Transcript

and life's in pride. I don't know. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Children and Young People's Scrutiny Commission this evening. I want to remind everyone present that this is a formal meeting of Hackney Council and all the constitutional requirements for council meetings apply. Please can I ask everyone to remember whether you are in the chamber or connecting virtually that this meeting is being held in public and is being broadcast live via the internet. The rights of the press and public to record and film this meeting apply and everyone present should note that media representatives may be in attendance or viewing the live stream. At the outset, I would like to thank all our contributors for their time and support for this meeting, including parent representatives, okay, including parent representatives, representatives from church diocese boards, Lambeth Council, London councils and officers from Hackney Education. Item 1, apologies for absence, I've got apologies from Councillor Palace, Claire Burton from the Department of Education, London region and Councillor Suso Runga, any other apologies? Nope. There are no urgent items and the order of businesses is published in the agenda. Do I have any declarations of interest? Nope. Moving on to the first and substantive item for this evening, which is school estates. As part of the school's sufficiency and estate strategy, Cabinet agreed to consult on proposals to close two primary schools and merge a further four through a public consultation, which ran from October the 8th to November the 19th, 20, 24, with the support of local stakeholders and other contributors, the Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission has agreed to review this update to the school sufficiency and estate strategy together with proposals to rationalise primary school place provision in Hackney. The role of the scrutiny is to hold local decision makers, to account and to act as a critical friend, to provide constructive challenge and feedback that supports strategic decision making across the council. As with its previous involvement of school reorganisations, the commission will retain a strategic focus and will therefore not comment on proposals for individual schools. It will, however, use the evidence presented to inform any recommendations for the future of the school estate strategy and the process through which school places may be rationalised. Whilst the scrutiny function is not decision making, it will review all the evidence presented at the meeting, both verbal and written, and any recommendations that it chooses to make will be presented to the decision maker, in this case Deputy Mayor Bramble and the Cabinet, to consider and respond. Any conclusions and recommendations that the commission makes will be made public and the response of the decision maker. The commission is being assisted in its scrutiny role with contributions from local stakeholders and other external contributors. All contributors together with the running order for the meeting is contained in the schedule at page 10 of the report pack. Details of all reports provided for each section are also provided at page 11. The commission is having a brief Q&A with grouped participants after each section of the meeting and will therefore, and there will be a broader Q&A at the end. To help the meeting run smoothly and efficiently, the commission has circulated many of the questions it hopes to ask in advance of tonight's session. Of course, other questions may come up outside of these in the meeting. Will I please ask members to ask questions concisely and singularly, and can I ask respondents to give brief and concise answers where possible? We have many of you in the room this evening, and we'd like to get around to as many of you as possible and to get through as many questions as possible, as I know members of the commission are quite keen to explore this item in great depth. So before the commencement of the item, the commission wants to acknowledge that everyone here in the room this evening fully understands and appreciates the important role that schools play in our communities. Falling school roles is presenting real challenges to schools, which is impacting children, families and staff. The challenging work that officers are having to do, I just want to recognise just how much of an emotive topic this is, I think, for everybody this evening. I don't think there's anybody who doesn't understand or can't sort of grasp the impact of the decisions that we're talking about. And I can't imagine any of us in this room today are keen on the idea that we're here to discuss closing schools that we know can be hubs of the community and a source of stability for both children and families. So I just want us to all have that in mind as we're discussing this item this evening and to be mindful of what this will evoke, understandably, for people in this room this evening. So to start this item, we will have a short presentation from Hackney Education, followed by Q&A, and then we will move on to other contributors. So I'm going to be really strict this evening, and I'm actually going to get my stopwatch out. So we've got 10 to 12 minutes of Hackney Education presentation, please. So over to Councillor Bramble to introduce, I believe, and then Jason and Terry to presently. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for acknowledging that this is very emotive and just want to add to the state code, which you welcome, that the union members that are here are present. I welcome the opportunity to hear from scrutiny colleagues and everybody here. It's really important that we continue to engage in this piece of work. I'm really proud of our family of schools. Before government removed the Ofsted criteria, 99% of our schools were either good or outstanding, and they continue to provide a broad, rich curriculum for our children. The reason why we are here is because of no fault of any individual school, school leader, or the council. Nobody wants to be making these difficult, uncomfortable, really heart-wrenching decisions. But actually, we have a duty of care to our children, to our school leaders, to the families that send them there, and the broader school community to make sure if there are difficulties within any individual schools or groups of schools, we make those difficult decisions. And that is why we are doing that. And we try to do that to consider everybody within that school community listening and engaging how we go. I know people feel uncomfortable, and I've often been challenged by many on this, when you mentioned children, young people, and money. Resources cost money, unfortunately. I wish that we had schools and there wasn't any money attached to it. I wish that if we had schools, we didn't have to think about how we resource schools. But the reason we mention any context around budget isn't that because we're insensitive and we don't understand the cost of how important a school is. Because we value the principles of what those schools do, we want to make sure that we have the right resources. The last thing that I'd say, Chair, the easiest thing would be to do nothing and just allow every individual school to continue in the situation there are, and we'll just see how it goes. But I think that will be irresponsible. That is why we are making these difficult decisions, and we continue to have these difficult conversations. I will pause there and hand over to colleagues. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Bramble, and thank you, Chair. I'm Jason Marantz, Director of Education and Inclusion. And in this very brief presentation, I'm going to summarize the position in Hackney due to the decline in the number of children in the borough, which is creating significant challenges for the local authority, our communities, and, of course, our schools. Many of our schools are already facing significant funding pressures or financial deficit due to having fewer children on their school roles. The local authority has a statutory responsibility to ensure that there are sufficient school places for every child in the local area and to support schools managing with their falling roles. This is to ensure that they can remain financially sustainable and offer a successful education, and, of course, offering choice to families in the local area. Hackney schools have been on a successful improvement journey, achieving amongst the best results in the country, and this includes 99% of all schools being rated good or outstanding by Ofsted and excellent attainment nationally. However, the funding pressures are now presenting a significant risk to the ability of our schools to maintain standards and meet the needs of all children. And I'm aware that it can be really challenging talking about finances when we're talking about education. We wish we could just focus on children, but as I'll outline further, unfortunately, we have no choice. And I do want to make the point at this stage that making decisions about how to manage the school estate is incredibly challenging, challenging for children, their families, our school staff and leaders in their communities. We understand that these proposals are difficult and painful. Unfortunately, the challenging situation with falling roles requires tough decisions, including, at times, the closing and merging of some schools. So I'm now going to take you through a very brief presentation. If we could just move it on, please, Martin. Thank you. The first two slides in this presentation outline the position with falling primary roles in Hackney over the past few years, as well as the projected numbers going forward. And if we can move to the next slide, please. I want to draw your attention to this chart. You can see the blue line. That is the falling role trend from when the trend began in 2017. And then the red line shows the projected trend up to 2035. And you can see that quite clearly. Moving on, please. The next two slides give examples of the impact that falling roles are having on education in our schools and the measures that we feel we must take to maintain standards through maximizing the available resources across our wider school estate. And what's interesting, sorry, just to go back just one point. What's one thing to point out on this slide about the impact is that as part of our school improvement program, we didn't even ask the question. We just did an analysis of reports from the summer term last summer, just to see if we could pick up the mention of the impact that falling roles was having on the quality of education. So without even asking the question, we saw that 40% of primaries expressed this in some way during that visit. Just moving on, please. If I can move on again, please. This is in the pack. So hopefully people have seen this. The measures form part of the Burr's current school estate strategy and particularly the various actions to address the surplus places that have resulted from falling roles. This slide and the one after it describe the approach and the actions being taken, including proposals to reduce planned admissions numbers, as well as closed schools that have become financially unsustainable. We are reluctantly taking this action as it is evident that keeping these schools open will have a detrimental impact on the wider sustainability of other local schools across the borough. So if I could just ask you to move on, please. Thank you. And you can see some of the measures there. So this slide outlines the timeline and progress of the current estate strategy, starting with the strategy launch in 2022, which preceded the first phase of reductions in 2023-2024, whereby 105 surplus reception places were removed as a result of four school closures. In this current phase, we are proposing a further round of school organization changes, which could result in up to four school closures and thereby removing a further 90 reception places. Following this current phase, the local authority will then be reviewing and reframing its school estate strategy in line with progress and learning from the last three years. Further school organization changes will be considered and brought forward as part of planning in an area-based model. So this will be done area by area as opposed to school by school. Next, please. This slide sets out the process the local authority has undertaken to determine its proposals under the current phase. We've taken decisions to move forward with the current round of school closure merger proposals based on the criteria and additional factors, which are also set out in pages 36 and 37 of the report pack for this session. And if we can move on, please. So on this slide and the one after this sets out the details of the closure and or merger proposals concerning up to six schools, followed by the timeline for consultation and the possible next steps. So this will be known to the room and the next one, please. Thank you. Thank you. We fully recognize the disruption to a child's education that a school closure can create. So we've been working closely with schools that are affected families and other local schools to mitigate the impact on children's education. The next slide and the one after details the support being provided to schools, please, Martin. Thank you. So this is the support package that we offered last year and have reviewed and will be offering this year to our schools. And on the next slide, schools and staff, I should say to our families and their children. And finally, the last slide explains how we will be providing regular updates to elected members throughout this process, including planning meetings with counselors for the constituencies of the schools affected. So to conclude as director of education, I am acutely aware of how difficult this situation is for our schools. Children and their families. And I must say, as a former teacher and head teacher, I understand that schools are very much the fabric and the center of their communities. And therefore, how emotionally challenging this process is for all concerned. Thank you, chair. Thank you very much, Jason, and thank you for keeping to time. I will kick us off with the first question. If we can take two at a time, so maybe have pens at the ready, but just to be mindful if we can keep questions succinct and answers also, as there's lots that we're hoping to get through. And I wanted to just ask about any key points of learning from the last round of school closures and mergers that we had. And in particular, yes, so what are the key learnings that have come from that for us that have been reflected in the proposals that have been put forward in the most recent consultation? But also, in particular, can we hear a bit more about whether the mergers have been successful and whether pupils who've moved across as anticipated, noting, for example, that Princess May has reduced its plan this year from 60 to 30, when I think the intended, the hope had been that with the merger, with Culverston, that that would have alleviated some of the challenges. And you're okay to take another question, is that okay, Councillor Pinkerton? Thank you. Just within that, I wanted to specifically ask if you could discuss anything that you've learned from the previous process that could help support pupils and students with transition to a new school in the event of a closure or merger, and what you've learned that could help support the tailored to the specific needs of the school in terms of seeking feedback from the specific school communities about what support they might think they need. Thank you. You're able to take those two and then I'll take another round. Thank you very much. I think, you know, my concern is that we haven't been strategic enough in the past, you know, about how we approach this. I mean, I, you know, asked the question at the last, the last time we were closing schools, how confident were we that children displaced from Colverston would go to Princess May? And I think the answer's in these papers now, you know, and we're left then with a big building that's costly to run and staff and a smaller pan. How can we get smarter at this? You know, because the process is clearly going to go on. So I think we've got to really look much more, have a much more demographically based approach, you know, not looking so much at individual schools and school budgets, you know, that's come out a lot in the papers, but you know, the needs of our community, you know, how are they being best served? Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm going to, I think I've heard three questions there. So I'm going to start and then I'm going to ask Terry to come in just in terms of the lessons learned. I think that's incredibly important to be reflective in a situation like this. And I think at the end of my presentation, I outlined the fact that we do want to take an area based approach and do want to look longer term and need to look in multiple years to do that as well. But just in reference to the question about lessons. So the timeline was shorted. It was it was longer in the last round. It was 18 months with an additional period of informal consultation on the back of feedback received largely from schools, but also from others that was shortened into one academic year. And the thinking was to try and reduce the unknown anxiety that any kind of consultation like this would cause. The other thing that we did was there was earlier engagement with a wider group of stakeholders. We met governing bodies. We spoke to head teachers as early as we could. There was also, we offered additional engagement sessions with parents. And in terms of should things proceed and move forward, we'll continue to have a dedicated member of the admissions team working with families should that be needed. And also a dedicated education healthcare plan coordinator, a member of the SCN team recognizing that there are children with significant need in some of these schools and should there be the need for that person will be able to help with the not just finding placements, but also transition if it's required. Do you want to come in on the mergers, please? