Decision Day For St John's

Councillor Mark Reckless MP has welcomed the news that the Office of the Schools Adjudicator has today ruled against the closure of St John's Infants School in Chatham and the amalgamation of Delce Infants and Juniors.

Today's ruling will come as a great relief to all the parents, children and staff who campaigned so hard to keep these small and successful community-based schools.

In November of last year Mark called on the Council to take independent legal advice to clarify whether or not Medway Council was acting lawfully in its plans to close St John's.

Speaking on the ruling Mark said:

"Last year, I was extremely pleased to have helped keep St Peter's Infants School open, and I similarly welcome the decision of the adjudicator with regard to St John's. I was never convinced of the case for closing St John's and voiced my concerns, including with respect to the legality of the process, in Overview and Scrutiny, to full Council, and finally to the Adjudicator.

My congratulations go out to all the parents, children and staff at St John's on running such a spirited campaign. I am also delighted that the two Delce schools will retain their independence and hopefully now go from strength to strength. Let us hope that this is the end of these proposals once and for all."

Decision on St John's Decision - Click Here
Decision on Delce Schools - Click Here

Decision Day For St John's

Why Can't We Take Independent Legal Advice?

Last night at Council - actually this morning as the meeting went on until nearly 1a.m.! - I requested that we take independent legal advice to clarify whether Medway Council has acted lawfullly in deciding to close St John's Infant school.

My concern is that officers replaced one of the school organisation principles, which our policy framework requires Cabinet to follow, with a different aim and falsely stated to Cabinet that it was one of the school organisation principles.

This is what I said to Council:

"Last Friday we learned from the Medway Messenger that St John's campaigners were considering a legal challenge to the closure of their school.

Given that, I think the wording of this motion is unfortunate, since it implies we accept that this is a matter for Cabinet. I don't agree, because it is us as a Council who set the policy framework, and that requires Cabinet to apply the school organisation principles.

However, it seems that our officers were not happy with one of those school organisation principles, since it only allowed the gradual amalgamation of infant and junior schools.

Instead, they developed a different policy, one which could be used to justify the closure of any infant school, and falsely told Cabinet that it was one of the school organisation principles. They used that policy to try and close St Peter's. They are using it now to try and close St John's. And I fear they may use it to try and close St Nick's.

Given the legal risks, I have to say I am surprised that our monitoring officer has taken such a relaxed attitude to this. It certainly contrasts with the position she took with respect to my ward colleague earlier in this process.

I don't believe that passing this motion will help St John's, and I do not support it. What might help St John's would be for this Council to take independent legal advice on whether it is lawful for officers to ignore a principle in the policy framework and advise Cabinet to follow a different policy instead.

If our monitoring officer will not take such advice, and this Council loses a judicial review in consequence, I would question whether she should advise us further."

Why Can't We Take Independent Legal Advice?

Statement Regarding St. John's C.E. Infants School

Medway Council's policy framework requires the Council's Cabinet "to shape the future of Medway schools in line with school organisation principles".

Rose Collinson, the Council's education director, assured the Cabinet on 17 September, that one of those school organisation principles was that:

"The number of transition points will be reduced wherever possible within the phases of primary and secondary education. In the primary phase this means creating schools for pupils aged 3-11 and removing transitions for pupils midway through the foundation stage and between separate provisions for Key Stages 1 and 2".

She then used that principle as a basis for advising Cabinet that St. Peter's and St. John's schools should close as they are small infant schools that cannot provide education from 3-11 (ignoring the rather more important points that they achieve significantly better than average results and only had a surplus places issue in respect of a single year's intake).

On Thursday at an Overview and Scrutiny meeting my sustained questioning led Rose Collinson to admit that she had misled Cabinet with that statement. What she claimed was a school organisation principle was not.

The relevant school organisation principle supports only amalgamation of infant and junior schools, not closure of infant schools, or closure of schools that cannot offer nursery education.

Rather than using the school organisation principles to make recommendations to Cabinet on closures, as required by the policy framework, officers relied on something from a different document and told Cabinet that it was one of the school organisation principles when this was not true.

I asked the Council's head legal officer to flag the problem to Cabinet before they decided on closures. She refused to do so.

Overview and Scrutiny have therefore sent the closure of St. John's back to Cabinet to reconsider as the decision was not taken, as required, on the basis of the school organisation principles.

Statement Regarding St. John's C.E. Infants School