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Who are we?

I was wondering the same thing. I think it’s the political activists who claim to represent all parents at the school. Led by the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition activist Martin Powell-Davis and a couple of left-wing parents.

Any official statements from Cllr Maslin or the school itself will go in the main forum. Debate goes here in #politicos:local-politics

I can find nothing to back up this ‘information’.

I joined that FB group & I had a look but couldn’t find the above post on there, and when I clicked on the link above I got this

IMG_6424.jpg1536×2048 488 KB

@JamesEvans… I was honestly interested. But your article kept referring to ‘we’ and I only wanted to know who ‘we’ was.

Excuse me for not believing everything I see on the internet. Do you have anything to back up this info and why was the post deleted?

James, I’m extremely interested in this subject especially as a FH School parent & am very worried about the situation especially as my son has SEN - I think the community has to work together to come up with a long term solution for this.

There’s some updates on the FB site. Apparently there has been questions about the validity of the figure. The notice has returned in an edited format. And because of this one of the Action Group’s admin’s has stepped down.

https://se23.life/t/forest-hill-school-update-from-cllr-paul-maslin/4830/7

I hope the original OP is able to comment on this!!

James as a future prospective parent I am very interested in this too.
I do think the local community should be discussing this as it will affect many and I am not sure why this has been put in Politics as the original post did not look that political to me.

Whatever the validity or not of the figure of redundancies, the very fact that there is speculation about this and no ‘official’ figures suggests that the Council need to improve their communication with parents. There is a huge amount of worry amongst parents and new parents which is not healthy, and which will be very unsettling for the boys due to start in September. In the absence of accurate facts and proper opportunity for discussion and resolution, there is bound to be fear and scaremongering. There is a blog post from the Councillor responsible but surely parents should have more than a blog post to go on? The end result of the lack of engagement will be rumours going round and prospective parents will be looking to send their children to alternative schools, which is not good for the community.

@Daffodil I hear you, but with the benefit of hindsight I still feel it was right to move this topic here. It claimed to present a group viewpoint but didn’t identify the group. It presented facts without anything to back them up. It risked serious scaremongering.

What do we know about the people involved? They are led by political activists. They blocked at least one commenter on Facebook for questioning their bias. They were quick to press an activist agenda before any of the facts were revealed in the FHS situation.

Article now appearing in media (which doesn’t make it any more true):

Only new bit is:

A spokesperson for Lewisham Council said, “We are doing everything we can to support the head teacher and chair of governors of Forest Hill School to raise standards and bring the budget back onto a secure financial footing.

“We welcome the NUT’s suspension of their strike action.

“Talks are continuing between Forest Hill School and the NUT to try and address the union’s concerns. We hope these talks will result in an agreement that avoids further strike action.”

Which doesn’t really address the point at all.

I have been following the FH parents action group Page and they are concerned parents. The only people I have seen posting on there recently are parents. Perhaps in the earlier days it was more ‘activists’.
The NUT has its own, separate Facebook page.

I would have thought If the figures were incorrect it would have been an ideal opportunity for the Councillor to come on to the forum to present the correct facts, to stop any more scare-mongering, because like it or not this is the figure that is being bandied about - as demonstrated by Michael’s link above.
(Also I don’t think it’s the responsibility of forum moderators to fact-check every single post!)

Just a side note - By moving the topic to politics, which most people are probably not opted-in to, it just looks like the topic has just been deleted from the forum.

I’d feel more comfortable with this rumour going out to our tens of thousands of visitors if I knew who the current leaders of the “Action Group” are, where they got this information, and why their word is more reliable than our local councillor’s response to this claim.

Creating a Facebook Group is easy. Whipping up a frenzy based on a rumour is too easy.

Why won’t Lynley Oram (or whoever originated this story) come forward and put her name against it on the forum? Why was it retracted from the group on Facebook?

SE23.life has differentiated itself from Facebook Groups because here, individuals credibily represent themselves and the organisations they work for.

Michael, I’ve got some info about the amount of money borrowed & payments made from the FB page & someone emailed me with more info about the whole situation - I wanted to go over these with you & @JohnRussell after our library meeting on Sunday to see if we could get to the bottom of it between us, which would then make it easier for everyone to work out the best way to help the situation.

