Join CAP with Local Schools, not Sprawling Cross-Country Network

0 have signed. Let’s get to 500!

Andy Gordon
Andy Gordon signed this petition

(Click here for our latest announcement.  The text below is the original petition.)

Dear students, staff, families, parents, and other stakeholders:

As you may know CAP (umbrella for Coleridge, Parkside, and Trumpington CCs and CAST) announced their decision to merge with UL. We write as concerned parents of a child at Parkside. We believe there's not yet enough information to tell the right path forward, and that it's premature to proceed with UL without serious discussions of local alternatives.

Although the decision has been presented as a "done deal" it's not yet done. The board has not yet voted and the Regional Schools Commissioner has not yet been consulted. We believe there is a silent majority who share our concerns. If a substantial body signs this petition we expect the board will take notice, as in effect we form the very fabric of the trust.

Our petition is to insist that CAP pursue excellence in their decision-making:

  • Pause the process with United Learning – if they’d welcome us now, they’d welcome us next year
  • Develop at least one local merger scenario (eg with CET or MET). (Details below.)
  • Be transparent about the evidence – the simple principle of informed consent from your stakeholders
  • Decouple the decision from the retirement of the CEO this summer. Andrew Hutchinson is an extraordinary leader, but we may need longer to settle on a longterm solution, and we should take the time to consult.
  • Publish detailed analysis of multiple scenarios, including staying as we are, and hold another consultation period including a well-marketed public meeting with speakers from each perspective.

We make the full case below. It's a bit long and we couldn't think of any jokes. It's just not a laughing matter, is it! (-:

If you share our concerns, please:

  • Sign this petition.
  • Email CAP with your concerns.  Template at top of this message.
  • Share the petition with other students, staff, and families, including those of feeder primaries for CAP.

Thank you for your time!  Be part of local democracy!

Andy Gordon and Kate Sharkie

Background:

  • The Cambridge Academic Partnership (CAP) is the Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) that runs Coleridge Community College, Parkside Community College, Trumpington Community College, and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology.
  • Last year the CAP board concluded that its schools need to be part of a larger MAT, due to ongoing reductions in funding.
  • In December, a working party was formed to advise on the decision. It did not consider forming a larger MAT by merging with a local trust such as the Cambridgeshire Educational Trust (CET, which runs Chesterton Community College) or the Morris Education Trust (MET, which runs Impington Village College). Its report has not been made public.
  • In January, CAP announced their decision to merge into the United Learning Trust (UL), a gigantic cross-country MAT. UL announced their delight at the done deal. Despite these letters, the CAP board has yet to vote on the matter, and the Regional Schools Commissioner has not considered the change.
  • Slides from a poorly attended public meeting were put on the web only at our request.
  • CAP is belatedly asking for our views as stakeholders.

We believe that a merger with a local MAT is a golden opportunity to create a nationally-leading MAT in our thriving city of Cambridge.  We should aim to be exceptionally good as a city-scale trust. Teachers can easily meet to share best practice and for professional development by bike not cross-country travel - surely a greener alternative!

We seriously doubt that merging into UL is better than a merger with a local MAT:

  • The CAP board was split – a Director resigned in January over this issue!
  • CAP has obtained no guarantee of increased funding from UL
  • UL takes full control of our financial assets – no guarantee that benefits of CAP's Cambridge real-estate would stay in Cambridge
  • UL's large collection of schools appears to gain more from CAP than we gain from them.
  • No evidence that economies of scale from a cross-country MAT improve on those from a local cross-city merger.

We are disappointed that CAP's involvement of stakeholders falls far short of outstanding:

  • Students, staff, families and the members of the local governing bodies are being kept in the dark, asked to comment on a done deal, only involved after the decision has been made. That's just not good enough.
  • The letters and the presentation set out an agreed sequence of events, with no evidence being presented that this is the right decision.
  • The report of the working party is not public. On the phone, Janet Swadling described it as "inappropriate" to reveal which MATs other than UL had been visited.
  • In particular, for some reason, there appears to have been no serious consideration of merging with a local MAT.