The Committee heard from three school governor guest speakers on challenges schools faced and their experiences of mergers and federations. 

Speakers included:

Judy Knappet, Head teacher, Hague Primary School, Ros Coffey, Chair of Governors, Smithy Street Primary School, and JP Morrison, Director of Education, Diocese of Westminster.

Judy Kanppet:

·       One form entry school 210 children when full. At the time of merger it was not full it had 34 vacancies but because of class to teacher regulations they had to hire a second teacher.

·       Context of schools in west of borough having increasing number of vacancies in the school due to declining birth rates borough wide, demographic change, and fewer family homes being developed.

·       This was resulting in the inefficient allocation of resources such as the 15 hours nursery funding which was only used by four families.

·       School governors came together to discuss solutions. One solution was to work in collaboration rather than coopetition and working towards hard federated status.

·       Hard federated meant having one governing body for both schools. The schools retained their names but teachers and other resources were shared. This strengthened their curriculum and staff training opportunities. The bulk of savings had come from staffing.

·       Ms Kanppet reported that she felt very supported by the local authority throughout the merger process particularly by Helen Jenner – Education Consultant.

Ros Coffey:

·       Experienced a decline in demand for places at the school. She cited a few reasons for the decline including bedroom tax, lack of social housing and a fall in the birth rate.

·       In June 2018 she met with Christine McInnes and Terry Bryant from the Council to discuss the issue.

·       The school of governors suggested an amalgamation with the school next door which was Redlands School. Both school governors met and are in consultation with parents and the local community on the merger.

·       It was noted Redlands had a PFI in place for facilities managed but plans had been made to manage this over the seven year period.

·       The benefits of the merger were described. These included: maintaining the high level of learning both schools provided, school results had risen, increased community cohesion between parents and children at the schools, staff are learning best practice from one another and teachers are working with shared intelligence.

·       The merger will change the name of the school to ‘Stepney Park Primary’.  The new name would unify children and parents from both schools and encourage a joint sense of ownership.

·       Joint meetings between both school of governors, treating one another as equal partners and open dialogue between the schools enabled the schools to happily merge.

·       Governors came up with an innovative idea to ‘let’ unused spaces in the school with the intention of reclaiming the space if or when pupil numbers increased.

·       The school will have a simple and affordable new school uniform. They could be purchased using the school uniform grant.

JP Morrison

·       Reported that Tower Hamlets had 9 catholic schools in the borough.

·       He conducted a piece of research  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4