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Terry Bryan, Assistant Director for School Estates. I want to start by explaining that when we undertake a merger in these circumstances, our focus is on trying to ensure that in the event of a school closing, that the displaced pupils have continuity. And therefore, the success of any merger is ultimately based on how many children actually moved to what will be the continuing school. I think we all understand that. And in the case of Baden-Powell and Nightingale, that was a very successful merger because the majority of children did move. And I don't know if you saw the news item recently, which the pupils talked about how that process worked and how much they're enjoying their new school environment. In the case of the other school, it didn't work. And I'll be frank with you, it didn't work partly because of the fact that so few children from Colveston actually moved to Princess May. And there are lessons to be learned there in the sense that when you're talking about schools, you need to be respectful and mindful of their communities and how they will work together, and not just now going forward. And you've got to do a lot of work in preparing for that significant change where you can. So we're obviously keen to do that. And in terms of the strategy moving forward, it's really important that we move to a sort of community area based approach whereby we can consider the needs. When we look at school organization, we can properly take account of the needs of the wider, the whole school community and consult them and ask them what they want before we bring proposals to them. And that will be the aim going forward. But I hasten to add before we can do that, we've got to, we've got to, we've got to get to a position where we've got a manageable, sustainable school estate. We can't begin to make changes to the future if we're really struggling at the moment, trying to maintain standards in schools because of the impact falling roles is having on their resources and finances. So it's, it's a balance and we're going to be working over the next few months to refine the right balance and engaging with our schools and our wider stakeholders as part of that process. I think on that final question, I think Councillor Pinkerton was your question answered about the support. Yeah, I think it, did it seem in your sec, the final bit of your answer, you were thinking about a future phase where it's an area based approach. So what about in terms of the current phase where there has been, you know, there's current proposals about potential mergers. So have, yeah, what current support is being provided or lessons learned from phase one in terms of how to benefit that, the transition that may be happening in the kind of immediate terms. We talked about what we've been doing to support the second phase of school organisation changes. What I'm mindful to point out to you is that at this stage, we've brought a set of proposals that includes in the case of four schools, or certainly two schools, the option to close the school outright or for it to close as part of the merger. At this stage, we haven't made a decision on that and we're very much mindful that that decision needs to be somewhat influenced by the feedback we get from the current round of consultation, which is only just concluded. So I think we've learned that we've got to engage fully with our communities and our proposals and if we decide to go ahead with the potential for a merger, that there is work to be done over the next few months with those schools to ensure that that can be a reasonably successful process. mindful that even outside of the consultation process, we need to engage with our schools and their communities to make sure that we put in place what they want. And as I say, at this stage, we haven't made a decision on which, so I wouldn't want to present something to you that suggests that we have. I don't know if you want to add to that. I just want to come in again about the point of support and then particularly around children, although there are a number of stakeholders here to think about. As part of the team that Terry leads, we have a transition and community cohesion lead who's kind of dedicated completely and did this last year to try and make, you know, where possible those mergers work. And we were very clear that one did and one wasn't as successful, but that person is still a member of the team and would be working on this should we be in that position again and go ahead. And just to give you the flavor of some of the things that they did, it's making suggestions to staff, so supporting the development of social stories to help children plan for their move. There were a number of tours that were arranged to the new school. There were a number of sessions created where children could meet children from their same peer group so that they could begin to develop relationships. And as I mentioned before, for children with additional need, there was careful planning for each of them. And I think the nightingale example is a good one in the sense that the entire community was sort of motivated by the head teacher and got behind it and really welcomed that community in with open arms. So I think we've got some examples and some things in place that we could continue to use, but we will continue to reflect on that. I'm just mindful that we've got a lot of questions to get through for this section. And we've only got about 10 minutes left scheduled for this. So we're going to have to keep answers a bit more succinct, please. I'm afraid. Sorry, we've just got a lot that we want to get through. Deputy Mayor Bramble, very, very briefly, please. And then just to say the head teacher from Baden-Powell was working with the head teacher. So it was both schools in collaboration and Hackney Education put additional resources financially to support both schools through the transition period, because health and wellbeing is core to all of this. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Binnie Lubbock and then Councillor Ross, please. Thank you. I was a bit disappointed to not hear during that section when you talk about lessons learned, sort of understanding around this sort of terminology around mergers and to hear mergers and closures kind of used interchangeably. I think people, when they hear mergers, they don't just think that's a merger of pupils on a case-by-case basis, but actually, you know, a merger in a deeper sense, especially around staffing as well. So my question is around the fact that given the new statutory guidance on opening and closing maintained schools published after the Cabinet meeting in September now clearly states that local authorities can apply to the Secretary of State for Education to establish new maintained schools when replacing one or more existing maintained schools without going through the free school tendering process, will the Council be consulting with school leaders about the possibility of genuine school mergers of staff and pupils and including as an option in any published consultation materials in the future? Can I take another question from Councillor Ross? Sorry. Thanks, Chair. The central government, as you are aware, announced new capital funding for primary schools to add nursery provision to increase pupil numbers and improve financial sustainability. Is this a possibility in any of the schools within scope for these proposals currently? And would this new funding make any significant impact in the short to medium term? OK, I'm going to take the first question and Jason will take the second. I think it's important to make it absolutely clear that the DfE has issued new guidance on opening and closing maintained school, but the primary legislation hasn't changed. We're, of course, aware of the provisions in the Education Act regarding opening new schools, but that's not what is required here, and that's not part of the current proposals. I think it's important that when a local authority proposed to open new schools that they consider what is further outlined in that guidance. And if you go on to page 18, it talks specifically about demand versus need, and it talks about having to demonstrate that there is demand for a new school and there is need for a new school. Now, the simple truth here is there isn't need for a new school in Hackney, particularly when we're going through a process of having to close schools because of surplus places. What there is, is a need to consider that where a school is no longer financially sustainable, that it needs to be considered to closure for the reasons that we've outlined previously. There's also a need to be mindful that if you're talking about demand, that you have to consider what the future demand will be. And you saw the slide earlier, which showed that we're going to be facing a situation in this borough for up to the next 10 years, where we're going to see declining roles. So there isn't a need for a new school. What there is a need for is to consider how to ensure that if you're closing a school, that the children from that school have the opportunity, the displaced children have the opportunity to continue at a local school ideally together. And that is the context in which we are presenting these merger proposals. And it's really important for me to stress that this isn't about the need for a new school. This isn't about finding ways to establish a new school. This is about ensuring that if we make significant school organisational change, we as far as possible protect the interests of children by enabling them to go to a nearby school. And that was the purpose of this proposal. And I should also add, there are two things that DfE have advised. Firstly, it would not be appropriate for the local authorities to seek to establish a new school in the context of these proposals. And secondly, you know, it would seem a bit odd that we're seeking to open a new school in the midst of trying to close a number of schools. I'll comment on the question on the nursery provision that you asked. Just to be clear, this was a capital funding grant. It's not provision funding. So the funding would only be to enable schools to convert space for additional early years places. But we would need to be mindful of the current demand for this provision in our schools. And there already appears to be sufficient nursery demand in the borough. I would also make the point that many of the schools in scope of potential merger closure already have nurseries, except for one St. Mary's who ceased their nursery provision from September 24, and have leased part of the site to an independent provider to act as a source of income. So we determined it wouldn't be appropriate or helpful in this situation. Just a very brief follow-up. Just on that question of there not being demand for a new school. As we heard earlier from Councillor Tinkleton, obviously we're thinking about these things in the context of the whole community and what's required for the whole community. And I'm sure that certain elements of the school cohort, the parents, you know, even up to the governors and heads talk about these things and would be interested in those kinds of things as a merger. And we heard about Baden-Powell earlier. And I remember when we had the mayor, we went to Baden-Powell together to first introduce those plans. The head there said that their red line was that there was going to be a merging of staff at that meeting. So there is a demand there from the community, from the pupils. And you mentioned that we shouldn't be setting up new schools when there's deficits and funding issues that we're trying to solve. But my understanding is if we close schools, then their deficits would be written off, as has happened with the schools that have been closed already. And also, I would like to know whether the funding, if the council is lobbying for the per-pupil funding to be tracked with inflation, because it's obviously stagnated for a very long period of time, hopefully we can see that increase under this new government. Just again, just to remind contributors, we are really up against it. So refrain from your statements woven into questions, please. I've got a few other people that I want to bring in before we bring this section to a close, please. I might bring Councillor Gordon in before I bring you in on that point, if that's okay. Yeah, thanks Chair. Just sort of maybe building a little bit on some points that have previously been made. I'm just really sort of asking Hackney Education, if you don't proceed with these closures, where will the financial risk lie ultimately? And who will be in the position of picking up the deficit? So just I know that this has been touched upon in the papers, but I think the youth would have that as part of the meeting. I suppose my second related point, apologies Chair, is that not all schools in Hackney are managed by Hackney Education or by our diocesan partners. There are obviously primary schools, we're talking about primary schools here, which are a part of academy federations. What is happening in relation to those schools, in relation to roles, and do those structures provide some schools with some protection from possible closure? If you could maybe address those points briefly, that would be very great, thank you. Yeah, I think there are about five questions in total, so forgive me if I don't cover all of the answers in my response. I think it's important to say that school deficits are not written off. They fall upon the council in its general fund if a school eventually closes. So it does impact on public births, and significantly so, because the council obviously relies on that funds to run its wider services. So we need to be mindful of that. It's not just, you know. In terms of academies, obviously they're funded directly by central government, and they come under the, in terms of pupil place planning, there's a requirement for them to work in partnership with the local authority, but the local authority doesn't have the final say on whether these schools reduce their admission numbers, or are closed in circumstances when they're not viable. But I think it's important to stress that our relationship with academy schools in the borough, particularly around issues like this, is improving. And going forward, we very much anticipate that that will be a positive and co-productive relationship. We've also been working really closely with the regional director, who has the ultimate influence over academies, to establish the approach both now and going forward, but also to make sure that where we have to make these difficult decisions that involve all schools, including academies, that, you know, the local authority has a reasonable influence over that. But yes, in answer to your question, there is no direct influence control over place planning and local authorities for the council. All right, so I'm going to take probably about the final couple of questions now, and then we'd have to move on, I'm afraid. Councillor Charlton, then I'll bring in Councillor Primery, please. Thank you. The decline sort of peaks in 2028, very briefly. You know, what are we doing differently now to be prepared for that? And I've got a brief question for the diocese as well, relating to the closure of St. Don's. We're coming on to that. Oh, okay. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, so my questions are in terms of the long term planning, and whether the education department is working in the silos, since that we know the demographic changes. We know what's happening with the housing in Hackney over years and years. We know what's happening with our youth services. So why has it not been more joined up looking at the long term? Since primary schools are the heart of our urban communities and mean so much to the community, how can we do a consultation in six weeks without bringing everybody together and having the long term view? And it sounds like you were saying that there were longer term plans last time, but we really need to bring everybody together. And finally, in terms of making adjustments for parents and for children, how can it be right to have a consultation and at the same time be taking children, sometimes even without parental consent in terms of classroom activities to other schools? Because that to parents is like a done deal. And we really need to look at our long term planning. So we all come together for what we need for the future for our communities. So I think in answer to your question in terms of the future outlook, there are a number of considerations. Firstly, we need to be better prepared for a further reduction in our pupil numbers. And it links back to all the data and intelligence that we gather around what the picture will look like. And that includes working much closer across council directorates, particularly housing, so we can understand, but also understanding our migration levels as well. So I think we're mindful that there could be a further drop in our pupil. It's projected to be. And we need to try and find a way of organising our schools where we can withstand that. And I'm going to be absolutely honest with you. It may be that we will have to look at more school organisation changes and possibly more school closures. Because those numbers, if they, you know, remain as projected, it's going to be very difficult to manage within the existing school estate. But we're going to do it in a way where, as I said, we're going to try and make sure that we mitigate the impact on the wider school community. And that's by looking at different models of school organisation, if possible. Getting schools working in partnership, working in partnership with our diocesan colleagues, with our academies and others to try and build a school system that is more resilient in this current context. And if I can just come in on the last point about the, I think I did mention this during the presentation, in terms of the length of the process, that was reflected upon and it was just felt that it was far too long last time. So I don't, I'm not sure you're ever going to get an ideal for this because we're dealing with such really difficult and complicated situations. And just to pick up the point, I think you asked a question about taking children to other schools during the consultation process. That isn't something that Hackney education leads on. We believe that in one school, one head teacher did do that because some parents requested that. So that would be a local decision between head teachers and families. It would not be something that Hackney education would lead on or do. Before we move on, I'd just like to make a bit of a statement as this is something that came up when we looked at this previously. And that is around how we can have a Hackney response to an issue that I appreciate is particularly pronounced in some schools. Because one of the concerns I think played out for me and what we saw with the amalgamation between, the proposed amalgamation between Culverston and Princess May was that we see the inequities within our Hackney school system play out there, where I think many of us know some of the top schools in the borough that are always oversubscribed. And I can't imagine they'll ever be in this position. And that's because of parent choice. Parents are choosing to send their children there. But what that means is that when we close schools, those children are not going to go to the schools that we want them to go to. The parent choice is going to help those schools to remain full. So we'll always come back to the same schools again and again, schools that mean a great deal to smaller communities, established communities. And they can't always bear the brunt of what is going on. So what can we do to share that load? What can we do to ensure that those schools that are seemingly thriving in terms of their, you know, pupil numbers can also feel the weight of that burden that is a Hackney burden? It's not through any fault of the schools. We know that they're performing to a high standard and that parents are largely, you know, very happy with the service that they're receiving. How can we, yeah, how can we look at plans and start to look at our three form entry schools and, you know, to try and shore up some of the more vulnerable schools? Yeah, I think what I was sort of just initially outlining was our plans to move to an approach where every school in the borough sees itself as part of a borough wide approach. And then they're working together to ensure that the system is flexible, but also that it supports our children in the best way possible. And I agree with you that that's very difficult to do if you have this kind of mixed economy. I also think that when you see the redraft of the strategy, you will see that there is a focus on how we can focus on how we can establish a system that protects our most disadvantaged communities. Now, that isn't easy. And in some cases, that's going to require a lot of pressure on our colleagues in the DFV and elsewhere to ensure that the system can be made fairer. And that local authorities have more influence and control because it's through that influence and control we can affect some of those changes that we all want to see. At the moment, we've just got too much of a fragmented system. There's too many actors in this play. And there needs to be one lead and that should be the local authority. And that's what we're pushing government for. Thank you, Terry. We're now going to move on to, I'm going to introduce Penny Roberts from the Diocese of London Board for Schools and Peter Sweeney from the Diocese of Westminster Education Board. Both Penny and Peter have been invited tonight, given that both Church of England and Roman Catholic Schools are subject within these proposals. And they will both provide information about the role of the diocese in school planning and the decision making, together with London-wide perspectives on how falling roles were impacting respective faith schools. Penny and Peter, you have five to six minutes each, please. And we will then follow up with some questions. