EXCLUSIVE: 90 Incredible Lyndale School Closure Consultation Responses
EXCLUSIVE: 90 Incredible Lyndale School Closure Consultation Responses
Phil Ward (Wirral Council’s SEN Lead) at a later meeting of Wirral Schools Forum 2nd July 2014 (who chaired the consultation meeting at Acre Lane on the 16th June and is referred to in some of the responses)
It’s not often there’s a “stop the presses” moment here or as this is an online publication “stop the electrons” moment. Yesterday I had planned to write about the Hoylake RNLI Open Day today.
However this was just four responses out of ninety that were known about. I was always curious about what the other eighty-six were! The following documents should show this. Sadly Wirral Council has taken it upon itself to black out a lot of the detail such as who the responses are from, however the other details can allow you to guess at who some of the names are. Apologies over some parts being hard to read, I think as part of the redaction some quality has been lost and a few are handwritten responses. I’ll try my best to type up some of the harder to read sections.
Wirral Council will be publishing these responses as part of the Cabinet papers by Thursday.UPDATE: Wirral Council will now not be publishing the consultation responses as part of the Cabinet papers. Apologies for this, in previous consultations they had published the consultation responses with the papers for those making the decision and Wirral Council had stated they would publish the responses but seemingly either changed their mind or lied. The responses are split by which category they came from into ten files and provide an interesting insight as to what was going on behind the scenes both during the consultation and as far back as the call in meeting. The way the consultation meetings were conducted comes in for criticism, so does the claim in the consultation documents that staff would be redeployed.
Lyndale School Consultation Meeting: Cllr Dave Mitchell “They need the care they’ve got!” (part 9)
Lyndale School Consultation Meeting: Cllr Dave Mitchell “They need the care they’ve got!” (part 9)
Phil Ward (Wirral Council’s SEN Lead) at a later meeting of Wirral Schools Forum 2nd July 2014 (who chaired the consultation meeting at Acre Lane on the 16th June)
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This transcript starts about 1 hour and 4 minutes into the meeting.
PHIL WARD
Next question, ok, yes, thank you.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER (MALE)
I’d just … (unclear)… and this side here, listening to the people who are around who have been giving their opinions, errm frontline people who have all the experience of all the years of looking after the children and seeing all those who have those difficulties that have actually come about you know!? Why aren’t they sitting there? Why aren’t they sitting there telling you, what the nature of those problems are and …(unclear)…ing to you how they feel that it should be dealt with and what would be the best way? Why don’t you prefer no experience to (unclear).. key parts…(unclear)… when you’ve got people with loads of experience and anyway you’re not going to do it at the end of the day?
He received a round of applause.
COUNCILLOR DAVE MITCHELL
I’m going to make two points and one is that what is being proposed of the nature of, we need to go back and look at errm individual pupils and we need to do this before we take a democratic decision, before we decide.
The second point is really concerning those children, errm the children of Lyndale and the point Ian [Lewis] touched on earlier, is that moving the children from the Lyndale School to other schools, those are children with different sets of needs and can we invite all those Lyndale actions you know?
What I would like and the children who are at Lyndale, could we be, could we be learning from them? They need the care they’ve got! It’s (unclear)…and you know, I think the point is relevant for me, I think playing one off against the other and it’s a case of the children at the Lyndale, hopefully so we’ll still get the benefit of that, but the children themselves (unclear)… and then (unclear) …and then you have the ability to cause problems and I am really concerned about that! I’m really concerned about that.
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How was the history of the Lyndale School closure consultation rewritten by Wirral Council?
How was the history of the Lyndale School closure consultation rewritten by Wirral Council?
Phil Ward who chaired the consultation (Wirral Council’s SEN Lead) at a later meeting of Wirral Schools Forum 2nd July 2014
A while ago, well nearly two months ago I was at the last of the six consultation meetings about Lyndale School. Nobody could really fathom out then why the officers were keeping the notes of these meetings “a secret”. In fact, had it not been for the Freedom of Information Act request of the Wallasey Conservatives I doubt they wouldn’t have been published for a further few weeks (and let’s face it they can use “future publication” as a reason to turn down FOI requests).
