GUILDHALL EDUCATION LUNCH: 23 JUNE

Michael Gove MP, 'a whirlwind of ideas all delivered with perfect lucidity.'

To give this lunch its full title it was 'To Mark the Continuing Importance of Education to the City and the Nation.'  It was hosted by the Lord Mayor and included a very wide cross-section of guests: CEOs of the big City-based companies, Livery Companies with a major involvement in education, heads of major schools with a City or Livery link, representatives from a wide variety of educational charities as well as representatives from the civic City.  Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education, was the principal guest and speaker.   David Levin, headmaster City of London School and currently Chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference - the first time a head of the City of London School has held this appointment - also spoke.

Michael Gove continues to be a whirlwind of ideas all delivered with perfect lucidity. His particular theme at the lunch was that the independent sector must do more to help raise standards in the less well performing maintained schools.  In fact the Livery Companies do a lot already and the Mercers and Haberdashers were singled out in the Economist's Bagehot column on 25 June as being leaders in this field.  The Drapers do not run education on the scale of either of these fellow members of the Great XII.  Nevertheless even though our Drapers' Academy is not quite a year old we are already beginning to see links develop with Bancroft's School as well as with other Drapers' schools and universities further away.  

Those who have read this blog from its start last summer will recall that Michael Gove, in his first few weeks in office, certainly caused us considerable disquiet when it appeared that he might cancel the Drapers' Academy new buildings.  At that time he was not particularly popular - a measured understatement - with the Academy project team.  But this is now all behind us.  I do not agree with everything he says but his robust and consistent championing of good education for everyone and the action he is taking to achieve it has been of considerable help in our work at the Academy over the past year.

DRAPERS' ACADEMY: NO NEWS UNTIL NEXT WEEK

We were told on Thursday afternoon by our Project Lead in the Department for Education that Michael Gove and his ministers will not now come to a decision on our Academy new-build until Wednesday or Thursday of next week. This will be nearly a month after his announcement.

Also from what we can piece together the complexity of trying to cut back on major capital projects, some of which such as ours were weeks away from going live, is inevitably stirring up a hornets' nest of legal and other problems that the Department of Education seemingly failed to spot when it started the process.

I cannot yet reveal our possible strategies, principally because we do not know what the decision about our new-build will be. What we are quite clear about is that we have a contract with the Government - it is called a Funding Agreement - and it clearly says we will get new buildings.

Times are hard but to cut back on contracts just about to start is not the brightest idea, especially if the buildings that are going to be replaced are completely clapped out and particularly if a community has been promised new school buildings after years of putting up with second-rate ones.

This is turning into a real cliff-hanger. We plan to open on 7 September.

To be continued.

DRAPERS' ACADEMY: NOT MUCH OF AN UPDATE

About a fortnight ago in an earlier post I mentioned that Michael Gove, Secretatary of State for Education, on 6 July had called in 'for discussion' the new-build element of Drapers' Academy. This was along with 130 similar projects.

We were very disappointed at this sudden change in direction. This particularly as we are within a few weeks of sign off following two years of work and very considerable expenditure: about £3million of taxpayers' money according to our calculations. And there is also about a million pounds of preparatory work in hand, some of which has been put on hold and some that is going ahead.

On 12 July we were asked to produce answers to a questionnaire produced at short notice by the Department of Education. This required a huge amount of work. It was essentially in two parts.

The first was to justify numbers who might attend the Academy and show how we were planning to double numbers and attract a sixth form within four years.

The second was to demonstrate why the existing buildings are just not up to the job. London Borough of Havering played a blinder and commissioned Jacobs to produce a condition survey at great speed. It confirmed our worst (or is it best?) fears that the buildings are virtually worn out and that a refurbishment option would be poor value for money.

We of course backed this up with our conviction that a new school was central to achieving the exceptional vision we have for the Academy.

The Academy team pulled together very well and in particular the support from London Borough of Havering was pivotal in getting a very strong case together.

We got the questionnaire back by Friday. Since then our response, along with many others, is wending its way through the Whitehall labyrinth and nearly two weeks after submission no decision has yet been made. The new term is getting close so it is quite a strain on the staff of the new Academy headed up by the Principal (designate), Matthew Slater.

We hope that Michael Gove's decision, when it comes, will uphold our case. We remain absolutely convinced that we can only meet our vision of changing educational opportunity with new buildings and that Harold Hill families deserve a better deal.

Readers of the blog will be kept updated.