If you've ever valued good quality education, sign this petition.

If you've ever thought that a safe, positive learning environment and a varied curriculum are important, sign this petition. 

If you've ever studied or worked at Newham Sixth Form College and witnessed how hard the talented teachers and support staff work, experienced the vibrant and creative community and seen the amazing results students get year after year, sign this petition!

Because one man is tearing it all down.

I studied Performing Arts at Newham Sixth Form College in 2020-22, following in the footsteps of my aunt and cousin who also studied there. The course was a transformative experience that helped me to explore beyond my comfort zone and develop my creativity, self-expression, and teamwork in a supportive and encouraging environment. This course allowed me to go on to study at a top university with key skills which peers at my uni never received. This team won the 2022 Pearson's Silver award for FE Team of the Year for a reason!

I am still good friends with many current NewVIc students, so when I learned recently that teachers from all departments have been going on an extensive period of strikes, I looked into it.  And I was shocked at what I found.

• Student safety is no longer a priority: When I was at NewVIc, I felt safe being in the building, but recently several security officers have been sacked and poor behaviour has increased. Parts of the college have been vandalised and some students told me they don’t feel safe in their lessons. In one shocking incident, a group of masked intruders burst into a classroom shouting and holding up phones, terrifying the teachers and students. When students have raised concerns, they have been made to feel they don’t matter and are silenced. One reason this behaviour continues is that there are no consequences for students. When I asked about this, it turns out there is no longer a working behaviour or disciplinary policy.  
  
  
• Students are nothing but a pound sign: Colleges get funded per student (which I didn’t realise!), so the more students they have, the more money comes in. At the beginning of this year, some courses had mass enrollments, even though there wasn’t enough space in the classroom, creating health and safety concerns. On some courses, students had no teacher for their first weeks of lessons. And on other courses, permission to get the necessary textbooks has been denied. Meanwhile, student support has recently been cut back with many students who used to receive in-class or additional support no longer getting it. Focusing on high student numbers instead of investing in courses is hurting learning and unfair to students.
  
  
• Disappearing teachers: Teachers and staff have disappeared overnight without the chance to hand over to new staff or for students to say goodbye and thank you. This happened to me, and it was upsetting and anxiety-inducing to not know why we were abandoned. We started a new project with our music teacher, and then suddenly he was gone. There was no communication with students or parents about why. Now I realise this has been happening across all departments, most recently, the Vice Principal, and it’s causing chaos and upset to many students.

 

• Dangerously disorganised exams: The recent January exams were a shambles! There were late starts, wrong rooms, papers not given, and extra-time students were disadvantaged and stressed over the process. This chaos and lack of organisation is a threat to every single student at the college.

These issues have come from the leadership and decisions of Mandeep Gill, a first-time Principal who took over in 2018. I've been told that the College has been in steady decline since then and now it's becoming impossible for teachers to uphold the quality of teaching that saw them receive a Grade 2 with Outstanding features from Ofsted in 2018. They had a strike in January 2022 when I was still at the college and now they are striking again for the same reasons.

In the nearly 30-year history of NewVIc, the staff has never been on strike against management until Mandeep Gill became Principal.

They have lodged a Vote of No Confidence against him, which means because of his continuous poor decision-making, they no longer believe he can run NewVIc to the standard needed. And I have to agree. I found out there were 5 days of strikes and another 30 days announced before he would even talk with the teachers' union to resolve the issues raised above.

A student showed me an email sent to parents by the Principal that claimed that the teachers' union had agreed to stop striking while in mediation talks and then went back on their word. But when I spoke to the Union, they confirmed that this was never agreed.

But what has stunned me the most, is that while this is going on, he now wants to issue redundancies to staff who are striking.

He intends to cut A-Level courses, like Philosophy, Spanish, and Fine Art, and entirely close down the Performing Arts department!

Performing Arts and Music has been running at NewVIc since the very first year it opened, almost 30 years ago. They have trained actors Danielle Vitalis (Attack the Block) and Holli Dempsey (Harlots, Black Mirror, Holby City), dancer Joseph Toonga, who is currently an Emerging Choreographer In Residence with The Royal Ballet, and Mobo-nominated Jazz musician Alfa Mist among many notable others. In the two years I studied there, I did projects with: Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Boy Blue Entertainment and the Old Vic Theatre.

These opportunities won't exist for future Newham performing artists when Mandeep Gill closes the department. 

Fellow alumni, parents, current students and ex-staff, we cannot allow this to happen! Even if you didn't study a creative subject, you'll know that the subjects like Philosophy, Languages and Fine Art at an inclusive East London institution like NewVIc are what makes it so diverse and culturally important.

NewVIc is a College that belongs to the families of Newham.

It’s not only my family that has attended NewVic over generations. Lots of Newham families choose NewVIc because of the positive experiences they’ve heard about from friends and family over the years. It has always offered a varied curriculum that gave us the best opportunity to study what we want. And it's helped sooo many of us transition to university or further training.

Under the current Principal, everything we have ever loved about NewVIc is being destroyed. 

The teachers themselves are putting themselves at risk to prevent it. Now we need to do our part. Let's unite NewVIc's longstanding community!

Sign this petition and urge everyone who has a connection to NewVIc to sign as well. We need to protect OUR College. 

And he needs to go.

#mandeepmustgo #protectnewvic