The officer chairing that meeting, Phil Ward was adamant in that meeting that the notes were for councillors on the Cabinet. Previously on this blog I’ve written up a transcript of the first hour or so of that meeting. Yesterday I compared the transcript of the meeting to the notes that officers wanted to use to tell Cabinet Members about the meeting.
One of the councillors in Eastham (where Lyndale School is) (who was present at the meeting) is Cllr Chris Carubia. He has written several books for example, The Raven Flies which is described as “finding out the location of his father, Sigurd and his crew, join King Olaf of Norway’s invasion to the land of the Moor’s, encounter a strange new culture and battle a savage new enemy”. I’ve never read any of his books (this isn’t really a blog for book reviews) but this is to make a point. The reason I mention this obscure fact is that his books would be put in a library under the “fiction” section. He used his imagination to come up with them. They’re made up.
This is probably where the notes (which let’s face it officers were going to use to persuade Cabinet to make the decision they wanted) should be as they are veering towards a fictional account of that meeting. Now the alternative viewpoint is, oh don’t be so cruel John, officers are doing their best under difficult circumstances. Yes, they are, but we’ve seen this subtle rewriting of history recently before at the Improvement Board where Wirral Council asked for questions from the public, rewrote their questions and handed out the “approved” version of history to those at the meeting hoping nobody would “spot the difference”.
So what is the proof I have of this? Well yesterday (and believe me it took some time to do as it was a two-hour meeting) I compared the notes to the transcript of what was said by whom. I am only about halfway through the meeting. It is only then when you can compare and contrast the two versions that you see what edits were made, what was left out and how things were changed. After all this is consultation, Wirral-style where we ask for your contributions but then officers meddle afterwards with them.
Call me biased (because let’s face it on Lyndale I am and it’s an editorial line we all agree on here but this is a serious point about how consultations are done and how decision-making happens). Is this the way consultations should be done? If the information politicians take into account when making important decisions has been altered in between being gathered and being put before politicians by officer/s is this honest? Does the way the notes were presented originally give anybody reading them the impression that the meeting was vastly different to how it happened and the misleading impression (as apart from a brief list of some present) as no names are used so that officer’s views can look like people responding to the consultation?
Below this is just the first half of the meeting compared to the notes. Things I have added are I hope highlighted in green. There are aspects of the notes that are broadly similar to what happened and I’ve left them in unedited. The aspects of the notes that seem to be at odds with what was said, have got a line through and are replaced with a direct quote of what was actually said. There are sections which were originally blank in the notes and some of the extra detail has been added.
This is so you can compare the “Wirral Council version” to my version of what happened based on the transcript. I hope that is clear. Most of the changes happen to the “key points” column. As names aren’t in the original version, this could’ve originally given the misleading impression that “key points” were made by the public. However this is just officers’ (and the Cabinet Member’s) viewpoints. It would take a long time to transcribe the rest of the meeting and do the same with the last few pages of the notes. If I have the time I will though. You can listen to the whole consultation meeting at Acre Lane about Lyndale from start to finish if you wish. Please leave a comment on this as (as has been mentioned many times by politicians and others before) getting consultation right is key to the decision making process at Wirral Council.
Annotations are added in red.
Public Consultation Meeting re The Lyndale School held at Acre Lane
16th June 2014: 5.30pm to 7.30pm
In Attendance:
Julia Hassall: Director of Children’s Services, Phil Ward Senior Manager SEN, Councillor Tony Smith: Lead Member for Children and Family Services (arrived late not present from start), David Armstrong: Assistant Chief Executive, Andrew Roberts: Senior Manager School Funding and Resources.
Attendees 34.
Questions/Comments Key points
Can we have a copy of the notes which you have been taking throughout the 6 consultation meetings
Could you then have key bullet points, or pick
up the themes and can we see them.
These are high level summary notes and not minutes and we will be using them to inform Cabinet. They are to capture your views
Phil Ward: “They’re not for circulation.”
