19 schools unite to protest 'damaging' delay over 2-tier switch in Stotfold and Shefford

A decision to pause switching from three-tier to two-tier schooling in Stotfold and Shefford is a mistake and should be reversed.

That’s the view of senior staff at 19 schools who have sent an open letter to Central Beds Council claiming the announcement has already had a damaging effect on children.

Schools were notified of the plans at the end of June following a budget review which forced the council to ‘pause the Schools for the Future programme in some areas’.

But an open letter from the schools has expressed concerns students in the Stotfold and Shefford area would suffer if the pause goes ahead.

It states: “The main focus of the Schools for the Future programme is to improve educational outcomes for all children and young people. This pause, however, will have the opposite effect

“While we have no desire in aligning ourselves with political point-scoring sought by any group on CBC, we must illustrate the damaging impact this announcement has immediately had on our children and our communities.”

The letter outlined schools’ concerns which included attainment, recruitment and retention of staff, costs already incurred and financial viability due to uncertainty on pupil numbers.

The letter adds that:

“Attainment will be affected, as we currently have multiple points of transition across the cluster as a third of the schools have already transitioned. We are also spending valuable time and resources on designing new curriculums in anticipation of the change to the primary-secondary model. If standards drop, the subsequent knock-on effect on Ofsted gradings could be considerable.

“Similarly, this announcement has made our recruitment and retention of staff - already a major issue amid the backdrop of a national crisis in the education sector - a great deal worse. In preparation for the upcoming change in age range, we have already started recruiting staff into new roles across our schools. This will grossly affect career prospects and we will now have little option but to redeploy staff to teach other age groups which may be outside their areas of expertise, or even lose them.

“Staff have been employed at all of our schools at significant cost for either primary or secondary provision. Should plans not be reversed, this will incur even more cost at a time when many, if not all schools, are struggling to balance our budgets.

“Our schools face further issues around financial viability due to uncertainty on pupil numbers, which this announcement only exacerbates. Families are already trying to navigate an uncertain pathway with multiple transition points in a split cluster. Some of our schools have seen a drastic fall in numbers of pupils in Years 4, 5, 6 and 8 as parents seek the security of places elsewhere, which greatly damages the year-on-year funding and makes it even more difficult to balance the school budget.

“We also have serious concerns about the status of capital projects which have either been agreed or are partway through construction. Some of our schools were reliant on the Schools for the Future investment to upgrade facilities, making them fit for purpose, or even move to new builds. This pause has only elevated our shared anxiety that much-needed work will be left undone, and fear that work already started may now need to be picked up by the schools themselves, whilst we wait for a decision by the council.

“We must also question the equity of treatment of our schools in pausing the programme in our cluster only, while work carries on in the Biggleswade, Woburn Sands and Cranfield areas. Shefford and Stotfold was the very first cluster CBC embarked on when launching the Schools for the Future

programme. Many years of work has already taken place and millions of pounds spent in reaching this point, so for this pause to affect our schools while effectively allowing other clusters to leapfrog us seems unfair.”

Cllr Whitaker, Executive Member for Families, Education and Children, said: “We acknowledge that parents, children and schools in the Shefford and Stotfold area are disappointed by our pause of the Schools for the Future programme. It’s not a decision we have taken lightly, as we recognise there have previously been setbacks, which is why we spoke with the schools before we made the announcement.

"We wanted to ensure they had the opportunity to ask questions and our door is always open for further discussions.

“Our plan is to bring deliverable plans back to schools in the autumn. This will give us time to budget for a deliverable Schools for the Future programme that will bring about the transition from three-tier to two-tier, in a financially responsible way."

Schools that have signed the letter include: Clifton All Saints Academy, St. Mary's VA CofE Lower School Clophill, Pix Brook Academy, St Mary's CofE Academy Stotfold, Fairfield Park Lower School, Gothic Mede Academy, Langford Village Academy & Gravenhurst Academy, Campton Academy, Etonbury Academy, Shefford Lower School, Samuel Whitbread Academy, Stondon Academy & Shillington Academy, Haynes Lower School, Roecroft Lower School, Robert Bloomfield Academy, Derwent Primary School & Southill Lower School.

The Schools for the Future programme was started in 2018 and reset in 2021 to ensure pupil number aligned with new housing growth.

More information on the programme is available here