Sorry for springing more work on you, I was going to surprise you both on Sunday with it

I won’t have time on sunday and I’m not really the best person to understand school finances. I would hope the governors are the best people to deal with the situation in the best interests of pupils.

The problem is I don’t really know who’s dealing with what and if anyone is - and when parents have been emailing Cllr Paul Maislin to ask for help and/or info all have got an automated reply telling them to read his blog which really doesn’t have any info or help on there.

Basically I think individuals are being ignored.

My thinking was that if we could work out what was what between me, you, & John to the best of our ability and asked for further info as a group we might get somewhere.

I’ll put what I’ve got in an email & send it to you, but I think something needs to be done yesterday to save the School.

And I always trust advice from you & John on community matters as it’s always invaluable

I’m always happy to have a chat with you but not always a formal discussion pre-announced on forums. There are much more involved people than me on this issue and much better people for you to speak to about school governance.

We’ll have a quick friendly chat then where I can pick your brains

Ellie Reeves said in her acceptance speech at Catford Town Hall: “My own efforts to fight for our pubic services start immediately – with the funding crisis at Forest Hill School.”

Source https://www.londonnewsonline.co.uk/25507/ellie-reeves-makes-three-women-labour-mps-massive-majorities-lewisham/

Chris,

Lynley Oram (who isn’t someone I know except through the parents FB group) has apologised to the group for the information that was posted and I suspect is feeling mortified that the information she was given and reported in good faith was not correct. The trouble is that the updated information she provided has not replaced the earlier mistaken information and is not reported in the local press.

To quote one of her posts…

“This is true in that there will be 30 teachers no longer at the school in September. The breakdown is: 14 voluntary redundancies, 1 compulsory redundancy, 2 resigned earlier in the year, 13 resignations in the week before the half term.”

Quite what the action group is and what it isn’t is a matter for discussion but I don’t think it is a group that is intentionally trying to misinform. The problem (to my eyes) is that the only people who will talk to the parents at the moment seems to be the NUT and some of the teachers informally. So this is the information that gets reported.

I’m not involved in any of this contact so can only go on what I’ve seen. It’s not an organised group with a structure and a committee it is agroup of parents, some with more ‘involvement’ than others and as you can imagine quite a range of view points.

All anyone wants as far as I can see is to support the school, the boys and the staff.

The real issue for parents is that they are worried and need everyone to work together to help the school and to let parents know what they can do. And at the moment not everyone is around the table and things seem to be being unintentionally decisive between different ‘groups’.

At the end of the day the financial issues that the school has are not for the parents to solve. The school (governors carry the financial responsibility at the end of the day) and the LA and others who can help need to get to a solution.

But each stakeholder has a different position…

• The LA think they have done all they can do. They have made a loan.
• The school are trying to make the best of a difficult situation and to get on with it.
• The unions are trying to prevent teachers losing their jobs.
• The parents are worried about the impact on the kids.
• The government are continuing (so far at least) to reduce funding per pupil for the school.
• a new pta has been set up (I understand) to help fundraise and support the school.

So how best to bring all of these groups together to the same page and to practically agree steps that will actually help?

Think I’m making a bit of progress on this

Though it’s not easy work

Totally agreed @Daffodil. Ive joined this group and all I’ve found are parents who feel utterly helpless, trying desperately to figure out was is going wrong and desperate to secure their children’s future.

I’ve offered some insight into PFI and it appears gratefully received even though I’ve admitted to be broadly supportive of public private partnerships. They appear genuinely thankful.

I see no evidence that they are run by activists and its sad they are accused of this.

I agree with what you’ve said, I’ve got a meeting next Sunday with a few parents I haven’t met before but that like me want to work out the best way forward without being angry & also to work out how best to support the Cllrs & School moving forward. To achieve the best outcome for the kids education.

And yes, how to work out how best LC can resolve the financial predicament the School is in.

Massive thanks for your input Jason

God knows how we can work this out, but we’ll try our bloody hardest!

Glad to hear the leadership team has changed. I’m surprised Martin has nothing to do with the group anymore (am I right to assume this from your quote?). He seemed quite central to it all.

I know at least one of them “resigned” after posting and then retracting the story about the 30 redundancies.

Who are the new leaders, @Starman?

So, I guess this was somewhat true 30 Staff members have left