They will be made public when our report goes
to Cabinet
I have been to 100 companies so far and have asked them what they think of the closure of Lyndale and they are 100% against it.
You are public servants and you should be serving the needs of people not yourself
Thank you for your comments
Phil Ward: “Is that something you’d like to submit to us?”
The consultation document is not worth the
paper it is written on
Phil Ward: “point taken”
When the children’s assessments are done
will they be used to cost need. Will you look at the banding
The assessment is about capturing the most up to date information of a child. This will be done on an individual basis
Phil Ward “then we had captured the up to date information that we retain on the children so that we could begin on an individual family basis”
The banding system is new and it was agreed by the Schools Forum.
There will be review after the first year. DA/AR will feed this information you are raising back to the Forum
David Armstrong “Just on the banding system, the banding system where we have five bands because of the special schools budget. Clearly, it’s new so it’s only been in place for a short while and I mentioned the Schools Forum before.” … He referred to the Schools Forum and how questions about the banding feed into the Schools Forum.
Ed – 1st update: Everything below this has gone a bit wrong (table wise) below this point. I’m working on fixing it! 2nd update: Fixed (11:36 13/8/14) 3rd update 3:55 pm removed duplicate cell in column 1 (above)
Councillor Dave Mitchell:
Will the petition from 5 years ago also be presented to Cabinet?
“Will that include the decisions made by Council which were fully supported by all parties?”
All 3 parties fully supported it and decided not to close Lyndale
“I think that’s a very important issue, it should actually be highlighted. It was a notice of motion to Council and it was fully supported by the local authority at that time.”
David Armstrong: No, it would just include references to previous reports.
Julia Hassall: This is a new consultation.
“We did make clear reference to that to my recollection at the call in.”
Lyndale school is a fabulous resource inside the school as well as outside. We are able to take our children out so that they can enjoy the trees, the garden etc. The idea of squashing us into another school is not conducive to provide a high level of care and education
Phil Ward: “Thank you for that point.”
Is it 5 or 10 places in Stanley School, it is just a play on words
The new building was built to accommodate a higher number of pupils.
The number of extra places will depend on the needs of the children
David Armstrong: “The school’s brand new and what we learnt when the Lyndale School was built was looking at primary schools. We built them absolutely tight on the existing campus. We found that the schools became more popular and also you’re building something for fifty or sixty years. We’re building something for fifty or sixty years, so we’re building to a generous standard and the new style that was built to a generous standard. The school, the school that we’re building had a capacity of ninety pupils. The new building is capable of taking a hundred and ten and the reason for that is that we’ll be building to the maximum standards in place, we’re building some spare capacity because we’re investing several million pounds for the next couple of years.”
Are there any PMLD children at Stanley School at the present time?
No, but there are some children with PMLD at Elleray Park
David Armstrong: “The school was built to take the full range of PMLD.”
I have visited Stanley School and I would be petrified to leave my child there. I think it would be a massive risk as I don’t think my child will be safe “would be absolutely petrified to leave Scott there. I’m absolutely petrified.”
Both Head Teachers are confident that they can safely integrate your children into their school. Across the country there are many schools who do this successfully
Phil Ward thanked her for her point.
Has anyone spoken to Paediatricians or Specialist Health Visitors about this consultation
Phil Ward: “Sorry I can’t speak for paediatricians, but surely the point… No they have not, no is the answer to that.”
What is going to happen if there are growing numbers with children with CLD if you transfer our children into Elleray and Stanley
This is something which we have to manage all the time. We need to keep up with the changes in SEN.
Phil Ward said the question had come up a number of times and the answer was that Wirral Council has a responsibility on specialist provision. When there was evidence that the numbers were growing in any particular category then they would start discussions with schools to plan places.
