To receive petitions and presentations from members of the public.
Decision:
The Council was addressed by Mrs Kay Tart, Co-Founder of Hitchin Parents Against School Cuts.
The Chairman thanked Mrs Tart for her presentation.
Minutes:
The Council was addressed by Mrs Kay Tart, Co-Founder of Hitchin Parents Against School Cuts.
Ms Tart thanked the Chairman for allowing her the opportunity to make this presentation.
She advised that Hitchin Parents Against School Cuts was a non-party political action group set up in response to the Government cuts to the education budget and stated:
We are parents of children at Purwell Primary school and we were first made aware of the detrimental effect of the decrease in funding in our local school when our Headteacher sent a letter home last year to let us know about the changes that we would notice as a result of this.
Following the recent publication of an article in the Comet in which secondary school Headteachers from Hitchin and North Hertfordshire had spoken out, concerned about the cuts and the need for action, we decided to establish this group to raise awareness of the serious effects of the funding cuts, and to express our concerns about the very real and current impact on school staff and children.
We formed our group just over four weeks ago and in the first two weeks, we gathered more than 1200 members in our Facebook group, a membership consisting of local parents, grandparents, carers and others in our community, including school staff.
Our group has the following aims:
1. To hold events to help spread awareness of the serious impact the funding cuts are having on our local schools.
2. To speak up in support of school staff and school leaders from schools in Hitchin, North Hertfordshire and across the country.
3. To generate support and involvement from parents, grandparents, carers, school leaders, teachers and support staff and anyone else who opposes the Government cuts to the education budget.
4. To advocate for the education budget to be restored, so that schools receive the funding they need to support every child.
We believe that parents are a powerful voice in the campaign against school funding cuts, and we stand in support of teachers, school leaders, our children and grandchildren and their schools.
We have been encouraged by the depth of feeling and the number of parents in our community who feel as we do about the effects of the Government cuts.
The support and interest in our group has developed rapidly, and our group grows daily.
As part of our united action, we have contacted all the headteachers in Hitchin, both primary and secondary, advertising a number of upcoming events, and inviting parents from their schools to get involved. The response has been very positive.
The first of these events was an Action Day with a market stall in Hitchin town square on Saturday 14th July, during which we spoke to members of the public to raise awareness and to build further support. We collected over 300 signatures on a petition asking our MP, Mr Bim Afolami, to bring this issue further up the political agenda and have since launched this petition online, where we expect it will gather many more signatures.
We are in the process of organising a schools’ drive, and we have asked local schools for a list of items and resources that they are desperately short of so that we as a group can gather donations of these items as a way of supporting them.
We have invited all headteachers, school staff, parents and others in our town to an open meeting planned for the 3rd of October, to be held at Purwell School. We have extended the invitation to our MP, and he is aware of our group and the ways in which we are taking action. A large number of our group have already sent him emails and letters expressing our concerns, and several of our members were at the meeting Mr Afolami attended on Thursday, 5th July at The Priory School.
The government would like us to believe that our local schools are coping. They're not, and they need our help to raise awareness and gather further support. Head teachers have to make impossible decisions about where to spend their budgets. We were told by a school governor at our Action Day that the board of governors to which he belonged were working to save pennies on some items, so dire was the situation. We have also been told about local schools running out of resources like exercise books and glue sticks, which teachers have been providing out of their own salaries.
We feel very strongly that the current generation will not receive the education to which they are entitled if funding for state education does not improve. We were really pleased to hear that there would be a motion proposed this evening regarding education funding and hope that the council will support our group and campaign by lobbying the government, and by bringing this serious issue further up the funding agenda.
The Chairman thanked Ms Tart for her presentation.