Seckford Schools: Curriculum and Special Educational Needs

There has been a very lively discussion going on here on my Blog on the post Is Matthew Hancock Playing Politics With Children’s Education. My Blog depends a lot on people who comment on articles and send me material. Without this it would just be me ranting which I think would soon get boring! I read every single comment that is posted and reply when I can.

The discussion has involved mainly people from the Ixworth area following the Seckford's meetings last week. Much of this discussion has been round the curriculum with some saying it is too narrow and that children with additional or special educational needs will not be met.

One parent from Beccles made what I thought was a really excellent comment

My worry as a teacher from further education working with students with additional needs, is the children from the Seckford model will be disadvantaged. Students who want to study vocational subjects or who have achieved qualifications at level one (below GCSE) now come out of school with qualifications that they can link directly into FE colleges and have a head start.

Students coming from Seckford will not have these and will in effect have to go back a step. For example a child leaving John Leman who wants to do engineering will already have a level two quailification in this subject and will be able to start an apprenticeship or a level three course (A level equiv). Imagine having worked for 5 years doing your best at school but coming away without a single qualification, because this is what they are proposing.

I for one would not be prepared to do this to my child as he has significant learning difficulties and with the best will in the world will not achieve any GCSE's.The Seckford foundation can say what they like about inclusion but without additional qualifications they are excluding a large group of children from our communities.

This parent has been engaged in a dialogue with the Seckford Foundation for a while, she started with the following email:

I hope you can help with my query, I have been looking at your website including information for prospective teachers regarding the ethos and curriculum at Beccles free school. I understand that the school will have an academic focus with strong pastoral support and will be non-selective. I am also interested to see you will be employing an inclusion manager to help children with additional needs.

My son who is currently in year eight has learning difficulties and autism he has statement of special educational needs. His behaviour can at times be challenging, will your staff be trained in safe handling techniques and autism awareness ?, what could your school offer him in terms of academic achievement. he will not be able to achieve the Ebacc standard that you mention and my worry is that he would spend all those years at school and come out without any qualifications.

The school he attends at the moment offers a range of qualifications such as the ASDAN awards which are aimed at students with additional learning needs, I feel it would crush his confidence to complete his schooling and achieve nothing at the end.

I like the idea of a small school for my son but worry that his need may not be met what could the school offer to a pupil like him? 

I look forward to hearing from you,

Seckford replied as follows:

Thank you for your email below which was forwarded to the relevant people who could answer it. I hope the following answers your queries:

The curriculum of all Free Schools within the Seckford Foundation Free Schools Trust will be one which is founded on the study of a broad and balanced range of traditional academic subjects supplemented with study in creative subject areas. In addition, we intend to provide an extensive range of enrichment experiences for all students. The academic elements of the curriculum will be organised in order for students to achieve the English Baccalaureate. To do this, qualifications taken in school will be primarily GCSE-based.

All Schools within the Trust will be non-selective and inclusive. The foundation of our approach to inclusion will be to put in place what is needed for students in our Schools to achieve the curriculum and qualifications outlined in the first paragraph.

Although inclusion will be the responsibility of every member of staff in our Schools we will shortly be undertaking the process for the appointment of an ‘Inclusion Leader’. It will be this member of staff who will lead inclusion practices in our Schools through undertaking the roles and responsibilities of the SENCO. We intend, through that appointment, to ensure that the needs of all students admitted to our Schools (and any training required for staff), is coordinated across each School.

I hope this provides you with the information you need.

Best wishes

On behalf of Seckford Foundation Free Schools
01394 615186

The parent replied to this saying:

Thank you for your response however I do not feel that you answered my question. You state that your school will be non-selective and fully inclusive yet will only offer GCSE level qualifications.

This does not reflect the broad range of children that attend a non-selective school, my son, like many other children will never have the ability to reach this level.

Qualications at pre-entry entry and level one were developed in recognition of the fact that many children were leaving school without any nationally recognised qualifications to take on to their next level of education or training.

What is the plan for children who clearly will not be working at GCSE level? to deny them any kind of qualifications would surely be in breach of the 2010 Equality Act section 6 which states a school must not discriminate against a pupil

(a )in the way it provides education for the pupil;
(b) in the way it affords the pupil access to a benefit, facility or service;
(c) by not providing education for the pupil;
(d) by not affording the pupil access to a benefit, facility or service;
(e) by excluding the pupil from the school;
(f) by subjecting the pupil to any other detriment.

I feel the Seckford Foundation needs to look long and hard at this issue especially in the light of the proposed transport policy which means for many children with SEN you will be the closest school.