In your special arrangements to provide an up to date assessment of each child you need to take into account that some of the children don’t have language etc and the environment is as important as well as relationships, friends, as well as a sense of place and security. They need a safe environment and this could be difficult if you mix them with children who have ASC ASD (autistic spectrum disorders)
We have asked our Principal Educational Psychologist to ensure that we have an up to date picture of each child and their needs. She understands each child and if we know the needs of each child, this will help to drive our future provision
Julia Hassall “This is why we’ve got our principal educational psychologist pulling together a group of meetings with the key staff involved with each child, the parents, any health professionals to really understand each individual child but also how the children interacty with each other.”
What aboutCouncillor Chris Carubia: However nobody had mentioned Foxfield School before? That was a great provision why have you not put this forward as an option
This is a secondary school; children come into this school at aged 11. One of the options mentioned in the consultation document is a 2 to 19 provision. We are looking at Foxfield School as an option as parents have asked us to.
Also it is important to remember that if we close Lyndale we will have a discussion about each child and parents can state their preference for any school
How come at Stanley only 90% is funded, will this mean that the other 10% will not be funded and have to be found our of their resources
She said that there were ten children at the school [Stanley] that were not funded and would this be sorted out if the Lyndale School children went to Stanley School?
Annually there is a census for each school. Numbers are reviewed and amended taking this into account.
Andrew Roberts replied, “In terms of places at special schools, those decisions are taken annually. So the schools take it at a point in time, the decision taken in respect of Stanley was taken last November as a census. Clearly we need to be reviewing, as do the number of places at other special schools.”
We gained public support when we fund raised £80,000 for the sensory garden, if you close what will happen to it and how will you give the money back to the general public who had donated it?
This was their hard work and you are going to knock down Lyndale!
There is an amphitheatre; do you know who built it?
It was the YTS lads from Wirral Action
Phil Ward: “We don’t know” David Armstrong: “there’s no decision been taken to determine it”…. In other schools we have always made sure that if we were about to close and transfer the children, we relocate any other equipment where possible. “anything that was in memory of a particular pupil we’ve dealt with that first and then we’ve gone on from that”We will look to relocate the sensory garden
David Armstrong: “I don’t know.”
David Armstrong: “I can’t know every detail.”
No
Ian Lewis
4 years ago officers put forward a proposal to close Kingsway Primary School because it was not financially viable and this was voted against and this school is still here. So what is to say 4 years on Lyndale will not be the same and continuing to deliver high quality care and education.
“If in four years time that’s [Lyndale] still here, who’s to say it won’t be viable?”
Kingsway remains a small school which limits its budget income and there is an outstanding Council resolution to carry out a review.
David Armstrong “In Kingsway, we haven’t gone back, but at some point there’s a Council resolution to go back and revisit Kingsway.”
Elleray and Stanley school do not always provide 1 to 1 support or even 2 – 1 support for their children so if you relocate Lyndale will that not effect their financial viability
The Head Teachers of both schools are confident that they will be able to manage integration of the children from Lyndale.
Ian Lewis
5 years ago at a full council meeting all 3 parties agreed to keep Lyndale open. Therefore the message is keep it open
Julia HassallThe difficulty as mentioned is that there is a change to the funding formula and we have been funding empty spaces in this school. You have been really clear during these consultations that what you want is wherever your children go to school that it needs to replicate the provision at Lyndale
“No, no the significant difference Ian now to five years ago, is the government have changed the funding formula. So Lyndale is currently funded as if there were actually forty children at that school and over the last seven years, the numbers have gone down. It’s been about fifty odd percent occupancy in the school and following the exact funding formula, it will mean that as some point, the £10,000 per a child will have to be applied and that will mean £230,000 for twenty-three children as opposed to £400,000 because there aren’t the children in the places.”
I have an issue in relation to the banding of our children. I accept that they all have different needs but my worry is that my child who is on band 4 is getting £8,000 less than others on a band 5 but what will happen at Stanley School? what band are they because how much money are they going to have taken off them?
We do not think that this will work as my son needs 1 to 1 care as although my son can feed himself he also needs to be fed as well.
Andrew Roberts: The banding is a new system and only came into being on 1st April 2014.
David Armstrong The question about whether your child is on the right band needs to be fed in to their annual review. You can also take this up with the Principal Educational Psychologist.
