Parents speak of being let down in free school’s closure

The former Collective Spirit free school

Parents of a failed free school have told this website how their children were left for weeks with little or no education after the institution closed in what they said were chaotic circumstances.

Collective Spirit free school in Oldham, greater Manchester, closed in July, four years after it opened and with parents now telling Education Uncovered that a government official had admitted to them, in a meeting after its closure was announced, that intervention to improve the school should have come sooner and that oversight had failed.

Collective Spirit was an 11-16 secondary school, with 210 pupils at the time of closing, run by an academy chain of the same name whose other institution, Manchester Creative Studio, has also been revealed as in line for closure.

The Department for Education announced the closure of the Collective Spirit Free School on June 29^th last year, just over a year after Ofsted inspectors uncovered serious failings in what the local Labour MP and former council leader Jim McMahon described as the worst inspection report he had ever seen.

But parents told us that it was announced at that point that the school would close two weeks early, in early July, and that between the closure announcement and that date, their children had little education.

Sajid Iqbal, whose 13-year-old son attended Collective Spirit: “From the closure announcement to the end of term, they had no teaching whatsoever from permanent teachers, with supply staff coming in. I can think of a Spanish lesson where they had no supervision at all for a whole hour. A lot of parents simply pulled their children out.” The parents say their children lost at least 2.5 weeks’ schooling, with much more time spent with poor quality provision.

But the difficulties for pupils did not end there. After the school closed, children were distributed mainly to two secondary academies: Oldham Academy North, run by the E-ACT chain, and Oasis Academy Oldham. Parents spoken to by Education Uncovered say there were further delays for their children starting at their new schools, while they also said there was unhappiness that they were not being offered a greater choice of schools to transfer to, especially as Oasis Academy Oldham is rated “requires improvement” by Ofsted.

Initially, Oldham Academy North announced that former Collective Spirit pupils would start two weeks after the start of term for other pupils, on September 20^th. Parents complained and it was brought forward to September 13^th.

When parents said this was still not good enough, especially given the teaching time their children had already missed, they were told that the delay stemmed from information not having been passed on to E-ACT by the local authority, whereupon, the parents said, the local authority said it did not have any pupil information to pass on, as free schools and academies were independent entities. E-ACT re-iterated this account when asked about the case by Education Uncovered, saying it had asked for “essential student records” from the local authority in July, but only received them in September.

In the end, Collective Spirit pupils did start on September 13^th, a week after other pupils.

A group of three parents – Iqbal, Rani Begum who had had two children at Collective Spirit, and Daood Akram, with one -  shared their stories with us in Oldham, while also relating how as many as half of the affected families had joined a Facebook group to discuss their concerns.

A grandparent we spoke to, Carol Drummond-West, whose grandson has a special need, said in November he had still not been found a school place, months after the closure of Collective Spirit, although he has been having two hours’ private tuition a day, funded by the local authority.

We were told that Collective Spirit had seen a succession of supply teachers, with parents seemingly swiftly disappointed after the school had been sold to them as offering a “private school” style of education, with small pupil numbers.

Iqbal said: “My son did not get taught maths for a whole year. He would say ‘I’ve done no maths’. He was just sitting in lessons; the school was 60-70 per cent supply teachers.”

Drummond-West told us that aspects of the school had been positive for her grandson, who had benefited from the fact that Collective Spirit had relatively small numbers of pupils, meaning he had received more attention than he might have done at a larger secondary.

However, the three parents said that problems had become apparent long before Ofsted first visited Collective Spirit, in May 2016, near the end of its third academic year. The inspectorate, and the government, should have been on top of the school’s problems far earlier, they argued.

Akram said: “I am a qualified business adviser, and I have to say: where was the oversight in this case? Where was the oversight over three years? It was not as if the school had just started.”

The parents then said that, after the school’s closure was announced, they felt they were almost left in the dark as to what to do.

Iqbal said: “We found out about the detail of the closure via a letter on the school’s website. It said ‘ring this number to find out about other schools’ but the number was wrong. We had very little information.

“I work in insurance, and I know that when you, for example, make people redundant, you at least plan for it properly: you provide human resources support. We were just told: ‘your school is closing; ring this number’. It was appalling. It was beyond belief.”

The parents say that a “middle-ranking” civil servant “who seemed very nervous” was sent to the school for the public meeting including local authority representatives on July 14^th, two weeks after the closure announcement.

Akram said the official had acknowledged that “intervention at Collective Spirit should have taken place sooner”. “He said ‘yes, we have got it wrong’. He said there was a lack of oversight,” said Akram.

Iqbal concurred that the civil servant had said this at the meeting.

On August 28^th, Akram wrote to Vicky Beer, the government’s regional schools commissioner for the area, setting out parents’ concerns about their experience and wanting answers on the follow-up for their children.

He did not receive a response until more than five weeks later. Most of Beer’s letter in response, seen by Education Uncovered, reads like a simple re-statement of government education policy, including a statement that “one of the strengths of the free schools programme is that we can directly intervene where underperformance is identified”.

Collective Spirit was mentioned by the Manchester MP Lucy Powell last month as an example of failure of oversight within the academies system – free schools are a type of academy - in a Commons education select committee meeting on school accountability.

McMahon has called for the National Audit Office to investigate spending at the trust.

Pressed on the details of this case, the Department for Education offered only two paragraphs in response, the first of which dealt with school standards across England, rather than the specifics of this case. It said: “School standards are rising - there are now 1.9 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools compared to 2010. All free schools operate under a strict system of oversight and accountability - ensuring any issues are identified quickly.”

On Collective Spirit specifically, the DfE said: “Closing a school is not a decision we take lightly and we worked closely with the trust, the local authority and other nearby schools to identify places for the Collective Spirit pupils and to ensure the transition was as smooth as possible.”

An E-ACT spokesperson said: “Our staff worked tirelessly to welcome former students of Collective Spirit Free School to the academy without delay, working closely with the students and their parents where it was possible to do so.”