The subtext of your reply at the moment seems to imply that only children who can achieve GCSE's are welcome. I look forward to your response, if you could let me have your full name and position I could know with whom I am corresponding 

What happened next will surprise nobody who has corresponded with Seckford. They just ignored the correspondence and did not reply which is what they do every time they are challenged.

The parent followed up with this email and has still not had a reply. Perhaps the Seckford staff that “monitor” my Blog might pick this up and reply?

Since I have not had a response to my e-mail dated Friday 4th of May, I am sending it again.

As a local resident and parent of a disabled child I feel that the way you have treated my genuine attempts to seek information about your plans to cater for children like my son is very poor.

You claim to want all children from the community to attend your schools but your attitude makes it clear that this is not the case.

I can only assume that your failure to respond is a strategy that you hope will put off parents like me from choosing your school for their children, if this is the case you would be failing in your legal and moral duties towards the community you claim to be helping.

To those of you I have copied in I can only apologise, as it is the only way I can get at least some chance of a response from an organisation which prides itself on teaching values such as courtesy and respect but seems to find it difficult to follow these themselves.

I look forward to your response

Live Blog: Suffolk Chilling Effects: Local Paper removes articles at request of Seckford Foundation

Suffolk Chilling Effects: Local Press remove article about Beccles Free School after request from Seckford Foundation

Last night as I reported articles on Beccles Free School were removed from all online versions of Archant’s titles: The EDP and the Beccles and Bungay and Lowestoft Journals.

Meanwhile Wikisuffolk have re-published the original articles and you can read the EDP website article or the Beccles and Bungay/ Lowestoft Journal print edition article over on the Wikisuffolk site.

No reason was given for this until this morning when after a number of enquiries to Archant they confirmed to me that the article was removed following a request from the Seckford Foundation. I asked why and was told it was due to the quote Watson gave that said that “final approval” was expected before the end of this month.

However I am convinced this is not a mis-quote as Graham Watson, the Bursar of Woodbridge School who fronts the bids has constantly repeated this message.

Back at the end of April, Watson wrote a letter distributed to nearly 2000 parents in the Ixworth area that said: 

It also successfully applied to run two Suffolk-based Free Schools at Saxmundham and Beccles, which will open in September 2012.  

This prompted concern that the Beccles and Saxmundham bids had actually been finally approved and Watson was asked about this in an email. He replied on 2nd May saying:

The letter was deliberately optimistic in tone.  We have not had final approval. It will not be for us to communicate the decision to particular parties, we will publicise the decision once we have it.

Two days later Watson wrote to "interested parties" of the Beccles bid telling them:

We had hoped, as you know, to have received ratification by 16 April. Now it looks more likely that we will hear the good news at the end of this month. There is nothing sinister about the delay, other than this is the first time that the Department for Education has been dealing with a charity opening two schools at once. 

Throughout this most frustrating period, the Department for Education has continued to be very supportive of the Free School plans 

Despite this exchange Watson went on to sound even more certain at the consultation meeting this week at Stanton when he said to a room full of over 100 people:

"We put in two bids to run free school one in Saxmundham one in Beccles which we will hear, probably sometime next week or the week after, that we have been successful and they will open on 6 September this year"

And yesterday in the Archant articles they quoted him saying:

"The final approval for the opening of the proposed free schools is expected by the end of the month"

This quote is apparently the reason these articles were all pulled from Archant's website yesterday following a request from the Seckford Foundation.

It is interesting to read the more cautious and probably wise form of words used by the proposers of the Breckland Free School:

We are in the process of completing all the necessary paperwork involved in order to have the Funding Agreement signed and approved. We anticipate that this will be completed by the end of May 2012. This is all part of the “pre-opening” phase of starting the new school and a normal part of the process. We do not anticipate unforeseen circumstances that will prevent the Agreement from being signed. We will of course announce when this stage has been successfully passed.

If as Graham Watson implies the signing of the Funding Agreement is a formality what has happened to the statutory duty of the Secretary of State to consider the impact on local schools and what was the outcome of the consultation which many local people contributed to that Seckford refuse to release?

This morning the EDP published another article which they claim was already written for the Saturday edition. It is a slightly different version without the Watson claim and with a headline about the local MP. In general it is less critical. I do believe that the article was already written, it is typical for Archant to do several version of an article for various papers but the impression this gives is chilling.

In any event the Seckford Foundation have managed to remove stories critical of them from the local press. Coming at the end of a week where we have seen posters opposing Seckford ripped down, leaflets for parents taken away and meetings where Seckford have refused to answer legitimate questions and closed down debate this gives a very sorry impression of democracy and public life in Suffolk.