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Evening, everybody. I'm Penny Roberts. I'm the Director of Education for the Diocese of London. So I'll just start with a bit of background about the Church of England Schools across London, and then we'll talk about how we're responding to falling roles and the issues here in Hackney. So the Diocese of London covers 18 local boroughs, 154 church schools, around 20 secondary schools, and about 135 primary schools. They're serving diverse communities, they're inclusive schools, and successful in the way that you've described the formerly Ofsted Good and Outstanding. And certainly that would characterise, I think, the Church of England schools that are serving in Hackney would be typical of the Church of England schools across the diocese. And a lot of the Church of England schools across the diocese are historic. They've been serving their communities for hundreds of years. And one of the consequences of that is that often they're very small schools. So often church schools are one-form entry. And what that means is that where the role does begin to fall, it has a disproportionate effect more quickly on a one-form entry school. So the Church of England schools are not immune from the same pressures that are facing all schools. I'd echo a lot of the comments that have been made already this evening, that nobody in education is here because we want to see schools close. These kind of issues that we're discussing this evening, they're emotive, but they're incredibly painful and difficult for communities to navigate through. And actually I think it's good that you're having this meeting to really begin to dig into some of the lessons that have been learned. I think I'd like to pick up on a point that Councillor Conway made about the inequities that we see when school roles begin to fall. And I think, and again, we see that playing out time and time again where we have very small Church of England schools serving really sort of disadvantaged communities. That there is a sort of interplay between the level of disadvantage in the school often, the role that falls. But actually if those are the small historic schools, they are the schools that fall. So if I could offer one reflection from what we've seen in other boroughs, it would be, I think, that as a council for you to really think about the kind of school estate that you want to have in Hackney in the next five years, 10 years, 15 years. You know, we know that this is not an issue that's going away. I think we've heard several times this evening already that this is something that we might expect there may be more difficult decisions to make. And I think now is the moment where there's an opportunity to do some longer term thinking really around what is the education estate that you want to see in Hackney serving the communities that need to be served by these schools. And our approach is a diocese to falling roles. So we have a pragmatic approach in the sense that we are not encouraging schools particularly to either become academies or, you know, we're not taking a sort of a one size fits all approach because our schools serve very different kinds of communities. What we have noticed, though, is that where schools move early into partnerships or federations under executive leadership, sometimes that's in an academy trust more often for us. It's outside of an academy trust that often when schools are in groups of between three and five under shared executive leadership, that that can help schools to remain sustainable when they otherwise wouldn't be. So more than half of what we I say, we've got many, many very small schools across London, and more than half of our primary schools now are under executive leadership. So they're sharing a head teacher and operating schools on multiple sites, not appropriate everywhere. But that that is is a way where schools are at the point of sustainability that can that can help them to be sustained. And I think I just make one one final comment in closing that there was a there was a comment earlier about the about the kind of place of diocese and schools within the local authority. So I think it's worth saying that all of the Church of England schools in Hackney are maintained schools. So none of them are academies, they're all voluntary aided schools, but that means that they're maintained by the local authority. So Hackney, Hackney Education has does exactly the same kind of work with the Church of England schools as with other maintained schools in Hackney community schools and so on. The funding for those schools comes from Hackney Education or Hackney and the ultimately the decision to close or to amalgamate a Church of England school would would sit with yourself just as it would for a maintained school. So we're grateful for the work that we, you know, for the partnership with education colleagues. And actually, I think I would say again, lessons learned over the last couple of years, those relationships and that collaboration has really, you know, I think it will now benefit the children of Hackney. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening Councillor Conway. My name's Peter Sweeney. I'm the Director of Education for the Diocese of Westminster. Thanks to my colleague Penny. We collaborate a lot across the diocese. A little bit of a background, I suppose, or just information about the Diocese of Westminster across the Diocese of Westminster, which is north of the Thames and all the way up to Bishop Stortford and out to the west of London. 202 schools, over 92,000 students in our schools. And I have to collaborate with 22 different local authorities or London boroughs, which is quite challenging and complex in itself, although I do have a team obviously to support us with there. Like the Church of England, churches came in to provide education many, many years ago when there was a need to do that. And again, Church of England, like the Catholic churches, we often provided schools before we provided churches. We knew that that was such an important part of being part of the local communities in our schools for St. Dominic's over 175 years has been embedded in the local communities and serving our local communities. What we know in recent times, not just the last 10 years, 15, 20 years, populations migrate. Some coming into the country, some moving out and actually moving physical structures is a lot harder than actually moving people around. People can move more easily. And so it's hard sometimes to respond strategically where that slow migration starts, where it's almost unnoticeable and it starts to ever weigh out people numbers in schools. Like the Church of England, many of our colleagues, many of our schools were established as single-plemented primary schools. And it's not the case with St. Dominic's, but many are there. And it does impact on that much more quickly about how the tools you have to think about whether you can amalgamate classes, merge sizes, bring in executive leaderships. So there's challenges there for several of our schools. And on a national basis, since 2017, the Diocese of Westminster, the bishops decided that schools working together for us in clusters of academies, and academies are still maintained by the government, obviously by the local authority. Our voluntary schools are maintained by the local authority, of course. But our academy is working together in groups of schools which can support each other. We now have just recently opened our ninth Multicademy Trust in Hackney, where there's a group of schools that are working collaboratively together. The leadership in those schools have been able to sustain those schools in this area and rebuild some of those in recent years. And in other areas of London, where we're seeing this as well, there's now where those Multicademy Trusts are maturing because their partnerships and shared costs, you can make even very small schools sometimes sustainable within that wider partnership. It's something we're not really able to explore because of the conditions of the notice for closure that's taken here. But even if that was the case, it may still be very challenging in a particular case that St. Dominic's has. What we have looked at across the diocese is where we have spare capacity. What's happening in Hackney isn't too dissimilar to many London boroughs, but it's not replicated in other areas. So in certain areas out to the west of London, some of our schools are still significantly oversubscribed. I know we're talking about primary education here, but the challenge if we look at strategically what might happen in three to five years' time, of course, is that these people numbers will roll through into the secondary sector, and lower people numbers in the secondary sector following through obviously causes a problem, will cause a problem in the secondary sector, sorry, lower people numbers in the primary sector currently, will eventually cause a problem because there's fewer numbers moving through into that area. So we have looked at how we are with our own strategy, academy strategy, about resizing and modelling those schools to make sure we've got an estate that's fit for purpose moving forward in those areas. It's a challenging situation. We know particularly with St. Dominic's there's certain community groups there that are very well served for that school, and we've built the school leadership, built over many years, trust for particular areas of the community in there where they feel comfortable in this type of school where they wouldn't in other schools. We're keen to ensure that we make sure there is suitable provision for those if St. Dominic's is to close, and we still hope that we could find a way for that not to happen. But if that can't happen, we'll make sure the provision and the support is there for those schools in that area. But it is very challenging, particularly with these young children that have in the past five years gone through so much before they've even got into school, and now they find themselves in schools. One of the things we urge councils to do wherever this happens in London is to make sure that they're not moving, if a closure had to happen, and when we've explored things like mergers, which we do in other areas, that those children may not be sent to another school that may also be in a strategic issue in a year or two years' time where they might face a second school that's closing on their educational journey, because that's not good for any children, and at the heart of this are children that we're trying to serve and ensure that they get the best quality education that they can do. So I'll stop there. I know we've pushed for time here this evening, and if there's questions that we're able to take, maybe that's easier for me and Penny to respond to those, because we could talk about schools, that's what we love. We could talk about schools all night long, so we'll stop doing that, but we'll take questions maybe. Thank you both. So I've got Councillor Troughton and then Councillor Siser. Thank you Chair. St Dominic's isn't in my ward, but within my ward there are two traveller sites, and all the children from those sites attend St Dominic's. Since the pandemic, you know, school attendance in that community has fallen. So they are already, you know, a cohort about which there is concern. What can the diocese do to support these particularly disadvantaged children? Who I have to say, the Education Authority has gone to great lengths to support over the, you know, the last decade. The advancements for that community have been really quite incredible. And now it seems to me, you know, they are being put at very high risk. Would you mind taking a second question from Councillor Siser, please? Sorry. Thank you so much. Thank you for the overview that you've both given us. Really, really helpful. Just wondering what additional support looks like. You've both touched on that, but be really useful to hear what specifically the additional transitional support looks like, and how you envisage that going forward. Thank you. If I take the travellers' question, first of all, is that, I mean, that's part of the, it alluded. We know there's certain communities there that are adversely affected, in a sense, by that. We know that the previous headteacher did with Arnon, the tremendous work engaging those communities and getting them into schools. We know it's a particular group of people who find hard to engage in education, and actually getting some of those, particularly girls, educated within that community is really important, and it's been a strength of the school up to this point. It's something we have raised. Our deepest concern, actually, I've got a big concern about any particular group in that school. It is that which I've raised with Hackney Council about how we can continue to provide support for that. We do have other options where we might be able to provide that within our Catholic schools or faith schools that are in there, but there is a, it takes a long time, we know, to build up trust with that particular community, and we know that many of those schools, those children, have progressed through to Cardinal Pole, and secondary school, and been able to follow through to complete their education. I think, Jason, you met one of the, the head boy currently in Cardinal Pole, is one of those scrapper communities who've both been through St Dominic's and now in Cardinal Pole, and is a real shining example of what a good, strong, consistent education can provide. Whilst I'm not the person with the power to stop that, I understand all the problems, and I would love that not to be happening, but it's not within my gift to just say that that can't happen, but we will work and leave no stone unturned to try and make sure that we can avoid that if possible, or if not, make sure that that communities are supported, and try and build that trust with that community that their other, other educator communities, and they can find, and would be able to find that support that they have for many years in St Dominic's. Okay. I'll take the question about transitional support, and then Peter can come in if you want to add something. So, I would say that transitional support looks different in each local authority, where, and the kind of support that schools get tends to vary between local authority, from local authority to local authority anyway. And I think as a diocese, the support that we're able to put into schools, we would always try to be responsive to, and in partnership with, whatever the offer was from that local authority. So, specifically here, in Hackney, the Church of England schools would have some advisor support from the diocese, as they do also from the local authority, and we've been working very closely with Jason and his team to make sure that that's complementary. So, if a school that is going through a potential closure, or a potential amalgamation, may have different kinds of needs to make sure they're continuing to keep the children safe, provide a very high quality education, despite everything else that's going on. So, we would try to provide support for that. I think it's also worth just thinking about the staff that may be affected as well through an amalgamation or a closure. So, again, in a voluntary aided school, the employer is the governing body. So, there's no chance that those staff could be redeployed somewhere else. However, what we do as a diocese is that we seek agreement from other schools, schools that they would offer ring-fenced interviews, for example, for any staff that were at risk of being rain-redundant in one school. So, there are other ways that we can just try to broker support to try to ease things for the community. Thanks. Thank you. I have a question for Councillor Martins, please. Thanks, Chair. I think there are examples in other local authorities where faith schools have been, I guess, threatened with closure, and then they've applied for academisation orders. So, it'd be really good to get some clarification about the policy or approach of the diocese to academisation of primary schools, and also just understanding how such decisions are reached between the school, the diocese, and individual local authorities. Also, whether academisation is a viable response to falling school rules. Thank you. Okay. So, first of all, I'll talk about the diocesan response first of all, but academisation is and should not be seen as just a method for keeping a school open. A school has to be viable, whether it's under an academy framework or not. There's a funding mechanism that's exactly the same. They've got to find ways of doing that. Within the diocese, you know, it would be, you know, if we think the school is viable, and when we first got into consultation, we thought there is some viability about the school, people numbers that entered into St. Dominic's in the reception years, nursery years this year, are not strong. And so, when you look at the numbers following through, that would be difficult to support that. When you make an application, it's about whether or not they would approve that. And so, we have to be able to demonstrate that it is a viable concern to going forward with the school. And whether it's the local authority working with us and looking at the viability of the school, it would just be another party looking at that. So, whether it's within the voluntary aided sector and maintained school or an academy framework, it still has to be viable because an academy trusts, if I said I could talk for ages, but I'll try not to if I summarise this. When they were first advised, the academies were there to turn around and help support schools