Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.
It is incredibly rare that teachers walk out, but that’s exactly what has been happening in Fleetwood and Preston this week.
That’s because of plans to ‘force’ the academisation of all Catholic schools in the area - irrespective of whether staff want it and whether the school is performing well or not.
Most of those schools have gone through the process - but some are fighting against it.
That’s the topic of today’s edition.
Lancashire briefing
🚔 A former magistrate has hit out at how the long-term closure of a court building in Central Lancashire has been handled.
The woman – who did not want to be named – was speaking after it emerged that the Leyland Family Hearing Centre, on Lancastergate, had shut its doors for major repairs.
She said the experience of her own son, who is involved in proceedings at the facility, suggested communication surrounding the closedown had been poor – and risked disadvantaging people in the family court system.
The MoJ refused to comment on the alternative arrangements that had been made for individuals who would otherwise have attended the Leyland Family Hearing Centre – nor how they had been notified. It also declined to comment more broadly on the former magistrate’s comments.
🌬️ The government has been accused of failing to fully consider a proposal that would have reduced by more than 80 percent the length of the huge trench needed to connect a pair of windfarms off the Fylde coast to the national grid.
Ministers last week gave the green light to the 18-mile onshore cabling route suggested by the applicants behind the already approved ‘Morgan and Morecambe’ offshore windfarm projects, which could power as many as two million homes.
However, a group of parish councils says the decision disregarded the major environmental and economic benefits of an alternative option that they and other local authorities had put on the table.
Back in April – while the government was still considering whether or not to grant a so-called development consent order (DCO) for the chosen route – Lancashire County Council, Fylde Council and Wyre Council submitted a report making the economic case for preparing the energy for the grid via an existing substation at Stanah, near Thornton-Cleveleys, or a new one within the adjacent Hillhouse Technology Enterprise Zone.
That alternative would truncate the cabling trench by 15 miles – from 18 miles to just three. It proposed that existing overhead powerlines would then be used to carry the electricity to Penwortham and into the national grid.
🍺 The work needed to bring one of Preston’s oldest pubs back to life has been given the go-ahead.
The Old Dog Inn, on Church Street, closed its doors eight years ago – and part of the rear of the Grade II-listed building has since collapsed.
Urgent repairs were completed earlier this year following an order from Preston City Council to prevent further deterioration of the protected premises.
An application was then submitted seeking permission to carry out a more substantial restoration of the decaying three-storey structure, which has now been approved by the authority’s planning officers.
‘A threat to education’: Inside the battle to control one of Lancashire’s best secondary schools
By Luke Beardsworth, with additional reporting by Alice Jones and Paul Faulkner
Why would you bring in sweeping changes at a school even Ofsted couldn’t find fault with?
That was the main question being asked by teachers on strike at a Catholic school in Lancashire in response to plans from the Diocese of Lancaster to ‘force’ the academisation of dozens of schools.
Corpus Christi Catholic High School in Preston was one of two schools on strike on Monday and Tuesday this week in response to plans by the Bishop of Lancaster to force all schools in the diocese to join a church-run multi-academy trust (MAT).
Staff from the National Education Union (NEU) and NASUWT at the school walked out - and so did the staff at Cardinal Allen Catholic High School in Fleetwood for the same reason. The latter previously walked out for a day in July.
The claim is that the proposed conversion of the Corpus Christi into an academy would see between five and seven per cent of funding sliced away to fund the central services of the Mater Ecclesiae Catholic trust.
That could mean job losses, but would almost certainly mean less funding available to maintain the rated-Outstanding levels of education available to pupils at one of the most over-subscribed schools in the area.
Charlotte Yates, an NEU rep speaking from the picket line this week, said the entire staff body is behind the strike action.
She said: “[Ofsted] couldn’t find a single point for improvement – there’s no better tribute to our leadership team, teaching staff and governing body than that.”
“[The Diocese] would be better served learning from us rather than trying to impose [academisation] on us.
“If seven percent were taken out of our budget, it’s highly likely that would result in redundancies, which would obviously dilute the quality of education that we could offer, at a time when school [finances] are already squeezed.
“That’s why our entire staff body is unanimous in striking against this – we all recognise the threat that it poses to education, resources and the environment of the school.
“This is about saving our school community as we know it.”
But beneath the surface of a row about the best way to manage an extremely good school is a row over how to best look at education more broadly - and claims that governors who opposed the plans have been gagged by the Diocese.