Private Eye and the Guardian have already written about the situation in Suffolk. I wrote a post last week suggesting Seckford are turning into Suffolk’s new Andrea Hill. It seems they are determined to prove me right.

Beccles Free School articles mysteriously disappear from EDP websites

Yesterday I wrote an article quoting a piece in the EDP by Richard Wood which was on the EDP website. Slightly different versions appears on the online and print editions of the Beccles and Bungay Journal and the Lowestoft Journal - all titles owned by local news company Archant.

Yesterday evening all of these articles vanished from the online editions leaving readers with the “not found” message shown.

Archant have so far not responded to requests for an explanation but the disappearance of these sites has already led to a number of questions being asked online.

Naturally this has prompted concern that the Seckford Foundation might somehow be involved in this but there is no evidence as yet that this is the case.

Meanwhile Wikisuffolk have re-published the original articles and you can read the EDP website article or the Beccles and Bungay/ Lowestoft Journal print edition article over on the Wikisuffolk site.

UPDATE: Archant have confirmed the posts were removed following contact from Seckford due to the inclusion of a quote from Graham Watson saying the free school bid "will" be approved by the end of May. They have re-written the article and published it here. A further blog post will explain more!

Seckford expect Beccles Free School ‘approval’ by the end of May - everyone else wants it stopped

Petition against Beccles Free School

In an article in today’s EDP about the proposed Beccles Free School the Seckford Foundation are quoted as saying:

“The final approval for the opening of the proposed free schools is expected by the end of the month.”

This stands in sharp contrast to the views of local Waveney Conservative MP Peter Aldous who said:

“The DFE said they will let me know as soon as a decision is made and I have had no indication at all.”

In my original submission on the whole proposals I did say it was important it was made promptly and I do think it should have been made by now.”

If the bid does go ahead Aldous is likely to join a long list of casualties that will be caused by the free school opening by losing his Waveney seat at the next General Election.

The articles then goes on to list everyone else, all of whom think the proposal in Beccles should be stopped. Jeremy Rowe, Head of the 400 year old Sir John Leman High School and five fellow local Headteachers, the local Conservative County Councillor and Suffolk County Council Leader Mark Bee, and large numbers of local parents.

They list of opponents seems to stop only when the article runs out of space.

But Graham Watson Bursar of the £13,500 a year Woodbridge School and Director of the Seckford Foundation stands alone against the this and by doing so appears to be arrogantly insisting that he knows better than local people, their MP, their County Councillor, local head teachers and thousands of local people.

This is the same man who told me at the consultation in Stanton that he did not know much about local schools in Suffolk and admitted that the “demand” at Beccles amounted to expressions of interest of 107 across three school years.

Seckford seem confident they can use money and power against reason and the will of the people but as local campaigner Ian Goodyer says:

I hold out hope because I think they have clearly lost the argument on every single measure.

UPDATE: The original news article has been mysteriously removed, please see this Blogpost you can still read a copy at WikiSuffolk

Is Matthew Hancock playing party politics with children's education?

Matthew Hancock is clearly an ambitious MP keen to be seen to be promoting the “success” of Conservative party “free school” policies that promote “choice”. He has written an article on his website urging parents to support the free school at Ixwoth.


Matthew Hancock and fellow West Suffolk Conservative Joanna Spicer have been the driving force behind the free school from the start. It was striking that more or less as soon as the consultation meeting finished at Stanton the Seckford people present went to speak to Cllr Spicer and other Conservative Party members present.

Sadly Hancock seems to be ignoring genuine concerns that have emerged about the school and does not seem to care that the facts get in the way. Here is my response to the points he makes:

The proposal for a free school at Ixworth has very strong support from local parents, who, given that the decision has been taken to close Middle Schools, are keen to have a choice. When asked, 87% of parents surveyed expressed an interest in the free school, and 75% either definitely or would very likely send their children.

Hancock sadly does not provide any source for these figures but I suspect they come from “expressions of interest” collected by the original “parent group”. This was hardly an impartial “survey” and most of the participants were Ixworth and Stanton Middle school parents with children currently at these schools.

Actually we have some very reliable data on demand for this school from the Suffolk County Council consultation in the Thurston area. This survey that had 864 responses from across the Thurston area showed support for the free school as follows:

In total 51% in favour and 49% against but support was very polarised:

Responses linked to	Yes	No
Beyton Middle Feeder Schools	41%	59%
Beyton Middle School	37%	63%
Blackbourne Middle Feeder Schools	56%	44%
Blackbourne Middle School	60%	40%
Ixworth Middle Feeder Schools	62%	38%
Ixworth Middle School	86%	14%

The strongest support was amongst current Ixworth Middle School parents, followed by their feeder primaries but notably less (but still a majority) of support at Blackbourne in Stanton.