in either financial difficulty or standards. That narrative has moved on somewhat from there now. It's more about strong schools working together and support them. But you also have to consider, and it's not an issue in this case, but the impact of schools and their ability to support other schools coming in there. Because if there's a financial drain in one school that's been supported by other schools, that has a potential impact of being detrimental to the performance of those other schools. So, there's got to be a balance there that's reached. And we work in every one of the 22 dioceses where we're establishing an academy trust, we work very closely with the local authorities who have very positive relationships about making sure that we're still part of that local provision. However much it is, whatever type of schools, there's only a finite number of pupils, a finite number of places. And it should not be a strongly survives approach to that. It has to be a shared mix of schools within there, that parental choice is there for faith schools and schools of all different types. That's what I think is right and proper. So, there is a process that we could go through there. It's been open to our governing bodies, who are the responsible body of that school, to consider. They've been invited to do that by the bishops back in 2017. Of 202 schools, we can't convert them all at once. We knew that it would take maybe 10, 15 years eventually to go through those. There's only so many per year you can manage to go through that construct. Unfortunately, it was not high on the agenda for St Dominic's previous leadership, or previous governing body. They were, until two or three years ago, a very stable school. And I think one of the learning cases for this is, whereas we have voluntary aid in maintained schools, we know about pupil numbers and sometimes where there's a drop there. We don't always know on actual information about the schools, about them, about whether or not the school's already, not only where pupil numbers are falling, but whether or not they're on a licensed deficit, for example, and whether or not that's one year or two years into that. Because all of a sudden, when that becomes unsustainable, that's often where you get to a position like the St Dominic's, where that is not going to be able to be paid. As my colleagues have said, that's a cost technically, which would end up on the council's general budget. And you've got a responsible action to take against that as councillors for that. Thank you. I'm just going to bring Jason in and then a final couple of questions, please. So just to add to that and provide a bit of a local authority perspective on schools, the option of a school academising in the context of trying to ensure its future sustainability. I think it's become evident through our work with the DfV in recent months that there is not an appetite for schools, particularly those with significant financial deficits to academise. There's also a concern that obviously where a school does academise and it's carrying over a deficit, what effectively happens is that the DfV actually has to repay the local authority that deficit. And then that deficit is carried forward to that school and the multi-academy trusted takes it on. And there's an abatement exercise where effectively that money is collected through the annual grant that that academy gets or that academy group gets over time. Now, I think it's really important to stress that, you know, academisation isn't the solution. And I think everybody is beginning to understand that. And it's also important to stress that the local authority is not in a position to wipe off deficits for schools that wish to convert to academy, because that will have an impact on the wider school estate. And I just want to make those two points very clearly. Two final questions from Councillor Gordon, Councillor Ross, please. Thank you, Chair. And thanks very much, both Penny and Peter, for your presentations. I just really wanted to maybe just ask a little bit more about the admissions policies across your respective families of schools locally in Hackney. And I think you've both touched on the fact that they serve pupils beyond the sort of immediate faith community. But if you can just give a little bit more detail really about your admissions policies and, you know, sort of what efforts have been made really to sort of, you know, widen the group of children that you're serving. Thank you. I'll just bring in Councillor Ross. Thank you. You mentioned earlier that with your previous work in similar situations, other local authorities work quite differently and have a different approach. Would you be able to share what you feel is good practice when it comes to local authorities responding to falling school roles? Thank you. Okay. So I'll give you one example of something that one local authority has done that I think is interesting. So in this local authority, they are looking for schools to amalgamate. And they understand that, that that is a difficult thing for both communities, for both of the schools that come together. And what they've done through their schools forum is that they've used the small leeway that they have in their school forum fund to provide some financial support for the amalgamation partner for three years going forward to, I suppose, to incentivise the amalgamation, but also to make sure that they're giving that amalgamation every chance of success. Now, obviously, that's the decision because that's money that then can't go somewhere else. But that's something that I think specifically around amalgamations that I've only seen that happen in one authority. But I think that's an interesting, interesting model. And I just want to, I'll come briefly to the point about admissions policies and then Peter might want to add. So as a, the admissions policies for each school are set by the governors of the school. So that's not something that we as a diocese can control. We can, we can issue advice. So our advice is that no more than 50% of the places at any Church of England school are set aside for families who are applying for a sort of foundation place. And at least 50% are then open to the, to, you know, the nearest children who would, who would attend. And across the diocese, we see a full range, including quite a number of schools that have just a full open admissions policy. Thank you. Sorry, I think we're going to have to move on with, with 15 minutes over at the moment to try and pull it back somehow. We're now moving on to Lambeth and London councils. So I'd just like to welcome Brilly who, Philip, who joins us online, who's the director of education and learning at Lambeth. And Caroline Dawes, who's the head of children's services for London councils. Brilly is going to provide a narrative on the impact of falling school roles in Lambeth and the approach adopted by the authority. Whilst Caroline can provide a more London wide perspective on this, though her role at London councils, through her role at London councils and the research it has undertaken. There is background information at pages 87 and 99 in the report pack. You both have five to six minutes each. And then we can have a Q&A. So can I ask for Brilly to go first, please? Thank you, councillor. Can everyone hear me OK? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, fellow councillors and colleagues in Hackney. Firstly, thank you for inviting me to your commission this evening. Our story in Lambeth is not unlike that in Hackney. As an inner London borough, we have seen a significant reduction in the birth rate since 2009, specifically roughly a third dropped in the birth rate, which is obviously impacting our people places and people numbers in the borough. I believe in 2013, we had around 3,200 children starting primary school in Lambeth just over a decade that has decreased to around 2,300. So we're looking at about a 30 percent reduction across the piece. Lambeth has been strategically asking schools to reduce PAN for some time now. We've actually reduced in collaboration with schools well over 975 places between 2016 and Airmark for 2025. And that has been through working with schools strategically, looking at a sort of area based approach as well. But, you know, literally approaching schools, you know, making them aware of the context and asking schools to be proactive in managing pupil places across the piece. In 2022, we actually approved our pupil place planning strategy at Cabinet. And that was with the aim to reduce another 440 roughly places by 2025. We didn't achieve that. We achieved a reduction of about just over 300. And again, that was in consultation with schools by a planning area approach and asking schools to consult reduce plan. And that included community schools, some voluntary schools, academies and foundation schools as well. And that's across the borough. So there was a real cross borough approach. That, however, triggered what we call a worst case scenario in Lambeth, where we hadn't reduced sufficient places and we were still seeing a significant amount of vacancies. Roughly 18 reception classes forecast vacancies for 2025. So from a people planning point of view, that was still significantly too many vacancies and some areas were worse than others, particularly the east planning area. We still have roughly a third of vacancies. And as a result of that, we consulted back in May this year to amalgamate and potentially close up to eight schools. We paused at least one of the amalgamations to give opportunity to get full feedback from all stakeholders in that particular amalgamation. But on the 4th of November, Cabinet did make a decision around the six other schools. Four were consulted to reduce to two schools as an amalgamation and two were decision was taken to close with some conditions potentially being met. That is, those schools have asked Cabinet to consider a counter proposal which they would bring in a new year. So all in all, a decision has been made to close two schools and to amalgamate up to four schools from potentially as early as September 2025. But the implementation date, sorry, is September 2026. We do have to look at the numbers again, we applied what we call the scorecard activity, as well to schools looking at applications, offers, as well as vacancies over a three year period. We generated a score for each school and those in the top percentile for most volatile people numbers are predominantly schools we've asked to reduce PAN or have been consulted on. But there are a number of schools that have scored what we call most concerns that we will have to speak to again to consider further PAN reduction and or potentially amalgamations. The local authority has avoided closures where amalgamations are not possible. I think I'll leave it there for now and I'll just give opportunity for questions after. Thank you very much, Ibrilli. Caroline, over to you, please. Thank you, Chair. Good evening, everyone. I'm Caroline Dawes. I'm the Head of Children's Services at London Councils. And for those of you who don't know London Councils, we are a membership. We've just lost you, Caroline. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, great. I was going to give an overview of the report we published in January and it is in your pack, so hopefully you've had a chance to look at it. I won't go into that much detail because of time, but I just wanted to give you the headlines. Firstly, in terms of the data, we had data from every single 32 London boroughs. So this gives us a really good sense of where we are in terms of London at the moment. We looked at the four year forecasts for demand for school places in reception and year seven. So in terms of reception, most London boroughs are expected to see a decline in reception pupil numbers from 2023 to 24 to 27, 28. And over this four year period, there is a forecast drop in demand of 4.4% at reception. That's average across London. So this masks some larger decreases, including seven boroughs in London that are forecasting a decrease in demand of over 10%. And I thought it would be particularly interesting as we're talking about Hackney. I just drew out the figure for inner London, there's a forecast 8% drop. So it's much larger than outer London. And also in the north, northeast sub region that you're part of, it's a 5.9% drop. So again, there's a kind of sub regional kind of issue there as well. I'm sure you're aware of what's going on in your neighbouring boroughs. I just wanted to mention secondary school. Peter mentioned it. There are concerns about the reduction in demand hitting secondary school level. And the data we collated really reveals that actually in terms of the four year forecasts, the numbers of pupils in year seven across London are expected to see a decline of 4.3% for year seven. And again, that's the average figure in inner London. It's a 6.7% forecast drop and a 4.5% forecast drop in the northeast London sub region. So there are a number of localised factors which have led families to moving away from London. We haven't gone into detail in terms of what's causing this trend, because every borough has a different kind of pattern in terms of demand and families moving. But we know there's a number of issues that have been raised with us in terms of, so for example, COVID, the impact of COVID, the increase in the cost of living is a significant issue. The UK's exit from the European Union and the lack of affordable housing available in London, which we think is particularly impacting on the drop in demand in inner London. And these factors are continuing to be significant in determining where families choose to live. And we've seen quite a drop in the birth rate, we think, as a result of one of those factors. In 2020, for the first time since 2008, London has experienced a lower percentage change in the total number of live births than the rest of the country. So it's very much a London issue at the moment. We know other parts of the country are experiencing challenges, but nowhere on this kind of scale. I won't go into the policy narrative, but I just wanted to draw out some of the recommendations of the report. There are a number of recommendations, particularly thinking about what the government could do to support local authorities and schools in this space. And we have had a number of conversations with the Department for Education, but I just wanted to pull out four key points in terms of the recommendations. So we're calling on the Department for Education to ensure that academies are part of local school place planning arrangements and school organisation plans, and that they're considered for pan reductions or school closure as part of a transparent and fair process that provides choice to families and excellent local schools. The second key point for government was that they review the funding model for schools with falling roles to help protect London schools for the future. The third key point was around the government is to review arrangements to protect close school buildings for educational purposes, working with local authorities and other education partners. And the fourth point we've been pushing for is the need for the government to work with local authorities and schools to promote more inclusion in schools and ensure that schools receive consistent and appropriate levels of funding to enable more more children will send so with special educational needs and disabilities to access mainstream school places. So as well as the ask of government, we're also looking at what we can do across London to support schools and local authorities and working working very closely with partners. So we think it's essential that local authorities, schools, maps, the diocese and Department of Education work together to ensure that school, the children in London are not being adversely affected by falling roles. So we're working with regional partners and we've been looking at identifying ways of sharing areas of good practice. And we organised a regional event in March of this year. We're looking at potentially doing some more work in the new year. And some of the good practice we've been looking at is around managing school budgets effectively, how you can reduce pans and also manage closures. So a lot of what you've been talking about today and thinking about how we can support boroughs as the challenge kind of deepens across London. And the final thing I just wanted to say in terms of next steps, we are planning another report we will be publishing in sort of early new year. And so we're doing the analysis again of those four year forecasts. They're kind of moving on and I can't give the details yet, but it does look like the challenge will continue. Unsurprisingly, it's not going to go away overnight, but we will be looking at how what more we can do in this space collectively across London and thinking about some of those kind of practical support we can provide for local authorities and schools, as well as some of that convening work we can do with the Department for Education. And other regional partners. I will pause there for any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much both. I will kick us off with a couple of questions if that's okay. I'll start with some questions for Abrily if colleagues can also have questions for Abrily to begin with and then we can move on to questions for Caroline. So a request by Lambeth Council for 13 schools in a local area East Lambeth to reduce their plan was not accepted by all schools in the area, which hindered school place planning and therefore later required more urgent action. What were the reasons schools gave for non-compliance to the council's request? And what does this say about the ability of schools being able to work together cooperatively to solve falling school roles, community and community wide issues? I also just wondered if you could answer a second question around if there's any other action being taken by other council departments to help address falling school roles in Lambeth. Sorry. Thank you, Chair. So I think just to bring clarity. So as I expressed and as clearly outlined in the report, our East planning area, which is sort of the middle of the borough around Brixton, and that area has seen a significant fall in numbers. And it actually was the first area we saw that significant fall compared to other areas. The southwest and southeast are less affected. We do accept about 30% of out of our applications in those areas. So those schools have experienced a fall in the birth school, but are being filled by out of borough applications. So it's not a case of those schools not actually necessarily agreeing to this plan. There were at least three we hadn't approached because they were oversubscribed and we felt that they didn't require a plan reduction or they didn't need to be consulted on for any school reorganisation. However, we do have a significantly high proportion of CFE schools in the East planning area. And as has been expressed by our colleagues in the diocese, a lot of our CFE schools tend to be one form entry schools, and a lot of our schools actually north and middle of the borough as well tend to be one form entry. So a reduction to plan would have seen those schools reduced from 30 essentially to 15, which, you know, as you can imagine, is