Readers will have seen my previous posting about the defeat of my motion to the County Council calling for a widespread public consultation on the future of school admission in the County [following the overturning of the County proposals for Durham Johnston].

So what is happening now?

A report is going to the Council Cabinet next Thursday pointing out the problems (that I set out in my motion) and proposing - yes you have it - a widespread public consultation on the issue!

I guess I should be grateful that County has come round to my point of view, but the hypocrisy of it all is breathtaking.

I moved a motion at yesterday’s meeting of the full County Council asking for a full and wide-ranging consultation with parents and local communities on the future of school admissions in County Durham.

I did this because of the decision of the Schools Adjudicator to overturn the Durham Johnson admissions criteria for 2009 entry in which he determined that the policy of giving priority to associated transport was intrinsically unfair. He was also critical of the council’s consultation procedures.

My motion was defeated by the Labour majority which leaves a very unsatisfactory situation.

This autumn the so-called “consultation” for 2010 entry will begin. School governing bodies will be asked their opinions, which will be fed into a mysterious body called the Education Forum. This comes up with proposals for Cabinet who take the final decision.

At no point do families and local communities get any real input. All they can do is to appeal to the Schools Adjudicator after the decisions have been taken.

What is this Education Forum? It consists of 14 people made up of two (Labour) councillors, 11 educationalists and just one parent governor representative. It meets in private (no-one else is allowed to listen in to the debate, not even other councillors) and the minutes are not made public. Indeed, I can find no mention of this body on the County Council web site.

In other words the policy is being made by something more akin to a medieval Star Chamber than an open democratic process. Moreover, there appears to be no way for elected councillors in general to scrutinise what is going on.

Frankly this is a scandal. In the debate yesterday, all that Councillor Vasey (Labour Cabinet member for young People’s Services - she sits on the Forum) could say was that the council was following government rules.

I rest my case!

The Schools Adjudicator, Sir Philip Hunter, issues his decision yesterday on the admissions criteria for Durham Johnston.

In brief, Sir Philip decided that the criteria giving priority to associated transport from specific areas ahead of families close to the school was unfair.

 He specified that the criteria for 2009 entry should be the same as those for 2008 with distance being measured from the closer of the Crossgate and Whinney Hill sites.

He also directed the Council to review it criteria for future years in the light of this decision, pointing out that in mixed urban/rural areas arrangements involving catchment areas or feeder schools were much more common and were more acceptable.

Sir Philip also criticised the public consultation process and the confusion caused in the mind of local people by the way in which the Council has said things in the past.

I believe this is the best outcome for now. It gives the Council time to get its act together and come up with a workable solution.

One point to emerge from all the debate was the fact that the current criteria actually make no difference to the admissions of all but very few schools in the County, as in most areas there is either no alternative school or no real cometition for places.

My conclusion is that in coming up with new criteria, the Council should look very hard at the areas where there is competition and devise rules that deal fairly with these situations. My regret is that the County Council clearly has not taken this approach in the past.

You can see the full judgement at: DJ Adjudicator decision

A very well-attended meeting hosted by the Schools Adjudicator was held last night at the Crossgate Moor site to hear objections to and arguments about the admissions criteria the County Council has proposed for the school.

There were presentations by David Williams, County Director of Children’s Services, Vanessa Kind, a parent governor at St Margaret’s School and Gail McCardle a paretn from Shincliffe. The meeting was then opened up for general comment and debate. In all, the meeting  lasted more than 2 hours.

Although I arrived late (I had to host a couple of hundred people at college - graduates and their families) I did hear all the debate from the floor.

It is clear that there is a strong level of concern among families in Neville’s Cross about admissions criteria which give preference to those living at a distance over those who live close by.

While there was some evidence offered suggesting that the risk to local families of being refused admission was low, I and most local residents were not convinced. I spoke and referred to the significant increase in new houses in the area which would undoubtedly start to impact on the situation in a few years. There had been a serious problem in the mid 1990s and the likelihood of this recurring gave me grave concern.

In addition, I was told by a resident that the demographic data used by the County was well out of date and that there was academic evidence of a recent population increases in the Durham area.

One issue referred to several times was the lack of real opportunity for local people to comment on the proposals before they were agreed.

While the County Councillor for Durham South claimed that he had ‘consulted local people’ I find that hard to believe as the final proposals only emerged in Mid March when we were all getting ready for the local elections. Indeed, we had about 7 days between the committee papers being published and the meeting at which things were due to be decided (although the decisions was deferred for a few weeks because of division in the Labour Group - see an earlier posting).

In reality, the process adopted by the County Council has always effectively excluded local residents, something accepted by the Director at the end of the meeting.

Nonetheless, I hope I am enough in touch with my local people to have a pretty good idea how they feel about this issue (and it was raised on the doorstep in the local election campaign) and the minutes of the County Cabinet show that I did represent them.

So what next? The Adjudicator will consider the matter and give his decision in about 10 days. He has wide powers including setting the admission criteria himself for up to the next three years. So look out for the result here, which will be posted as soon as I have it.

