

It's almost three years since soon-to-retire Roger Alston was asked if he could spare some time to review Cumbria’s schools. He was given two objectives by county council chief executive Peter Stybelski – cut the number of surplus places and improve secondary schools standards.

Roger Alston

Now we are poised to see the culmination of his work. Cumbria stands on the brink of a new era in education, one which is being closely monitored by Government ministers eager to see standards go up.

The school bell rang for the final time this week in four secondary schools in Carlisle and two in Copeland. They will be replaced on September 1 with three academies.

The reorganisation of secondary schools has been one of the most exhaustive public consultations Cumbria County Council has embarked upon.

The school organisation forum, with Roger as the chair, was set up from scratch in January 2006 along with five district groups, all made up of local education leaders looking to tackle issues at a grass-roots level.

Roger’s first task was to set out a vision for the future that resulted in the seven-page document ‘Enhancing Lives Through Learning – A Vision for Schools in Cumbria’ clearing stating the principles and objectives of the wide-ranging review.

Since then, thousands of parents, governors, pupils and teachers have turned out time and again to make their voices heard throughout every stage of this difficult and emotional process.

In Carlisle, they have possibly proven to be the most controversial changes in the secondary sector since comprehensives were introduced in 1968.

The arrival of the academy – the Government’s flagship drive to raise standards by having state schools run by private sector bodies – has also fanned the flames.

People have argued that private sponsors should not be involved in education in such a way yet academies are a fast-track way of getting millions spent on building modern new schools.

The academy developments and the creation of the University of Cumbria have helped the school organisation process take huge strides forward but it has not always been a smooth ride.

The partnership between the Richard Rose Federation, that will run Carlisle’s central and Morton academies, and the university is leading to the creation of a training school for post-graduate teaching students. It will help train student teachers and help the academy recruit and retain staff.

Roger said: “The federated idea of having two academies run by the one organisation is still an exciting and rare idea that Government is interested in.

“Also, we got the university’s involvement very early on. Twelve months later the Secretary of State was standing up in Parliament saying he wanted more academy-university associations. We’re also going to be growing our own teachers in our own training school. These are just some of the ideas now possible through this whole review that were not possible before.”

The school organisation review also had to examine why parents were choosing to send their children to schools outside of their catchment area.

In Carlisle, there were cases where more than half of the children living close to their local school were actually going elsewhere.

Roger said: “Our aspiration is that every school is a good school and now in Carlisle we’re going to have two academies, Trinity and Newman. William Howard and Caldew will serve the outer areas. Now there is no reason why all the schools can’t be good schools.

“We’ve changed the face of education but you can’t see it yet. The building blocks are there.

“In three years’ time there will be brand new buildings and super ICT provision but the biggest thing will be the recruitment of good quality teachers and staff.

“All of this ought to enable to us to do that better. The learning environment will attract good teachers. They will want to come and teach here.

“But the proof of the pudding is going to be five years down the line. We’ve set the scene for it to work and set the scene for Morton to have a decent intake from its own area. We’ve downsized Trinity so it will not take huge amounts of children and William Howard is going to be stuck with a 240 intake.

“We’re not there yet but this September will be the first step. It has all been started and now the conditions are there I believe for it to succeed.”

He added: “We have kept to the principles (of the original vision), they were very much about learners and it very much concentrated on young people. It was not about institutions.

“I think the vision will stand the test of time and I think now some parts have been used in the primary strategy that is being developed.

“The principles haven’t been difficult or controversial. The devil has been in the detail, in the operation and implementation of it. For example, that has been when we’ve been going into someone’s school and we’ve asked about amalgamation.”

Fear of the unknown has always created the most opposition throughout. “What we’ve found throughout is the general resistance to change, the concern and the worry, even with the most thorough consultation,” said Roger.

“We compared our consultation with other local authorities and we found we were doing a lot more. Our documents were better produced, we had more meetings and were talking to young people and had neighbourhood forums. If you had to look at what lessons we’ve learned, it is that you must do more consultation.”

It was hard at times for the School Organisation Forum to deal with certain issues head-on during the endless rounds of public meetings. “I had been warned about such meetings but I suppose I was still taken aback,” Roger said, “not by people’s emotions but what I thought sometimes was some people’s lack of logic.

“For example, where a school was going to get very small, what was the point where it would not be able to deliver for its children? For example, where you have a secondary school with under 100 pupils you’d only have one year 10 class. How could you offer different technologies, different sciences and at different levels? You can’t.

“People would say that they were okay with what they had but they aren’t. In the process you’ve had to be very careful not to criticise a school but you can’t say the reality because you’ve got parents and pupils there and it would destroy public confidence. You would walk this tightrope knowing that things ought to change for the benefit of young people but not be brutally honest about the standards issue.

“You can’t destroy public confidence in their schools but that, the nostalgia, has made it difficult. You couldn’t counter that so we would talk about surplus places a lot when we maybe should’ve been talking about standards.”

When Roger first agreed to take on the project, there was not even a team in place to lead the school organisation process.

A team of six was immediately set up and now the county council has built up a whole section that has been expanded to cover planned changes to primary schools and Building Schools for the Future, which pledges millions to improve school buildings over the next 15-20 years.

Cumbria County Council is currently waiting to hear whether the Department for Children, Schools and Families will back its long-term strategy for the primary sector.

Roger said: “School organisation was never big business in the county council. People had concerns about schools, about two things in particular.

“The chief executive Peter Stybelski was concerned about surplus places because the birth rate was going down and spare places in schools were going up. He was also concerned about standards in some schools.

“Now through the chairing of the School Organisation Forum and the setting up of these groups there is now much more of a strategic approach that has been developed about the whole thing, that infrastructure is in place.

“We have to make a difference and we’re making a difference to children’s lives. Where we’re changing things those changes will benefit children and children’s learning.

“I would’ve liked to have done more. In Carlisle, we’ve probably done as much as we could reasonably expect to do. In the time we’ve had available, Carlisle has had a big shake you could say.

“Two academies are going up there and £20million is going to Trinity and a new 14-19 centre being built at the college.

“I’m happy with how Carlisle is going but I’d like to do more in west Cumbria. The issues I’d like to address there include surplus spaces in the secondary sector and the shrinking sizes of the schools, particularly the shrinking of primaries in semi-urban areas.”