not sustainable and would not have been an easy decision. At that point, the diocese for Southwark had expressed that their preference wasn't amalgamations, because obviously that then means that there may be vacated school properties. And in terms of CFE land, as you know, some of those properties may have to go back to trustees and the church may lose those spaces. So the diocese had considered whether plan reductions could be made and schools could remain as mixed form, small schools. But when we looked at our financial position across the borough, of which the vast majority of our schools are still L.A. maintained, we felt that that was not financially viable. So we approached the diocese and the diocese schools again and said that we could not explore 15. So a couple of our diocese schools actually did eventually consult to reduce to 15. We have now consulted on those schools to amalgamate or potentially to close because it's not a sustainable model. And as we have expressed in the report, a current forecast for schools is, you know, if we do nothing, that may go from a significant, you know, surplus position. Only schools accounts to a significant deficit, which has been expressed before falls on the council's accounts in terms of responsibility. And at least three quarters of our L.A. maintained schools are forecasting an in-year deficit position, which is a movement of around 30 million, which is also not sustainable. So it I think, you know, I hope that explains so it wasn't a case of non-compliance. It was a case of it wasn't as straightforward where, as you know, we've said before, schools could have reduced plan if they were too formentary and so on. In terms of other council departments and their role, this this has been a complete, you know, borough wide approach. So I lead the steering group and that steering group is attended by colleagues across the council. So we have finance, H.R., assets, planning. The list is long. We meet actually every week and colleagues at service manager, assistant director and even director level attends that steering group. So when we look at our strategy, we consider the wider implications that these decisions have, not just on schools, not just on schools accounts, but also staff, which is obviously really important or potential plans around housing or strategic asset management plan as well across the councils if assets were to become vacant. So we do take a borough wide approach to this and that's been really positive in planning the strategy. I hope that answers the question. Very helpful. Thank you. I've got Councillor Binnie Lubbock and Councillor Gordon. Thank you, chair. It's a question for Caroline and London councils. It's really great to read about your recommendations, especially about asking the government for more control around the pan and getting academies on board with that. I'm wondering if you're aware of any legal changes that may increase the powers that you have within the school place planning framework and assist the local authorities with responding to schooling full roles. I'm thinking specifically around what was reported out of the King speech about all schools being required to cooperate with local authorities on school admissions, special education and disability inclusion as well as place planning. Thank you. Can we take another question? I think your question was for I believe. Yeah, I had a question for both speakers, but maybe first with Bri, thank you very much for your really interesting presentation about your work in Lambeth. I'm very interested to hear about the cross council committee that you chair in relation to the input of services. Can you just tell us a little bit more about whether that's had any sort of positive impact on planning and, you know, if it has what they have been? And I did have a question for London councils, but I was coming in with that first. I don't know whether I can ask that now or yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I was going to ask a similar question to councillor Binny Lovett, but just a couple of additional points. It's obviously really welcome to see you using your collective lobbying might in terms of all local accountability for schools. I wonder whether you've also considered making any representations in relation to school funding models, which do seem to be, you know, underpinning a lot of the ways these decisions are made. And just another sort of really quick point in relation to these causes of this. I have read that in some areas of London, it's the number of parents choosing to send their children to private schools is an additional fact. So I just wonder whether you've got any comment or data on that. Thank you. Should we start with Abrily, please? And then Caroline? No problem. So I think there's one question for me with reference to the cross council committee. So in just in terms of planning, they were involved really early in this process, just in terms of our identification of schools to approach to reduce plan and obviously to consider for amalgamations and in worst case scenario closures. And as you know, we would go to our housing team and our planning team to generate what's called child yield in establishing whether we're going to have families taking up any new housing projects or affordable housing and year or year that that yield has been zero. And although the council is invested in affordable housing, there's no evidence to suggest that's going to produce a significant amount of families with young children moving to the borough. And actually some of the patterns we're seeing is that, you know, couples are having children in Lambeth, but many are not actually starting school when they get to school age. So there's not just a fall in the birth rate, there's also a fall and decline in those numbers of families actually remaining in borough when their children are due to start school. I think across the piece, what we're really looking at now is the assets and how as assets become empty, as they will be, or even potentially there's more space in educational sites. How can we use that in a much more effective way to solve other issues in the borough? So for example, we'll look, as I said, it's been a setup of an asset management plan, but that in that group, we're working really closely with our SEND colleagues. So my assistant director for SEND is part of that group, and we're looking to see where we can expand SEND provision in borough, which obviously has an impact on SEND transport, for example, where there will be fewer and fewer children potentially having to go out of borough to take up special places. So we're looking at those numbers now, we're looking at where, well, we always look at what needs we have in borough. But that's one of the areas that we're going to be exploring, which is expanding SEND. And we've actually had quite a few of our current schools asking to be considered to take up some of those places to expand provision, which is obviously a good news story if we're going to bring much more SEND provision in house. But we also need to look at potentially issues around temporary housing. I'm not saying that school access will be used necessarily for temporary accommodation, but schools are significant estates. And I would encourage any council to look at that potentially because we know temporary accommodation is one of the biggest issues for most councils in London as well, in terms of finding temporary accommodation and finding one that's affordable and potentially sustainable and much more effective than overnight stays or hotels. So it might be looking at that. I know the diocese in some instances in Southwark, they're exploring some of that in their properties, where they're looking at temporary accommodation and looking to solve other social issues with school assets. But working across those different groups is really important and has been effective so far in considering how this strategy can manage school places, but also solve other issues around SEND transport and temporary accommodation in the council. Thank you very much. Caroline. Thank you. I noted three questions. So first one in terms of legal change. Yes, you're right. There's some, it was mentioned in the King's speech that there's going to be children's wellbeing bill. And we understand within that there's, there's like, there will be something around school place planning and admissions. We're yet to see the full details. And we have been asked, we've made contact with the bill manager. We've yet to get to see the full detail of what, of what that will look like. But we have, we have been lobbying around this, the issue around accountability academies for a while. So, and we met with the current, so the minister of state for schools, Catherine McKinnell. We met with her last year when she was the shadow minister and did discuss this with her. So we're fairly optimistic. There'll be something in the bill. But as I say, we will have to wait and see what the detail looks like on that. And it does also mention, I think, in-year admissions specifically, which is another area we've been focusing on because we know that it's a huge area at the moment in terms of the amount of churn within London is really challenging for all of you at the moment. So we've been pushing for local authorities to have kind of control over the whole, the whole in-year admission system to make it more manageable for local authorities, schools and children and young people. And just moving on to the funding question, we've been pushing for more flexibility in terms of the falling roles funding that is available to some schools. But I think you have to demonstrate within four years that you're like your demand will start to increase, which is very, very difficult. I can see a brilliant thing, but it's very, very difficult to demonstrate that at the moment. And we, you know, as a region forecasting ongoing drops in demand. So I'm not sure if anyone's been able to access that funding. And on a larger point, on a wider point, we have talked to the DfE about if there's any additional funding through the Department of Education. And I think at the moment it's unlikely we would get any more funding when there's less children in the system. I think it's quite difficult within the current kind of revenue funding envelope. Obviously, there was more funding announced in the budget in terms of the national funding formula. So I don't we don't yet know how that will pan out in terms of people funding allocations. But there is a little bit more in the budget there. We will continue to make the point about the falling roles funding, though. The third point was about private schools. I'm afraid we haven't got any data on private school numbers, whether there's been much change. It hasn't been raised with us directly as an issue that's impacting kind of drop in demand or. And we're not sure what the impact will be on the removal of the tax exemption on private schools. And in terms of maybe driving more children into the into the state sector, we don't yet know what that will look like. So it's something we're kind of monitoring, but I don't have anything more I can add at this point. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think one last question and then we're going to move on to the parent representatives, please. Thank you, Chair. And thanks for Beely. Thank you for joining us and talking to us about land birth. A couple of questions. One was in Hackney we're talking about mergers. Mergers with schools, which is actually a very contested word because a lot of people don't see this as mergers. They're not a full merger. Staff are not being taken across to other schools and it's not a situation of equals. You're talking about amalgamation. And I was wondering whether you had applied to the Secretary of State for the Section 10 EIA where you actually can create a new community school in order to do that. And my other question was around, obviously, like Hackney, your communities, diverse communities have been profoundly affected by development and gentrification. And what you found has come out of those equality impact assessments, which are the communities that are diverse communities that are very affected, not only by being moved out, but actually with the schools disappearing. Thank you. Thank you. So we do interchange you with amalgamations and mergers. In our proposals, we're actually proposing to close one school, discontinue one school and merge into another school. However, we are being really careful to ensure that all staff specifically have rights to a job in that amalgamated school. And we will be running the process where our intention is to form because this decision was just made a few weeks ago. The intention is to form temporary common governing bodies across the two schools that would have a combination across both schools. Those two governing bodies coming together would recruit a head teacher and then the governing body along with the head teacher would agree the new structure. And there will be a full restructure process that involves staff from both schools. And that's the process that we're applying in our amalgamations, which then does create equality. And we have looked at the legislation around that. And specifically, it's with reference to TPM employment rights in that sense. And obviously, for those children, it goes without saying all displaced children in the closing school will be automatically allocated a place in that new school. So I hope that answers the question. But, you know, amalgamations are not easy. Mergers are not easy. And as you know, there are different ways to do it, which you have expressed, which is potentially close two schools and open a new school, which I wouldn't recommend necessarily. To close one and merge into another closures are much more straightforward in terms of processes, but we felt at the council that was not the right approach for us. We felt mergers and amalgamations are much more ethical for staff. We believe it's much more ethical for families. It's less disruptive because all children are guaranteed a school place. It supports children to transition into a school and gives time for that transition and that community cohesion to take place rather than closing a school and having to then place children and year groups and friendship groups across a number of schools. We have taken the decision to close a couple of schools. But as I said, both schools have requested to bring a counter proposal for an amalgamation, which the local authority has agreed to consider in a few months time. So it's not, you know, I just want to express sympathy with my officer colleagues, because this job is not easy. And I understand how much, you know, emotion is attached to this. And again, thank you for inviting me today. You know, this is a necessary evil, but we're working really hard. And we believe from an equalities point of view to answer that question that this is better for children and young people, because ultimately, if schools don't have children, they don't have resources and resources and money pays for staff, which is the most important resource in any school. And our children with send needs and those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds may find themselves in forced unplanned closures, which can be extremely disruptive for them and their families and really cause significant interference in their educational experience. So for us, we actually do believe this is the right thing for children from diverse backgrounds and the deprived backgrounds. We have two secondary schools in Lambert close suddenly. There were academies last year with one terms notice, and the local authority did step in and support families to find places. But we felt that that actually was disadvantageous for children and for families. And if we can do this in a planned and strategic way, it helps us to really think about those children, their communities and help them to find a school that in the long term is strong and sustainable. And that must be better than being in a volatile, emptying school. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you to you both. Given we're running quite considerably over and I really want us to be able to hear from parents and our union representatives here today. So we're going to move on now to the parent representatives. I'd like to start by thanking parent representatives for attending this evening and presenting to the commission. And to also thank parents for taking the time in preparing submissions at such short notice and for joining us this evening. The submissions can be found at page 11 of the supplementary agenda pack. We've got three to four minutes for each school, which will be followed up with the Q&A from the parent group representatives. And so in order, as they presented in the pack, would start with Dominic's, please. I just wanted to start with the two year agreement for recovery. We have new management in place from this September. It was a general merger formed with St. Scholastica's and I feel as if we need that two year agreement to be fulfilled. We can't just have a proposal chucked to us from the council at the same time of giving us a two year contract to save the numbers of the potential closure. Yeah. Good evening, everyone. My name is Amelia. One of the things we wanted to bring to this auditorium is St. Dominic provides consistent, tailored support for our SEND students. And they all have specific and critical needs. And we feel by them being moved to another school, that school might not necessarily have the funding to cater to those needs. We also want to bring to our understanding that the Children's Act of 1989 and 2014 prioritised the welfare of the children or the child. And we feel as though this announcement of closure doesn't necessarily speak to that. St. Dominic is a community. We are fully aware of what that changes would be. But we want the council to understand that you have over 200 students who have a long history in this school, who knows nothing about the school and nothing about another school. They are recovering from the COVID. Some of them have to lose friends who had to move outside of the area. And we feel as though that we've not been given the opportunity to make a turnaround. We came into the school year with a two year agreement and now it's a six week one. We've attended meetings and consultation with the council. But as a parent or parents, we feel as though we're having an hour meeting and we're giving 20 minutes to express our concerns and our worries. We understand there is a funding issue and we get that. But what we're asking the council to consider is the display of our children and giving us the opportunity to work alongside that. We don't feel like we've been given that. One of the questions that we've asked if the council is working in partnership with social services, because it's our understanding that, you know, the welfare of a child is paramount and it will be paramount to them. We also want the council to consider the level of referrals that would come into CAMHS should our school close, because there's no preparation for our children. The children, they are constant as a parent. I've got three kids in the school, ages ranging from ten to four. And it's a constant everyday reassurance that we are