The number of local parents appealing against the County admissions criteria for DJ has grown rapidly and the Schools Adjudicator has decided to hold a hearing on the issue later this month.

My information is that the Adjudicator will hold public meeting at the school on Thursday 26 June at 6 pm. This is to allow parents to make representations.

If there is more information, I will post the details.

In addition, a letter has gone out today from the parent governors of Neville’s Cross Primary School drawing attention to what is going on and letting them know how to make their view known if they have not already done so.

I have been getting a lot of e-mails in the past few days over the changes that were made in April to the DJ admissions criteria (see earlier postings on the subject).

In particular, I was contacted by Vanessa Kind, a Governor of St Margaret’s Primary School, who has now arranged a meeting at St Margaret’s on Tuesday 20 May for local parents to discuss the issues.

Vanessa has allowed me to re produce the letter to parents for those who want to know about the meeting.

Over the weekend (in between marking examination papers) I hope to put together a side of A4 setting out the history of the situation and where things now stand and I will post it here.

Here are some recent photos of progress with the new DJ school building

I spoke representing the Lib Dems at a small public meeting hosted by the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) in Shakespeare Hall yesterday evening. Alongside me was Albert Nugent, Labour Leader of Durham County Council. The Conservatives were invited but failed to send anyone.

In my speech I mentioned my opposition to Academy Schools and particularly those sponsored by the Emmanuel Schools Trust (funded by the Vardys and promoting whacko ideas about evolution).

This elicited a strange response from Albert. He agreed with me. He was also against Academy Schools.

Why strange? Because Durham County Council, led by him, has just decided to proceed with two Academy Schools and are still looking at a third!

No wonder things are going off the rails at County Hall.

The other thing I found out was that the County are in discussion with the Civil Service about using a building at Aykley Heads to deal with ID cards. The building concerned is the detached council block where the County Library Service used to be run from.

Apparently this could attract another 500 workers onto the County Hall site with who-knows-what impact on traffic and parking in local streets.

The thing that annoyed me is that my County Council division includes County Hall, yet no-one in the administration had the courtesy to let me know what was going on so that I could represent the serious and legitimate concerns that residents of North End already have about parking and transport issues.

Yet another cavalier example of how Labour deals with local people.

There was an extraordinary last-minute meeting of the County Council Cabinet this morning to decide the admissions policy for Durham Johnston, when it was agreed that the villages served by the school (Shincliffe, Bowburn, Park Hill etc.) would have ‘associated transport’ which takes them up the priority list for admissions.

As a governor of the school I have supported the wish of the governors to continue with the educational investment the school has made into those communities over 25 years or more.

As the elected representative of Neville’s Cross, however, I am very well aware that we are now returning to the arrangements pre-1995 when the admissions criteria together with the number of children involved ended up totally skewed and worked against families in my area.

Pupil numbers have declined significantly over the past decade, however, so I don’t think there will be a problem in the coming few years, but I did speak up strongly in the meeting to point out that there was a risk of the mid-1990s situation happening again in the future and if it did, then the current criteria would be untenable.

I also pointed out the anomaly that the ’siblink link’, criterion, which gives preference to brothers and sisters of children already in the school, was too weak and could give priority to families living a considerable distance away or those where the elder child had only been in the sixth form. Many other councils discount this. I did extract a promise from the meeting that this would be reviewed next year.

The next legal step is for the Council to advertise in the local press that the arrangements have been approved, then local residents have 6 weeks from the advert to object. If there are any objections, these are considered by the National Schools Adjudicator, who’s ruling is binding.

One final comment - it is now just three years since the rebuilding of Durham Johnstion was confirmed by the government (conveniently during the 2005 General Election campaign!), but it is only at the last minute that the Council has got this issue settled. Another example of how well Labour runs County Hall?

We were called to a meeting with the Director of Young People’s Services yesterday to discuss the DJ admissions situation.

The key thing that we got clear is that by the criteria that the Council use, Gilesgate Comp is closer to Shincliffe and Bowburn than Durham Johnston - not by road (see earlier posting on this) but by ‘walking route’.

It appears that walking routes allow for the use of any road and any public footpath. This means that going across country via Bent House Lane brings Gilesgate 0.36 miles closer than the Johnston. The fact that no parent with any serious consideration for the safety of their child would allow them to use that route on a dark winter afternoon is not a consideration it seems!

The rest of the discussion then revolved around bussing arrangements and the duty of the authority to provide for transport for any child whose parents selected the closest school, together with the fact that families on free school meals or family tax credit will necessarily have their transport costs covered to any school between 2 and 6 miles.

Basically the whole thing is a mess so I wait with anticipation for the Council Cabinet meeting which will make the decision (due on 14 April).

One futher thing about the meeting that I was not happy with.

It was scheduled for 10 and as we Lib Dem Councillors arrived, the local Labour members accompanied by our MP (who appears to have turned up without a direct invitation) left the Director’s office.

I told the Director and Councillor Vasey, the responsible cabinet member, that I was not impressed by there being separate meetings, especially as no-one had told me that this was the case. But that’s how things get done at County Hall.