Julia Hassall said, “Can I just add one other bit, I think it’s important to feed that in through the psychologist when the meetings are taking place as well.”
If the banding was changed would that keep the school open?
David Armstrong:
In relation to the National Funding, Local Authorities have the ability to say what system they are going to use and Wirral chose to do a banding system which has no flexibility.
“decided to do away with this system, which you know because it was easier, but it really doesn’t have much flexibility or address the actual needs of the children involved.”
The difficulty is that by the time you go to the Schools Forum to change this system, Lyndale will be closed
(no response given)
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As Tom Harney (the Chair of governors at Lyndale School) himself said at that actual meeting in relation to another matter “it’s amazing the things that go on”. He was also one of the few speakers at that meeting to get applause. The comments made by Cllr Paul Hayes (a Conservative councillor who if I remember correctly was also present at that same meeting) about the consultation process as reported in their local paper were very critical of the way the consultation process and that meeting was handled.
As I’ve mentioned the Conservative and Lib Dem positions, I should mention that the only Labour councillor I recognised at the meeting (Cabinet Member for Childrens’ Services Cllr Tony Smith) arrived late. It is of course extremely difficult to describe what the Labour position is on Lyndale School other than being pro closure consultation, telling the public that they have an open mind and that no decision has been made yet. A decision is expected on the 4th September on the next stage. The point that Labour are keen to make is not for Labour to do things that would give the impression that they have made their mind up. This was again made at the July Council meeting by Councillor Tony Smith and Councillor Phil Davies.
So in the words of a Wirral Council officer Phil Ward what was the purpose of these notes about the meetings? Phil Ward said “They’re notes recording the high level points raised at the meetings and importantly we will be reporting them to Cabinet.”
I had a look through the notes for the one question I asked in the two-hour meeting (something is there but it bears little resemblance to what I asked). It wasn’t there in any form that resembles what I asked. Maybe it wasn’t classed as “high level” enough. Maybe I should instead have started by saying “This is a high level question I am asking so please put it in the notes”. Or maybe Wirral Council doesn’t like putting down tricky questions and answers and prefers to subtly rewrite the historical record to suit itself.
However this isn’t about me. This is about Lyndale School. Let’s have a look at the notes Wirral Council produced.
Here’s the first line of their notes “10th April 2014: 10am to 12pm”
Err no, seems Wirral Council can’t get the date and time of its own consultation right (which should worry you there right from the start if they can’t get the simple stuff right like the date and time!) It should read “16th June 2014: 5.30pm to 7.30pm”.
Turns out there were two different meetings at Acre Lane as part of the consultation. There were notes from both meetings. Apologies.
Moving on, it seems the “points” column according to the table used are not what the people had to say at the consultation. No the “points” column is reserved solely for points made by officers and the Cabinet Member Cllr Tony Smith.
The more difficult questions raised, the important concerns of parents about what’s going to happen, what appears in the points column? Nothing… almost as if Wirral Council is ashamed as to what was said to these questions to be known in public.
Even some of the answers that do make it are misleading. At least one of the officers is in fact tying themselves in knots and going into policy areas that strictly speaking in my opinion they shouldn’t. To the best of my knowledge all the officers at that meeting are in politically restricted posts. One of these legal restrictions from what I remember is that they are not allowed to “speak to the public at large or to a section of the public with the apparent intention of affecting public support for a political party”.
Now I will make this clear, I’m not referring to Julia Hassall, David Armstrong or Andrew Roberts. These people are senior professionals and although I’m sure people like me make doing their jobs more difficult, I will state now my personal opinion that all three have been extremely professional in my past dealings with them.
This is despite me doing what in any other sphere of life outside the political arena would be classed as behaviour that would lead to people falling out with each other. I have written things (robust criticism would be putting it very mildly) that disagree with their professional opinions and have pointed out what I perceive as flaws in arguments they have used. They know I do not however do this out of malice or anything personal.
That’s just the nature of politics as one of the rules is “don’t take things personally”. Other people’s opinion of them may be wildly different but like myself they are doing a job in a highly political environment, so criticism goes with the territory. They are public figures (as are politicians) and are rewarded with a high salary partly to reflect the problems that having to deal with the likes of the press can cause.
