WITH reference to your article titled 'council blasted for lack of help' published in The Shuttle on June 25, 2009.

The director of children services for WCC, Gail Quinton, is quoted as saying “The local authority action plan offered all the necessary support for the former governors”.

As a former governor I feel it necessary to offer some clarification regarding the “local authority action plan” and the support that was available to the former governing body.

The LA did not approach the governing body for any suggestions or feedback at any point after the OFSTED inspection. The Statement of Action was prepared without any involvement of the governing Body, as was the previously mentioned “Action Plan”.

The “Action Plan” was never shown to the former Governing body, nor did they have any input to it at all. The plan was submitted to the DCSF early March who rejected the original and suggested numerous amendments. Likewise, the amended plan has never been discussed with or shown to Governors by the LA.

The Governors invited the LA to nominate two additional Governors to sit on the Governing Body. This was to support the Governors and to attempt to engender a closer working relationship with the LA. The LA nominated one additional Governor and that was all.

The Governors have since discovered that the LA informed DCSF that they had approached the same people who now constitute the IEB, however only one of them was willing to work with the GB and school, while the others only wanted to sit on an IEB if it was established. It should be noted at this point that members of an IEB are may be paid by the Local Authority at whatever rate it chooses, whilst Governors are purely voluntary and receive no remuneration.

The governors extended an invitation to the appointed Educational Improvement Advisor to attend Governors meetings, however, it was made quite clear that this was not the preferred approach from the LA.

The action plan contained no support measures for governors at all. There were three actions for which the GB had a responsibility but that was a joint responsibility with the EIA. At no point did the LA approach the GB to discuss or offer any support actions.

The GB was left to organise and facilitate any support it felt it needed, despite requesting the LA to work with it and help it develop a program of focused support that would improve its capacity to monitor and challenge the school. In the end the GB had to arrange its own training sessions and indeed were actively following up suggestions made by Michelle Parker HMI in the acquisition and installation of monitoring software that was considered highly effective in another school. Sadly we fear that this momentum will now be lost by the appointment of the IEB.

The support that was offered to the school fell, in our opinion, way short of what could be seen as the norm for schools that enter special measures. Schools have, nationally, seen support packages that range from £50,000 to £100,000 whereas the package for Lickhill Primary amounts to £38,000. That does not include all the extra costs involved such as supply cover to allow staff to undergo training.

The implementation of the plan was massively delayed by the seemingly endless amount of auditing the LA carried out between Dec 08 to April 09. In fact, the first whole school support action was carried out on April 28 2009, one day before the first OFSTED monitoring visit.

This is clearly commented on in the Monitoring Visit: “The external support provided by the local authority is having a limited impact because of delays in implementing the action plan. Support for senior leaders has not been sufficiently forthcoming to strengthen their skills of monitoring and evaluation.”

Leadership support for the school was delayed by the LA because they felt that the school would want someone “independent” of the LA due to the past “history”. At no point was the GB approached and asked our views on this. Had we been, we would have been quite clear that we were happy to work with the LA, and would not have wanted any undue delay in getting vital support for the school.

When the governors were notified of their expulsion they were keen to ensure that the IEB could hit the ground running and that no further delays were incurred to the schools recovery. Sadly the offer of a handover meeting, where the GB could have passed on relevant information was refused by the LA.

I hope that this provides some clarification in to the “support” offered to the former governing body of Lickhill Primary School.

PHIL GATES Stourport