working to make sure that there's some kind of alternative. We're yet to hear that. Also that we are the only Catholic school in Homerton and in the council's consultation themselves, they agree that the other Catholic schools are not in a viable distance for our community to be able to even try and travel. So, at a parental engagement meeting on the 6th of November also, because of the short notice, we asked if it would be a mirror image. And it was assured that it would be. But the council brought along the admissions team as if it's already been decided. So, I don't see how that would be a mirror image if you're already bringing the admissions team for our parents to have to apply for other schools, if we're in a consultation period. I'm going to have to ask for just some final, final contributions, because we've got to hear from the other schools before we go to Q&A. So, in closing, we believe that this premature closure announcement has caused significant harm to our children and is undermining any sort of recovery process that St Dominic could have or use. We've not been given any sustainable alternative as of yet, and we are in November. And we are just urging the council to extend the time for recovery and work with the diocese on these issues in the proposal. Thank you very much to you both. Now to the parents, Thomas Abney, please. Thank you. So, yeah, we feel it's misleading for the council to use the terms merger or amalgamation in this consultation. So, many parents weren't aware that teachers and all staff would be made redundant and that they as parents and the teachers and governors and the leadership team wouldn't have any influence on integration into the new school on the St Thomas Abney site if the merger goes ahead. There was no option of a non-closure of a true merger, there was no option of a true merger, and that means people can't vote for what they really want. And that skews the reading of a consultation and it negates the validity of the consultation. We feel we were given an option of a place for our child or no place. And that's not a true choice and that's not a consultation. And being here today, it's really alarming to hear about a failed merger. I feel like the risk of this occurring is higher when parents feel they've got no choice or where their choices have been ignored. Our choice would have been for the school to stay as it is or for a true merger where the teaching body could merge. And listening to the comments earlier about the traveller community at St Dominic's and thinking about how many children at St Thomas Abney are in temporary accommodation, I want to ask why is it that disadvantaged children like these are being allowed to be the ones in Hackney that have less of a choice about what school they want to remain open than schools which have a bigger proportion of affluent parents. And also, finally, why do Lambeth seems to be able to do a true merger of schools but not Hackney? Throughout the consultation with STA, the council has been repeatedly asked why a true merger hasn't been put forward as an option. Where we can see as many of our staff retained as possible and we have been told this was not possible without forming a new school which runs the risk of becoming an academy. We have a high SENS population. Over 50% of our children have SENS. The loss of all our teachers will have huge consequences for the majority of our children. Some families transferred to St Thomas Abney from other schools in the area because those schools didn't have the specially trained staff. To provide the help their children needed. Staff we have at STA. We see this as a need and a demand for a new school and a chance for staff to transfer with the pupils. We've consistently asked for this. We believe that special permission could be sought with appropriate motivation. There doesn't seem to be this motivation at Hackney Education. Despite repeated requests, no evidence of any informed assessment of the possibility or advice sought has been shared with us. We've also been told that there's an urgent need to close St Thomas Abney as it has a deficit that council cannot maintain. We're worried that basing such drastic action on the fact that STA has a slightly larger deficit than homely at this point in time. Without considering the appropriate context and financial history of both schools, especially compounded by the removal of current staff with the acquired knowledge of running the building cost effectively as possible. Could lead to our children facing another imminent closure or amalgamation with further resultant instability. And as it will be detrimental to the financial success of homely on our current site. Thirdly, Hackney's equality impact statement for the STA consultation acknowledges that merging with another school might need to a loss of community identity. We are both great schools and we are friendly towards each other. However, the council's manner of this consultation has been extremely divisive, divisive. That's right. The children of STA face the loss of their teachers, their school name and uniform. And with any ring fencing of a representation of the current STA community and ethos has been handed to homely to control. On top of this, the consultation document describes our children as simply access to more funding for homely. The plans put forward just don't make sense. And it's quite depressing and the needs of STA as a school with a high number of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds can be minimised so easily. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. And parents from Old Hill. One parent, one parent from Old Hill. I'm coming in representation for the parents in Old Hill and I also work in Old Hill. So I started work 22 years ago in a Church of England school. My son goes to a Catholic school. And I titled this little speech, the damage was done, the damage is done and the damage will be done. And it's because the rush of the consultation in our school, our parents feel that the first of September we started a three year plan to become a one form entry. The three year plan lasted 10 days. After that, the lack of choice for our children. As the consultation process begins, the parents, they have a choice. The choice to take their children to the nearest school and the schools that they want. That choice stops when the children have special needs. Because the schools refuse the children with special needs. And that happens in my class. The thing that makes me the happiest is that all five children in my class, they are together in another school. That's what makes me the happiest. Because I know that they are having friends. But the other ones, they don't have that choice. My own son is going to be ACP. My own son doesn't know where he's going to go in September. In fact, it doesn't matter if he knows or not. It's not something that he can afford to go somewhere. Because he's not going to be doing that. Now, Jason uses the word inclusion in his title sometimes, not all the time. But I'm going to remind him what inclusion is. Because I just Googled it before. It says the practice of policy of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized. Such as those who have physical or intellectual disabilities. To use the title is to do this for the children with disabilities. But sometimes it doesn't happen. Terry talks about the community and how the community is affected. How come some schools are full with only children from some backgrounds, but then some other schools that are empty and not having enough children? I don't understand that. But what I do understand is that coming from the north of Spain, the lowest birth rate in Europe, I know one thing that they do. And it's they don't close the schools. I used to teach Victorian times all the time to all the children. And I never knew that we were coming back to Victorian times where the classrooms are 35 in some schools that I know. I got friends that are working there. So instead of reducing the number of children, instead of providing a better education for the children, instead of doing that, now the teachers that they are receiving the children, that now they have 30 children and 12 or 15 of them are special needs. They want to leave. They don't want to stay there. They want to stay there. I don't know. They want to stay there. They want to stay there. Nobody can teach a child now. 30 children in a class with 12, 15 special needs. I know that because I'm a teacher. And I did have 30 years ago that. And I left the school because it was too difficult. was too difficult. So in conclusion, every good speech has to have an illustration. The illustration is a documentary, David Attenborough, and in the Serengeti. And you see a young calf, injured one. Who do you think the tiger is going to go for? This is exactly what is happening in Hackney today. The children with disabilities are the ones that they are going to suffer the most. The damage is done. The damage will be done. Because wherever those children go, the money is never going to be enough. The money, by the way, I just googled as well, the price of an average Hackney house is $700,000. And guess what? That's the debt of our school. So every time you see a house that's been sold, think about the 120 children. Think about the 37 EACP children. Because that's what it costs. Thank you very much. Thank you to you all. Questions from the commission, please. Councilor Binnie Lubbock and Chanel, please. Thank you. That was really powerful and important stuff. Thank you for sharing with us. I wanted to drill in a little bit on what you were saying about the consultation and about how easy it was to sort of understand and complete. Was it clear the information that was being requested from parents and how this information was going to be used? Because I remember that was one of the key demands that we sort of had when we looked at this previously. Well, in the beginning, they told us that the ARP unit in our school, because I also read an article in the newspaper saying that Hackney wants to increase the numbers of children in the ARP, and our ARP unit was going to be moved to the new school and even increase. The ARP is not a pizza or a box that you move to another place. There are children, there's a staff, there's something else. The other school didn't have the capacity. And then soon after, that approach was not considered anymore. So at the moment, we don't know where the ARP unit is going. So we're coming in soon. Channel, please. Oh, did you want to come in? Yeah, sorry. Just to answer your question. No, we didn't know how to fill it out. We needed to get support to do that. Once again, that speaks to what we were saying, that we weren't really considered and we don't feel any kind of work in partnership with the parents of St Dominic's. Thank you. I've got a question from Chanel and then Councillor Premier. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for sharing with us this evening. I just wanted to ask, what impact have parents seen of falling school roles at your respective schools? Has the curriculum been impacted? Has the amount of teaching staff or support been reduced? Or has there been a decline in extracurricular activities? I mean, I can just speak for myself that the, yes, the extracurricular activities do seem to have reduced. However, I actually think it's having smaller classes is great for our children. And I think that that's something that we should be trying to maintain. And, you know, my daughter was in a smaller class than my son was previously. And I think it's benefited her, actually. There has been after-school art classes and specific things like that have fallen aside, but there is still an after-school provision that has been put on by the school. We've seen no drop in trips during school time. The children have not, I think, noticed anything. And it's just, as Jordan stated, it's been beneficial for the children, actually. Thank you very much, Councillor Premerew, and then Councillor Gordon. Thanks very much, and thanks very much to all of you for coming in. It's such a difficult thing to do at a very emotional time, but also to sit in this big chamber, and it's really powerful to hear from you all. Unfortunately, in my ward, St Mary's, which has also impacted the two people coming, have had changes of circumstances and weren't able to come tonight, but a lot of what you said resonated with what is happening at St Mary's. And I just wanted to ask a bit more about how children with special needs are impacted, how the whole way the consultation is going is impacting, because certainly there has been some feeling that, St Mary's, that the rapidity of it and the no prior knowledge that's suddenly to be presented. with not only a six-week consultation, but at the same time, people coming in straight away to try to suggest that children for their own benefit might want to be moved to go to visit other schools, has felt very much like it's not a consultation plan. period, and I wondered if you had anything more that you wanted to say about those things. First of all, in our school, we feel like the lack of respect from the HACN education over the years, not now, over the years, is being clear. It's being clear, because we have always taken all the children with special needs, knowing that the school had to spend more than we receive, always. But the parents are happy, because the people there are doing a great job with that. But if you think about this, which school is going to get children with special needs and get into deficit again? They don't want to. They don't want to. So the problem is not the children. The problem is the money that they receive to do a good education. So the impact on the children and in the parents, we had a meeting there, and Jason and Terry, they were there with the parents. They said that the HACN education can tell the schools not to refuse children. And my answer was why they didn't do that five years ago, four years ago, three years ago. So we all share the burden of the joy of having children with special needs, the burden economically, because it's never enough money. But to have a school full of children with special needs means that the children in my school, when they go to assembly, they don't have a problem when somebody starts shouting. They don't have a problem. I want my children to be like this. I don't want my child to see somebody with special needs and look at them like they do in other schools. And maybe that's why they don't go there, because they don't fit there, because they don't treat them right. And there's nothing worse than to have a disability and be treated with that contempt. And that doesn't happen in my school. So I'm proud of what we have done in the school. And also we are going to go, because as you said, all the teachers, and it's a surprise for you, it's not a surprise for me. We are all going to be redundant. We will find a job. But my worry is not me. It's not the teachers that are working with me. My only worry is the children with special needs. This consultation, the least worry, the least worry that they had, it was the children with special needs. And that's clear. Thank you very much. I'm going to take two final questions. Councillor Charlton and then Councillor Gordon, please. Thank you, Chair. And thank you to all the parents who've come today. It's not where we want to be. But, you know, we do want to make sure that this process is as transparent as possible. So I've got a couple of questions, which, you know, first I'd like to put to St Dominic's parents and also to the director. In terms of the Academy proposal, you said the Luxemunde Catholic Academy Trust. You say that was a viable option. Why wasn't it pursued in 2023? You know, is it, is it really, were they prepared to take on the deficit or was it around the deficit? And for the director, you know, to go from a surplus of 62,000 to a deficit of 278,000 in a two year period. It shouldn't happen. How did that happen? And looking at the reception numbers, you know, 23, I mean, is it definitely an improvement on year one, but is that not an indication that perhaps the school has turned a corner in terms of financial management and given a longer period could recover? So perhaps start, if the parents could just respond. I'm sorry to give you two questions, but I really do think this is detail that we need to. If we can wait for the, if you can hold on to that question for the, for education, because we're coming back to a more of a general Q&A. If we just focus on the parents for now, please. About the Academy proposal. All I can say is that our school was under different management at that time. And it's a more viable option at this time. It is. Yeah. If we can come back to those points and anything else that you've picked up from this, but I think it's important for us to just give the parents at the moment the focus. Councillor Gordon, please. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming in this evening and for your really valuable contributions. Um, I just really, um, I mean, you've obviously got the floor in the chamber now. Um, we are where we are in this process at the moment. Um, I just really wondered whether you, any of you want to really take the opportunity of asking, um, Hackney Education, um, you know, what would improve this process going forward? Any, any sort of particular request you've got? Um, I don't worry. I'm sure that myself and other counsellors are going to be asking you the specific questions about other options in relation to your schools. But say, I was going to ask you to use this opportunity to, um, um, just to ask me just about this process. Anything that you can feed back that could improve this process going forward with the experience for you and your children. Thank you. I mean, I said it already. Um, I just want to ask again about the possibility of doing a true merger of the schools where they could retain some of their character where, you know, the children could have some input into a new name for a school. And the children could come together and not just feel like they were completely taken over was what I would like. I just want to know where the children in the ARP and I want to know the children with EACP, where are they going to go? And what are they going to offer them different from what the parents they can find on their own? Because at the moment they are all on their own. I think one of the questions that we would like to put to the education department, what happened from a two year management plan to the six, like six weeks. Because it felt, again, pardon me for my lack of knowledge, but it just feels very rushed. Um, we were here one day and then we came into the school year with something else, even with a new management. Um, I just want to know why we're not being given the ability to turn things around. It would be good to, I think, hand over to officers now to, to respond more directly to those questions, including, um, the question from Councillor Troughton, please. I think I'm going to address, um, directly the St. Dominic's question around why or whether there's a possibility that the school could be sustainable, either through being allowed to continue as a maintained school or converting to an academy. Um, in the cabinet report, you'll recall that the, um, council reported the school's financial position as £278,000 in deficits. And we were concerned that that deficit wouldn't be able to be, uh, managed down over a period of time. Hence why we felt that the school wasn't sustainable. We were aware that the school had moved into what was effectively a soft federation and an executive head had moved in. But it was very quickly determined through the work of the deputy, uh, the executive head and, uh, officers within the council, uh, our school's finance team. Um, scrutinizing the school's budget that the financial position as it currently stands is about 1.07 million. So it's much worse than was previously reported and what was indicated to families. Uh, and that's through no fault of the, the, the current leadership. That's what they've inherited. So the position in St. Dominic's quite frankly, from the local authorities point of view has been made more difficult. And if we take that into the question of whether the school would be able to be considered for academy conversion, then obviously the DfE would look at current and his historical financial position. And would be most concerned about its viability, not just because of that school would have to be able to support itself, but any map multi-academy trust that took the school on would have to be sufficiently robust, sufficiently strong to manage that. And that would be very difficult for, for what would effectively be a relatively new amount of academy trust, which is already inherited schools in other local authorities with deficits. So this is a situation, frankly, um, that I'm disclosing within this forum, but it's important that, that, that is made clear at this point. I'm going to come in on the question on the, on the SEM pupils at Old Hill, but just before I do that, as Terry mentioned, just to explain, um, the previous head teacher at St. Dominic's retired last year and the governing body of St. Dominic's at the time approached the governing body of St. Scholastica's because to enter essentially what was a soft partnership for two years. And that's something which is governing body led. It's not local authority led. I mean, it's something that we, we, we, we would welcome, but I just want to be really clear about that. Um, in terms of the SEM question, I mean, I would agree. There are many children with SEM need adult at Old Hill. I think you're correct on that. Um, many of you are probably aware that Hackney has very high numbers of SEND pupils. And that's something which appears to be increasing. And it's something that we're looking at quite carefully. Um, so there is good practice in other schools in terms of meeting the need of SEND pupils. There's also, um, an ARP there and an alternative resource provision. Um, and should the school close as a result of the consultation, we would look for another school to host that, be it through an amalgamation such as the one proposed or another school. Um, and we would also, you know, it's, it's something you have to be really careful about that, that you're transitioning children, um, with need. We have experience with that and, and we would plan that very carefully. But if you are careful, you should be careful before. Not in the middle, I suppose. At the beginning of the consultation, you should be careful if you know that the numbers are high and we have an ARP unit. Not in the middle of the consultation because it looks like in the middle of the consultation is not the right time to think about the children because they only have a few months. From April to September, it's not enough time for a child with a EACP and a child that is in the ARP unit. And you still don't know where the ARP unit is going to go. So it's a bit, it's a bit up in the air. I think just to add, um, to the point my, um, colleague has made as well. We are talking about primary school children. And if any change, whether as adults or as adults anyway, you need to be prepared for that. And what I might be wrong, but what I'm hearing is we've already seen the slide. Where is our preparation? When do we then start having these really life altering and life changes conversation with our children? When do we then prepare them? When do parents have any opportunity to assess them? Because some of these children have grown up in the school. We have long history. We have generations that have come through the school. And to date, we still don't know where they're going to go come September. And everybody knows that there's no spaces. So what then are the, um, educational department proposing to us? Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, I've just, I've got a couple of other hands up. Um, I think we're probably going to have to eat into the questions that we wanted, the cross cutting questions that we wanted to ask towards the end, so that we still have some time to hear from the unions and to have some questions. Um, Jackie, very briefly, please. And then I'll bring in Councillor Terbitt Dulof and Andy, and then I'll have to move on, please. Hi, I'm Jackie Burke. I'm the group director for children education. So I'm responsible for education and social care. Um, and, uh, just from, from our point of view, from office's point of view, it's absolutely heartbreaking to hear what you have to say tonight. And, you know, none of what we're doing gives us, fills us with any joy. Um, I think it's really important to stress that we haven't concluded the, the consultation in terms of making decisions. So we wouldn't be preparing anyone whilst no decisions have been made. Um, what we, what we've learned from the processes we went through last year, and through learning what went well, um, it was about, we all have to get behind these children. So, you know, and, and the schools where, in the school, two schools where the merger worked really well, the parents got behind it, the school staff got behind it, and the children were really guided through that process. If you do have an opportunity to look at the newsroom clip, um, that we can circulate. I think that was nothing to do with the council. It interviewed children who've been part of this process, who talked, there was no grownups folk. And I'm not saying this is every child's experience, but it was some children's experience. And we did offer, we've got the wellbeing and mental health offer in schools. Um, so we will be working very closely with schools, and we recognise and, and really value, um, the leadership that heads give, the community feel, you know, the community experience that children have. And what worked well last time was when those communities worked to really support those children. Hearing you say you've got three kids at, at St Dominic's, I really, really understand how painful this, this is. I have to stress, we haven't concluded the process. There haven't been any decisions made. So in terms of concrete plans about what happens next, we're not in a, we're not in a position to share them with you because nothing's been decided. And I appreciate how difficult and how worrying that is for all of your parents in the room and for, um, for staff members as well. Sorry, can I just say, um, I find it quite hard that you are seemingly put the onus on us to protect our children in this, and make way for a smooth transition and the teachers of our school. And definitely that has been said to the teachers of our school, who you are making redundant by, or both the options that you've put on the table. It's a big arse to then turn to us, and of course we're going to get behind our children. Of course the teachers are going to get behind our children, because Hackney is made up of strong communities and teachers, and strong, really good teachers, who are fast losing trust in Hackney education. And that is a real shame. And I think you, it seems, I'm, I'm really angry to hear you tell us to get behind your decisions when you don't know what the decisions are. But you've landed us with huge consultation documents, which are hard to wade through, which the headlines are, but in our case, your school is being closed, your teachers are being made redundant. So, please, I know this is not the time to get emotional, but it isn't an emotional, but this is the attitude we've been getting from Hackney Counts, Hackney education. It's a one-way conversation and we, and we are being told what to do and what to feel, and you're not listening to us. And that's, that's how it is. And I'm sorry to get emotional and step in there. Just conscious that we've still got to bring our union colleagues in. I'm sorry, I just feel like I've asked twice why the possibility of a true merger, like they're doing in Lambeth, I've asked twice why that can't be done. And I don't feel that's been answered. So I want to ask that again. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I want to respond because I think what my colleague in Lambeth was explaining that they weren't doing a different process in terms of the school organisation or change. They were still closing one school and expanding another. What they did, what she described was an HR process where they'd agreed with the schools that both sets of staff will be considered for positions in the continuing school. That's different to the HR and legal advice that we have in this borough. So that's, that's the reason why we've taken a different approach. But just to be clear, they're not proposing to close both schools and open a new one. That's not what she said, I believe. And we can clarify that with her. She's still on the call. It isn't still on the call, but it was my understanding, I think, perhaps from what she said also. Very, very briefly. And then it's Councillor Terbitt Dulof and Andy, and then that's it for this item. Please come in. Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's really worrying that you have two schools and a bunch of parents sitting, and we've, we are yet to get a final, like, like a date, or this is what we're doing. And what, again, like what one of the parents was saying, I think it's a big ask to ask parents to get behind something. That decision has not been made. We don't know where we're going. And that's, you would know, there's funding, and you have children in these schools that require a longer transition period. But what coming up for Christmas, we still don't know what we're doing. But what we're being asked is basically is like, we are, once again, we feel like we've been ostracized, despite the many changes that's been done in our communities. Yet again, we feel as though the one system that should support us is not doing that. What I'm going to, to ask now, because we are, the meeting is essentially, we've nearly finished, but yet we've still got things to get through. So I'm going to ask if we can bring in the unions, then we can have some final questions afterwards, if we can incorporate any bits that we may have wanted to ask. I know that everybody's keen to hear from the parents, because, of course, of everybody in the room, you are the most connected to the decisions that we're talking about. So we really do feel the need to hear your voices and your experiences. And we're eternally grateful for you to come here and share such personal and difficult experiences with us today. So over to the unions, please. Can I, starting with Carly and David from the NEU, please. White hand. Sorry, I was pressing the one that said, with the green tick, thinking I might be on. OK, so my name is Dave Davis, I'm the Joint Secretary with Carly of the NEU. I want to first of all state that we are perfectly aware of the difficult financial situation and the difficult situation regarding falling roles. And we also know of the dire state of education funding and the ridiculous way that our schools are funded in terms of per pupil rather than per institution. However, the NEU decision to close schools is one that will have a devastating effect on staff, children and families and indeed the local community. And therefore, I mean, I already know, for example, one child that has left Colverson School because it was closed last year and moved to Thomas Abney and will now be faced with a similar upheaval. I know a member of staff who was working at Randall Cramer and is now working at one of the other schools that is under threat of closure. So this is not to be taken lightly and it's very, very serious. And therefore, it behoves the council to ensure that the consultation process is as effective and as efficient as possible in order to ensure that all possible alternatives are looked at. And the local government gives guidance on governing principles when it comes to consultations. And these are known as the gunning principles developed by Stephen Sedley QC. And there's four principles. And I think the consultation process falls foul of these three of these. First of all, and I'm not going to attribute any nefarious reasons behind this. I believe there are good and understandable reasons for why it falls short, but nevertheless, I do feel it falls short. The first is that it's essential that the proposals are at a formative stage and no decision has been made or predetermined. And I feel that the way this has been spoken about, the way in which the proposals and the consultations are explained to parents and staff and the language used very much indicates that a decision has pretty much been made. Although, on terms of closing, there are two possible other scenarios for Old Hill and St. Miss Albany, but they are essentially closing the schools as far as staff are concerned. And, well, I could ask Carly to how that was basically outlined to staff members and parents at St. Dominic's. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So, while I represent the union, I do also work at St. Dominic's School. And in our meetings, statements have been made which would kind of suggest that some of this is predetermined. Obviously, those conversations are very difficult, not just for us. I know they're difficult for Terry and Jason as well and the team that come in. But it was quite an emotional first meeting and we were told, and I made sure that I heard this right with my other colleagues, if we were going to be confrontational, this would not go well for us. Also, at the cabinet meeting on the 30th of December, Antoinette's presentation in it, which is obviously a document that anyone can have access to, it sounded like there were only three options. It's close, merge, or do nothing. So when we as parents and staff are filling out those consultation documents, it's very hard for us to think about alternatives because all the language used sounds like it's a done deal. And then also when the, sorry, the meeting that the parents, my school reference, the 6th and the 11th, on the 11th of November, it was November, right? When Jason and his team came in, Jason and Terry and their team came in, as they had already mentioned, they brought the admissions teams and they brought the SEND teams with them to our parents. That was very confusing because they already didn't understand the consultation process and was expected them to fill in these forms. So when they see these teams coming in, their first immediate thought is, oh, it's been decided. So we best go talk to these people to understand why they were heavily challenged in that meeting. And I don't think anyone ends up going to see those team members because they wanted to understand why that they would bring them in before the informal consultation had even closed. So yes, the actions do feel predetermined. Thank you. And just to add to that point also, the teams have gone in, I understand the reason why, but they've gone in to help parents select new schools, particularly parents with children with EHCPs. So once you start doing that process, the other point I would make is that the decision is supposedly going to be made finally on April the 30th. But the HR processes to start the redundancy process discussions and consultations with unions will start in February, right in the middle of the final consultation. So if you're starting a redundancy process and it suggests you have already decided the outcome of the consultation. The second principle, the Gunning principle is that there's sufficient information to give intelligent consideration. And I believe there isn't sufficient information in the consultation document for us to be able to make a really considered judgment, indeed, for parents to make a considered judgment. And we've already heard how the parents have found it very, very confusing. Particularly want to draw attention back to the whole question of the free school presumption and whether or not a proper merger or amalgamation can take place. Now, the guidance did come out in October, but it doesn't change legislation. It merely interprets existing legislation and it quite clearly suggests that it is possible where Secretary of State consent, local authorities may publish proposals under Section 10 for Community Special Foundation or Foundation Special School. So I believe that should be explored and that option needs to be explored thoroughly because a proper amalgamation makes a massive difference to whether or not it's successful. One of the reasons why parents at Colton did not want to take their children over to Princess May was because they knew none of the staff, none of the teachers, none of the school staff that their children had grown to love and respect and develop a relationship would be going to that school. So if you are wanting to make a successful merger, do everything in your power to ensure that the staff will be going over to the other school. Very, very important, particularly for SEND students. Lambeth are trying something different. They're trying to ensure that before they start this process, they've got the information and the possibilities of a merger where they've got agreement from the governing bodies beforehand about whether or not you can have some redeployment and whether or not you can have joint governing bodies. That hasn't been done in this case and therefore is remiss in terms of that principle of enough information. The final point is, finally, length of time. It says quite clearly in the going principle that there has to be adequate time for consideration and response. Anne talks about the widely accepted 12-week period of consultation. We have six weeks in this period of consultation. I know there will be another formal statutory process once the decision has been made to go ahead with this, but this is the fundamental consultation which will change and inform the decision about whether or not to close the schools. And six weeks just isn't enough time and the dissemination of information for parents and for staff has not been adequate enough. So I believe that really, if the council wants to ensure that it isn't accused of, and I don't believe this is intentional, but isn't accused of running a sham consultation, they need to really make sure that the voices are listened to, ideally extend the process, give people more time to consider, look to see what the funding formulation will be in March, and finally make some adjustments. The last process, 18 months it took for that consultation. I'd be interested to know any differences made to the initial proposal when the final consultation ended. Okay, thank you very much, thank you. Moving