Adult education closure

The closure of adult education in Seaford is to be rubber-stamped at a meeting of the governors on 7 December. Given the supine position they took on the closure of the sixth form, it is hard to imagine they will do anything to derail the principal and the county council’s latest cut in education provision in the town.

See the Seaford Gazette’s report

Closure of adult education at Seaford Head?

The local newspaper reports that the adult education courses at Seaford Head, though successful, many of them over-subscribed, are threatened with closure.

Those who followed the story of the sixth form’s closure will not be surprised. If the closure is allowed to go ahead, then how can the school reasonably continue to call itself a community college?

School-leaving age to rise immediately?

The Guardian reports that the school leaving age is likely to be raised to 18 to keep the unemployment figures down:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/05/school-leaving-age

This makes the decision to close the sixth form even more short-sighted.

The long-awaited consultation

A letter, with some odd uses of English, and the salutation ‘Dear Stakeholder’ came yesterday. I’m a parent, not a stakeholder. The salient points are:

• The consultation runs from Tuesday 25 March 2008 to Friday 2 May. It seems to be run by a Post 16 working party, whose membership has not been made public. The letter is signed by Carolyn Lambert, who, at the council meeting last autumn, was a strong opponent of the closure. Parents will hope she has not been suborned.
• There’s a public meeting on Wednesday 23 April at 7pm.
• The governors will make a decision at a meeting on 14 July. History students will remember that this date marked the end of feudal autocracy in France; it might do so once more.

The consultation come much too late to be of any use to the students in Year 11 who have lost the chance to stay at the school. If consultation were to be meaningful, it should have happened before the governors took their decision. I’ll scan the letter as soon as I can.

School libraries summit

CILIP, the professional association for library and information professionals, held a summit yesterday, to discuss the crisis in school libraries and agree an action plan. There is a trend around the country to cut professional library posts in schools. Seaford Head, partly no doubt as a result of the closure of the sixth form, is no exception, and will lose its professional manager.

Still waiting for Ofsted

To pass the time while we wait for Ofsted to report, have a look at this study:
‘Schools are manipulating a new system of Ofsted inspections to exaggerate success’
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2267697,00.html and this one from the Times on how ineffective school governing bodies are: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3613917.ece