Now you can point out at this point the press is supposed to be impartial. I try to be even-handed (and believe me that’s very difficult at times) and to quote Cllr Jerry Williams recently “There’s no side to the gentleman, he does a very good job”. An editorial decision (and I’m pretty sure the Wirral Globe takes a similar policy stance too) was made a long time ago that we’re against the closure of Lyndale School, but obviously in the reporting of this matter to do it justice we have to report both sides of this issue.
There are people of course that are for the closure of Lyndale School. You are entitled to your opinion too (it just happens to be one that this publication disagrees with but that is the nature of politics)! However one of the extremely important roles of the press in society is to stand up for the viewpoints of people who can’t advocate for themselves. The children of Lyndale School are in that position.
The person to whom my criticism is about at that meeting is the Wirral Council officer Phil Ward. Now I’m not saying he said things downright stupid and overt like “vote Labour in May” I’m not. However throughout the whole meeting he appeared to champion a particular policy position/stance on this matter.
There is admittedly a fine line between explaining decisions that have already been made and talking about decisions that have yet to be made by politicians in the future. The former is entirely legitimate for officers to do. Taking policy positions (especially on a party political matter such as how education budgets are spent) is something that officers have to be very careful of.
Now officers can say in relation to future decisions “based on my professional advice or opinion I advise you to do X (or X, Y and Z are options I’d prefer you to do X). However the decision is up to you.” That is one thing, however they should not advocate support when speaking to the public during a consultation for a particular political decision that has yet to be decided or even worse give the impression that a decision has already been made when it hasn’t yet (even if they think they can guess how it will be made). If they go down this route, their impartiality will be called and can be called into question (and his was during the meeting).
No officer at Wirral Council I know of before in a politically restricted post has done what was done at that consultation meeting by Phil Ward in the way he did it. Believe me, during meetings politicians have put officers under extreme pressure to take sides. Most officers with some common sense (and there are a lot of them at Wirral Council) will politely decline to answer such questions. This is what should happen.
This was however what the audience at Acre Lane found so amazing. A consultation is supposed to be about listening to their views (and yes Wirral Council has a long way to go on getting better at involving the public in their decision-making). However chairing this meeting was an officer who was the equivalent of waving a red flag to a bull. Had he come to the meeting with the genuine attitude of “We’re here today to hear your views, the purpose of the consultation is to do that, we appreciate you being here and we’ll listen carefully to what you have to say.” then I think the audience would’ve applauded him. However the impression the audience got was that he was lecturing them and completely impervious to any other viewpoints.
Sadly this particular officer did somewhat get stuck in “broadcast” mode. However, this attitude leads to the audience getting the following impression and I quote from the notes “No one has fully answered any question. You are just white-washing it. You have already made your decision”.
The Wirral public are not stupid, nor are they children. They are able to read people’s body language and how they say something. How something is said and the person’s body language when saying it are a large part of its meaning. Sadly Phil Ward didn’t seem politically savvy enough that night to develop a positive relationship with the audience. Nor did he seem to appreciate the way power shifts. The senior officers are better attuned to these kind of things.
There was for example in that room that night, Emma Rigby from the Wirral Globe, myself and Leonora. For those who recognise us, they’d know that that amount of people from the press means you have to be very careful what you say. I hope to carry on in the next few days with publishing a transcript of the long meeting itself. In the meantime the below links should take you to what has been published so far.
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Hear what was said at the Lyndale School Closure Consultation Meeting (16th June 2014)
Hear what was said at the Lyndale School Closure Consultation Meeting (16th June 2014)
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Above is audio from the two hour consultation meeting during the consultation on the closure of Lyndale School
Above is audio from the two-hour consultation meeting held at the Acre Lane Professional Excellence Centre on the 16th June 2014. I’ve been writing about it on this blog, but so far have just got to over half way through the meeting. If you’d like to read what I’ve previously written about the consultation meeting, links to the various parts are below.