on to Unison please, Max Hall. Hello, I've got a short slide, I don't know if you can pop it on the screen, thanks Martin. Right, as we've heard earlier, before looking ahead, it's vital we all look back at the previous school closures, understand the impacts and learn lessons, something that doesn't appear to have been sufficiently done. Data obtained from the council as of September 2024 shows 11% of affected children no longer go to any school in the borough, whilst in addition significantly, 25% fewer children remained in our community, LA maintained schools. Far from shoring things up, the summer 24 closures actually enhanced the risk to other schools. Encouraging, promoting the retention of children within our community schools is essential, ensuring sufficient parent choice in all forms, and particularly for those seeking an inclusive, happy education, as opposed to the high control, overly strict behaviour approach seen in many academies, highlighted most recently by the Guardian news article at Mossborne. Without first doing everything possible, including working with and lobbying the new government, the council is allowing or creating a vicious cycle that puts all our community schools at risk. We also know that 121 directly employed staff lost their jobs, costing 2.55 million pounds in redundancies. That doesn't include the impact on agency workers or third party contractors. While we've asked for, not yet been provided with a breakdown of that affected characteristics, certainly from a support staff perspective, we know most of them are older women from black and global majority backgrounds, relatively low paid, while 64% were themselves Hackney residents. Not enough effort was made to try and prevent or minimise the redundancies, including encouraging all local schools to advertise vacant posts via the council. We've also not yet been provided with the total cost of the closures. We should factor in both writing off any financial deficits and inheriting reserves that existed as well. But we imagine this will pull off any previous deficits that existed. We also believe future closures would have a disproportionate effect on support staff. Whilst there is a well-known national shortage of teachers, support staff, and especially teaching assistants, have faced constant cuts over the past 14 years. Development opportunities such as training to become a qualified teacher are hard to get. Many have a special connection to their school community, whether that to be as a former or current parents, or having themselves haven't been a pupil there. If forced to look for a new job, the areas of our London with growing need for school places could be prohibitive, given lengthy commutes and their relatively low wages. Whilst it's also true to some extent the underlying issues are London-wide, the council's own decisions and actions have in part led us here. The council allocations policy for social rented homes published in May this year states that the number of social tenancies becoming available to be let has reduced by almost 50% over the last five years. Of course, both St. Mary's and St. Thomas Avenue are on the doorstep to two large-scale council regeneration sites, King's Crescent and, more significantly, Woodbury Down. The loss of social housing via regen projects, Woodbury Down especially has seen a net loss of over 600 social rent properties, has exacerbated and already strangled availability, forced families out of the borough for significant periods, if not permanently. Concerns have been raised continuously. In 2023, Councillor Joseph said, there has been a lot of controversy as to why this has not reproduced the council housing that was there. We need an increase in social housing to match the figure that was there. The Woodbury Down community organisation commented, from the original to the second master plan, there was a loss of 200 homes. During phase three, more social homes were demolished than built. There is no indication this will change in phases five to eight. We are getting less social housing, more inequality of tenure and greater density. This is not what the regeneration was meant to be about. In May this year, the planning committee on a split vote narrowly approved the next phase, which reduced the number of social housing again by two thirds, and was far below the council's own policy of requiring at least 50% affordable housing. We are now seeing the knock and effects of these decisions breaking up our communities. This graph on the screen highlights the direct correlation between the Woodbury Down regeneration scheme and falling pupil numbers at Thomas Avenue. As one parent epitomised the community feeling, families aren't moving out of Hackney, they're being pushed out. We don't want to leave, and for the people that are still here, they've decided to close our school that we love. In a very crude way of describing the situation, if we don't address the supply of children, we will always only deal with the after effects. Next slide, please. Can we wrap up, please? Very quickly. We can't ignore the children's centres and the council recently withdrawing its opposition to the judicial review, accepting it acted unlawfully by misleading the public. This commission itself previously picked apart those proposals and summarised that you could not support them, yet the administration collectively ignored you and the many of us ringing the alarm bells until the eleventh hour. Many already don't trust the system and the processes such as consultation being done in good faith. Many will lose trust after recent events. This must be a line in the sand moment for how the council engages with the community. Lastly, after 14 years of Conservatives, we now have a Labour government absolutely focus on better protecting and supporting community schools in numerous ways, whilst also expecting to see interventions allowing a major and much-needed boost in council housing. As Sadiq Khan warned, I'm really worried about local authorities making permanent decisions based on what could be a short to medium-term blip in the demography of London. If they're boomerang Londoners and they come back and schools have been shut down and property sold off, that's a problem. I'd encourage schools not to take decisions which later on they regret. Thank you all. Thank you very much and apologies that you had to wait until the end. I could feel the desperation in both of you to get all of your points across. I think now to just open up to some final questions from the Commission. I think maybe we can allow one or two. If there's anything else that I think emerges for us, I think we may have to follow up beyond the meeting. I'm going to have to prioritise the Commission if that's okay. I'm sorry, Councillor Etty. Sorry, Andy's been waiting and also, yeah. Okay, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. It's evident to me that the current processes are causing significant anxiety listening to all the representations this evening. And I'm mindful of the impact that falling rolls and the associated financial pressures have on schools. But as Jason highlighted, the projected decline in student numbers up to 2035, I think you said, poses a serious challenge. So at present, the response appears to be primarily focused on addressing the immediate effects of falling rolls, as seen in last year's closures and amalgamations, as well as the proposed changes currently under consideration. So I'd like to know what are the long term plans for ensuring sustainability and stability in the face of these projections? How do these immediate actions align with a broader strategic vision to secure growth and adaptability for the future? And should we anticipate further waves of closures or amalgamations in the coming years? And finally, what specific plans are in place to address the implications for secondary schools, ensuring their viability and the quality of provision in the long term? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Andy. And given that there are a few questions in there, I won't add another one for you. So I think we've discussed earlier about the current challenge in relation to the continuing decline in roles. And I mentioned earlier about the need to look at a different approach to just simply move into school closures each year. We talked about moving towards an area-based plan where we were able to look at the whole picture, mindful not just as all the other factors that we've been discussing, housing, migration, et cetera, but also in terms of pupils and their transition and how we can limit the impact of that on particularly on our vulnerable communities. So I think it's clear that going forward that the strategy is going to look more holistically at the picture. I think, you know, having just recently arrived in Hackney that it's evident to me that we'll need to look at our planning areas for our schools, because at the moment we have quite a few and they don't necessarily reflect how the population is changing. I take the point about the concern around families feeling as though they're not able to remain in the borough. And obviously, you know, there's a wider piece of work to be done, not just within education, but within the council to see if we can address that in some way. But the simple truth is that this is a position that not just Hackney is facing, but all of London is facing and our neighbours in particular. And we're mindful that we're going to have to work with them as well to try and look at this, perhaps even across borough boundaries. So there's a lot. I'm also mindful that we, alongside the fact that we have a reducing pupil population in some respects, we have a growing arrayed population and we need to be mindful of their needs in the future. So there's a lot to be done and there's a lot of discussion to be had. But I established a principle at the beginning where this is part of the collective responsibility for all our schools. It means that our primary and secondary schools will be working together and we'll be encouraging that. It will mean that we'll need to look at new ways of schools to work in partnership, but new models of school organisation and not just your traditional primary and secondary schools. We will look at all the options, including all three schools as well. We will try and do what we can to make the model, the system more sustainable. But the simple truth is that if the numbers continue to decline at the rate they're declining, then we will need to consider further reductions and that could mean further school closures. And I'm not going to say in this or any other forum that that isn't something that we will have to consider. We'll just have to try and do it within the context of what I just described. Do you want to add to that? Very much. I think I'm going to, I can see loads of hands, but I am going to have to draw it to a close. I'm afraid because I think we could, we could keep going because I think that we recognise the gravity of this decision. We were here before last year and it's, it's, you know, these are, these are children's lives. You know, as a parent of a primary school age child, not that that matters. I think everybody in the room will have some connection to schools in the borough. And we know just how central, and as I think Jason said, how schools are, local schools are the fabric of their societies. They're the, you know, it's yeah. So we, this is a really critical, you're still putting hands up guys. Look, I'm no, I'm trying to be really firm. I'm sorry. We are going to have to. Just point of order. We haven't had a chance to ask the union representatives anything. And they, they have been here, you know, for the whole period. They have, but I, yeah, I said one question and the question wasn't to the unions. So that I can't, so, you know, we can have a final question to the unions, but then we have to have a response. And, yeah. But can I ask that the question to the unions is about teachers? Because I think that we're talking about wider issues that I think we need to look at, but that's not what we're wanting your contributions to be about. We really want to hear about the teachers in particular, if that's okay. I'm sorry to keep everyone a little bit longer, but I did want to ask that. Obviously we've been speaking about school mergers and I wanted to know what the impact would be if a genuine merger would be on, obviously on teachers, but also the families and the pupils that they serve and how that would look different if the council was already looking at an area based approach from your point of view. Well, I mean, it's a very simple fact. If you do merge schools, you'd rather just simply take children across and you get an agreement either from the governing body of the school that is going to expand that they will ring fence all job opportunities. Then you're going to reduce the number of redundancies and hopefully avoid compulsory redundancies in this present period. But the second thing I made earlier, it's very, very important for parents and for students to be able to remain with the people that they develop relationships in the school, especially primary school students and especially SEND students. So I'd really urge looking at that, what Lambeth are trying to do and looking at whether or not the preschool presumption can be overturned by the Secretary of State. Thank you very much. So I think that following on from this, I think one of the key themes that I'm seeing emerging for everybody is that we're recognising that there are particular schools that are not sufficiently equipped at the moment to weather this storm. I think that we all understand the landscape, the changing landscape, families not being able to afford to remain in Hackney, and the terminology used feeling forced out, pushed out by the rising housing costs and temporary accommodation. And I fully appreciate that. And I think we all recognise the impact that that's had on schools in the borough, and in particular on the schools that service the most deprived families and communities in the borough. I think we can all see that. I think we've heard that from each of the representations, which I think just brings home ever more just how important it is for this process to really, for us to really be able to think about how we can weatherproof Hackney, so that, you know, every iteration that we go through as a community, that it isn't always the most vulnerable, the smallest, the less equipped to stand up for themselves or to understand things or to get support, who end up being the ones who are battered by the storm the most. And I do get the sense that this is something that we are all sort of in agreement on. And I just think, I'd like to think that through our recommendations, we can, combined with the observations that we've had from the previous rounds, I'd like to think that we'll be able to make some recommendations that speak to that and to speak to us coming up with a vision for going forward in Hackney, where we don't have to be here again and hearing similar voices again. And we can potentially take a different approach to things. But yeah, possibly wishful thinking, but final words from Mayor Woodley, please. I don't mean to take the final word, but just in terms of your recommendations and how they're specific to Hackney, it's probably worth me saying that as, you know, part of London councils, lobbying around the free school presumption is already a priority that all London leaders across parties are committed to. So just to take that one away, I can go further and say there is also a commitment around social housing. So to take that point on board as well, if that doesn't come into the remit of your recommendations, and to thank the parents very much for coming and speaking. I know you're representing a lot of voices here tonight and staff as well. And I'm sorry it was nerve wracking as well when you first came in. I know this room can feel quite intimidating and it was really good to hear your voices. So thank you for that. Thank you very much. And just to remind everybody that what we will do following on from this process, the Commission will reflect on the evidence heard this evening and make a short summary report, including any recommendations that it chooses to make to the Deputy Mayor and the Cabinet. And on the evidence, falling school roles are here to stay for the long to medium terms. The Commission welcomes the commitment to review and update the school estate strategy and sees this as an opportunity to reflect on the process to date and to make adjustments and changes on what has been learnt here. And I think this will be coming back to the Commission in April for us to feed into and to feed everything that we've picked up from this meeting today, but also when we went through this previously last year. So we would like to support that review process and welcome the Deputy Mayor and senior officers so that we can contribute towards that positively. And we would also like to, it's important to note this, we didn't get to mention this, but these are some of the questions that we would have liked to get to is admissions, because that is the thing that has been a bugbear for me because that's where the inequality begins with our schools and why you can point to some and the children look this way and point to another and they look entirely different. We wouldn't be talking about these issues around demographics if our schools were a bit reflected Hackney better than they currently do. So I think that this is now as a time for us to really reflect on admissions and to see if there's anything that we're able to consider here. So that's the end of this item. I can see everyone's keen to leave. Very sorry for going over. And just to thank you all, thank everybody who's come and contributed towards this item. In particular, our external contributors, we're no longer joined by them online, but from the diocese, we really appreciate your contributions. It's invaluable seeing the broader context. And of course, the parents, you know, we really are most grateful. It's incredibly late and this is a very moving topic for you to be sharing with us. So yeah, thank you very much. And moving on to item five, minutes of the previous meeting. The minutes from the previous meeting held on the 14th of October at page 121 of the report pack. Do members note and agree the minutes from that meeting? Item six, work programme. The work programme for the remainder of the municipal year. Can I just remind people that the meeting is still actually on? So can we not talk, please? Sorry. It's... So item six, work programme. The work programme for the remainder of the municipal year is at page 137 of the report pack. There are a number of changes which are... December the 11th meeting will now be the update on children's centres. The children... The children... The... The... What does CH... Why? I've just... CHSCP. The... City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership. I'm sorry. Annual report. And then unregistered settings and budget monitoring. January 2025 meeting will be Deputy Mayor Bramble's Q&A. And... So... That's just to update you all. Any other business? I doubt it. And... Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Monceau. Thank you. Thank you, Monceau. Thank you.

Transcript