Georgina Green, Special Needs Officer

Southern Area Education Office

St Edmunds House

Rope Walk

IPSWICH

IP4 1LZ

September 18th 2007

Dear Georgina,

First Base – Proposal to Federate with Alderwood PRU

Response of the Teacher Unions and UNISON

The ATL, NASUWT, NUT and UNISON Representatives who attended to consultation meeting with staff on 14th September wish to make the following observations.

1)Quality Assurance: Everyone acknowledges that the work of both Units is of a particularly high standards and our members in the area inform us of their appreciation of the services offered. In the case of First Base, the very close working with schools by the former headteacher and present acting headteacher (who worked together as a team) has led to many supportive comments and appraisals of their services.

The Unions are most concerned that changing the structure by which these services are delivered and reducing the overall management time would lead to a worsening of the service and a lack of support for schools at the point of need. The current team at First Base have ambitious plans to continue to develop and expand the services on offer, which we foresee would be jeopardised by reducing the amount of leadership time available.

2) The Principle of Federation in this case:

The Unions support the principle of federation where:

-it has proved impossible to appoint a suitably qualified and experienced headteacher, such as in small Primary Schools

-pupil numbers are such that classes are mixed age beyond what is normally considered reasonable.

-Budgets are so small that adequate headteacher release time by qualified teaching staff is not possible

-federation can prevent the closure of a small school, through sharing of staffing and resources

-the educational experience for the children is enhanced, by contact with a greater number of their peers

-infant and junior schools are merging under one leadership.

We note that none of the above conditions applies to First Base. There is no imperative to merge the leadership of the two units.

Neither would we envisage that a similar federation would be applicable to either First Base Lowestoft or First Base Brandon. We do not see any organisational or educational reasons to Federate and the Authority has confirmed that there would be no financial savings overall from the move.
There is therefore no financial reason to change either.

3) Working Practices: Cooperation:

The Authority puts great store on the OFSTED reports on the 2 units indicating that OFSTED feels that the 2 Units should communicate and collaborate more. Incidentally, we have not found any reference to that in either report – it appears to be a verbal report made to an Authority officer. We believe if OFSTED felt that it was essential or preferable that the Units should be joined by an executive headship they would have put it in writing.

The Unions believe that there are many ways in which First Base and Alderwood could increase collaboration, learn from each other, and avoid any possible duplication of effort.

We note that the 2 units have:

  • Differing working practices (children are only part-time and shorter term at FB – the programme is more integrated with work done at school)
  • Different client schools
  • Vastly different priorities
  • Different needs for flexibility – less demarcation between “class” teaching and outreach work in FB.
  • The fact that there is no (or should be no) transfer from First Base to Alderwood, unlike a mainstream federation of infant and junior school.

We note from the meeting and conversations afterwards that there is at present a lack of awareness outside First Base of the details of the work they do and how they do it.

There seemed to be the idea from the Authority that the difference between First Base and Alderwood was simply that First Base has younger pupils. This was indicated when they referred to successful federation of AlbertPyePrimary School with RavensmereInfantsSchool. The situation with these 2 units is entirely different.

The one area of cooperation which was highlighted by the Authority in the meeting was parenting groups. Such cross-unit priorities could be delivered by staff employed by both units – this is particularly possible given that all PRU staff are centrally employed – if there is really a need for such joined-up delivery.

4) Conclusions: Our members at First Base assure us that they can see no advantage in having half of Denises’s management time, if they lose the flexibility and status of a full-time head of unit, devoted solely to the priorities and specialist services of First Base.

Although there were some comments from Alderwood staff in support of the proposals, there were also concerns about capacity in both units, including the loss of leadership time if Denise’s time is to shared across 2 Units.

Denise admitted that her job of “Executive Head” would probably involve more meetings. We fear it would also mean less time to teach in the Units, and to liaise with schools and early years teams. As there has been little or no contact from Alderwood with First Base so far, we would anticipate a long period of familiarisation and adjustment. In any case, however good an Executive headteacher is, this cannot replace the experience and expertise of the First Base Headteacher – Deputy team. Apart from anything else, we should consider the workload of such an Executive Headteacher, attempting to ensure the same delivery from 3 SMT staff that has been delivered up to now by 4 SMT.

Some staff expressed to us afterwards that it was not a good time to re-organise provision in Ipswich, if the Borough is to take over the ownership and staffing of these units, it would be better for them to transfer across, as per TUPE, the full staffing complement of both units.

All things considered, we believe that there are no advantages to federation, for either Unit, and definite disadvantages for First Base. we are convinced that federation as planned would reduce First Base’s capacity to continue to deliver its high quality services to schools.

We therefore urge the Authority to reconsider and appeal to the Management Boards to reject the proposal.

Yours sincerely,

for:

Keith Anderson, NASUWT

Ann Boxall, ATL

Malcolm Gibbs, UNISON

Martin Goold, NUT

Graham White, NUT

cc. Janice Lee

Staff at First Base, Ipswich and Alderwood PRU