Source: Suffolk County Consultation Cabinet Paper

So unless we are only talking about current Ixworth Middle School parents the support is nothing like Hancock's figures - and this was when the free school was ostensibly led by a parent group and assumed free transport to either Ixworth or Thurston.

Suffolk County Council, Department of Education, and indeed the Thurston Partnership also have set out that they welcome the choice a free school would offer to parents.

Suffolk County Council have a policy document on free schools and academies that support them in principal but the Administration does not appear to have taken a position on Ixworth. Whilst local County
Councillor Joanna Spicer is clearly a fan she herself seems frustrated at the lack of enthusiasm from her fellow Conservatives in the Administration.

The Thurston partnership proposal had the comments about a free school shoe-horned into it due to political interference from Hancock and Spicer as this blog revealed. 

Of course it is also important that the right transport is available. Suffolk County Council has a statutory duty to treat free schools in exactly the same way as any other school. Further, they are keen to ensure that there is as much choice available. Their consultation on the future of transport explicitly makes clear each area of Suffolk should be treated according to local circumstances, and that one option is that parents are given their choice of transport to either school in a catchment area. Further, a secondary school at Ixworth would shorten the average journey for pupils and so should save cost. So I am confident that concerns over transport can be worked out in a way that ensures the very best options for schools in and around Ixworth, so that we can ensure the very best education for local children.

I don’t think Hancock undertands the transport issue fully, he seems to think it will just go away. It won’t. As one parent said at the consultation "It’s all to do with transport, you don’t seem to understand"

The SCC consultation makes it clear that local plans must fit a general set of principals. Indeed they would be unfair if they did not. Matthew Hancock appears to suggest that somehow a situation will be engineered giving parents free transport in Thurtston area to a choice of schools but not elsewhere in Suffolk.

So I would have to pay for my choice but not a parent in Ixworth.

The consultation document talks of a single transport area in these terms:

Consider creating a shared transport priority area, so that children are transported to more than one school within the area, where:

• schools are ‘close together’ (less than two miles); 
• a significant community is split by the creation of a new transport priority area;
• the transport network provides cost-effective solution; or 
• there are insufficient places in the local schools to meet the likely demand;

I don’t see how this applies to Thurston. Schools are over two miles away and it looks unlikely that the transport network can provide a cost effective solution - certainly unless the Free School changed its hours so the same buses could be used to both places as it is now to the Middles and to Thurston. At the consultation meeting the extended school day was sold as a key part of the proposal.

If you support having options for your children’s school, then I would urge you to make your voice heard at public meetings on the 15th of May at Blackbourne Middle School and the 16th May at Ixworth Middle School, or contact the parent-led free school group here.

Presumably if you do not support this - or would rather some other choice than Seckford - then Hancock would rather you did not make your voice heard!!

It is notable that there is no link to the “parent-led free school group” as the bid is now, as Hancock is well aware, led by the Woodbridge based Seckford Foundation. The leaflet circulated at the meetings makes it clear they are the contact for any questions and the “parent” group played no part whatsoever in the meetings - actually I think one of them was entrusted to hold a microphone at Ixworth....

I hate seeing party politics interfering with eduction like this. It re-enforces my view that politicians should not be allowed near schools! They make things worse not better.

Live Blog: Seckford Ixworth Free School Open Meeting from Ixworth Middle School

Ixworth Free School: Seckford Foundation admit their narrow curriculum may cause "collateral damage" to some children

Last night in Stanton the Seckford Foundation held the first of two “consultation” meetings about the proposed Ixworth Free School. According to an information leaflet given out at the end of the meeting the purpose was:

Welcome to the consultation evening for parents of prospective pupils of the Ixworth Free School. The aim of the meeting is to give parents an opportunity to contribute their ideas to the formation of the school.

However the meeting certainly did not feel like that! It seemed more like a "take it or leave it approach"

Firstly I must thank @RevErasmus on Twitter for enabling the Live Blog from the meeting to go ahead despite the “tech fail” I had when neither Vodafone or Three coverage was available at Blackbourne Middle School. Apparently you need T-Mobile! I will be making sure I have some “emergency” SIM cards in my Geek Bag in future!

Present at the meeting were Graham Watson, Director of the Seckford Foundation who “ran” the meeting, Graeme Bruce, Director of Studies at Woodbridge School and Rob Cawley the recently appointed Principal of the planned Seckford Free Schools Trust.

