Bid to sack Budmouth College's interim board over academy move is defeated

Lib Dems and the Greens brought the amendment to a Dorset Council meeting on Thursday evening.

It claimed that the Interim Emergency Board at the college had failed to support the interests of pupils, staff and parents. It also claimed that although the board had concerns about the move to an academy and the group likely to take over at Budmouth from September, it had failed to adequately represent those concerns back to the regional schools body or the Secretary of State.

Education brief holder for Dorset Council Cllr Andrew Parry said the move would do nothing to help the situation and might make it worse for the school. He told the Dorchester meeting that it would not delay the process of becoming an academy and, in any event, the board would be disbanded at the end of August. He promised to feed back the concerns of councillors, staff and parents to the board.

Each of those groups spoke at the meeting asking the council to do what it could to stop, or at least delay, the process of moving to an academy. Concerns were also expressed about the future of the sports centre and playing fields at the college which parents and Unison want protected.

The council went on to approve a motion from Weymouth councillor Ryan Hope calling on the Secretary of State for Education to delay the move to an academy while the progress the college had made since the last Ofsted report was assessed – and also to ask the Regional Schools Commissioner to justify the decision about who should run the college.

He told the meeting: “The school has a new head teacher who has an excellent track record and is held in high regard; the senior management team has been changed and feedback from teachers and parents since he took office have been positive and reflect a wider sense that the setting is robustly addressing the concerns raised at the last Ofsted inspection with positive and measurable results.”

Chickerell councillor Jean Dunseith, whose ward the school comes under, said in three years she had visited three head teachers. Cllr Dunseith said she had confidence in the current head : “I want Mr Herbert and his staff to stay there and turn the college around, which I know they are capable of...let's have stability there.”

But several councillors claimed that the school was already losing good teachers and that many parents were trying to transfer their children to other schools.

Cllr Nick Ireland, who put the amendment to dismiss the interim board, said problems started at Budmouth in 2016-17 when the then head was suspended, leaving what he described as a power vacuum: “The school fell apart without him,” he claimed. Cllr Ireland, who had two children at Budmouth, said he believed it could again be good without going to academy status.

Green councillor Clare Sutton, who backed the move to dismiss, said she was concerned that financial information had not been made available, as it had in the case of All Saints when it changed status. She was also worried about any future plans to sell off playing fields, to close the sports centre and was worried about the future provision for pupils with additional needs.