The meeting began with instructions not to video or record it which seems a little bit of an unfortunate way to start off.

The SCOFS campaign had clearly had a big impact on Seckford although I think the presence of several of us in the room moderated the words of Graeme Bruce about the information we had provided to parents. But the information session majored on trying to answer criticisms made about the narrow curriculum and special educational needs.

What was interesting is that Rob Cawley who Seckford have just appointed who has spent his entire career working in state education was, by far, the most impressive of the three. He gave convincing answers. Whilst this might be seen as a positive thing - and it is certainly better than hiring someone unconvincing who doesn’t know what they are doing - it also made me wonder what exactly it was that Seckford are brining to the party.

Their leaflet to parents boasted:


I think they meant 400+ years but the mistake only goes to highlight that the plan does not look at all thought through. If you contrast the 4 page document with the the much more detailed and impressive plans for IES Breckland you might see what I mean. I am not a big fan of contracted out education provision but at least they have a coherent plan.

Seckford certainly made a valiant attempt to defend a curriculum that just offers academic subjects with no choice at all of vocational subjects and indeed several academic subjects missing. The flaw I felt in the argument was why students could not follow an academic core curriculum and  study vocational subjects as well .

Asked by a parent what a child aspiring to be a mechanic would study Bruce made a good point that Physics and Maths could be relevant to them but surely if they studied this alongside a vocational subject they could see the relevance and links better.

The same parent asked why his child should have to study a language if they did not want to and would be likely to fail, might become disengaged . Somewhat unfortunately Bruce said

Yes they might have to do a bit of French but that is “collateral damage"

This is a particularly unfortunate remark as Ixworth Free School supporters have constantly criticised Suffolk County Council claiming they made a comment that collateral damage would be cause to children due to the school re-organisation review. Needless to say the parent was none too keen on the idea that their child would be have to endure this.

At this point another parent stormed out of the meeting saying “this is complete bullshit"

Seckford Point blank refused to answer questions about their finances claiming this would be “irrelevant to prospective parents”.

Challenged by me on Governance Watson finally admitted that the Governance arrangements he claimed were like most other academies were not anything like most Suffolk schools and that Seckford would have a majority of the Trust Governors rather than the majority being parent, staff and local community representatives.

Watson also admitted in response to a question Thurston that :

I don’t know much about the local schools…we are not in the business of comparing ourselves with local schools

Strangely they also answered a question on why the school would not have a sixth form by saying that this isn’t what the parent group asked them to do although the parent group clearly stated in the original material they circulated to parents that they wanted to open an 11-18 school. Watson was clearly not aware of this.


Watson closed the meeting down as soon as things started getting interesting. One parent loudly heckled that:

It’s all to do with transport, you don’t seem to understand

This got widespread applause.

Watson went to to maintain that the school would only go ahead if it had high demand. I challenged this which resulted in the following exchange:

Me: Did you mean like Beccles
Watson: Beccles has high demand
Me: Really so about 80 children have applied
Watson: your information is incorrect
Me: So how many then
Watson: i’m going to tell you, I can’t remember, either 146 or 107, I think its 107
Me: About the size of a tiny primary school

Seckford have constantly refused to provide this information. This figure is across three  year groups! The figure of 86 is one I got from a Freedom of Information Request back in February since then an extensive marketing campaign seems to have got as few as 21 additional expressions of interest.
The mood of the meeting was interesting. As Watson closed it down he thanked:

I am drawing this meeting to a close, thank you very much to to those parents who have a genuine interest in the free school for coming.

I was then heckled by a group of parents who suggested “you’re not a parent, you don’t live in Suffolk!” which was a little strange as my son was actually sat next to me. I do live in Suffolk and I am closer to Stanton than the Woodbridge based Seckford Foundation!

I would say there was quite a polarised 50-50 split in the room for and against the free school. I expect stronger support at the Ixworth meeting tonight!

Live Blog: Ixworth Free School Seckford Open Meeting

Suffolk Free School Campaign: "Free School Plan means staff are leaving our middle schools"

The Suffolk Coalition Opposing Free Schools has published flyers for Middle School parents ahead of the  Seckford meetings this week. Beyton Middle School have already sent it out to parents via parentmail and  Facebook and we are hoping that Ixworth and Blackbourne Middle Schools will follow their lead as they have all sent information out to parents from Seckford about the free school.

SCOFS have not asked the Primary Schools and Thurston Community College to send the flyers out as they have taken the position that they will not send any information out about the prospective free school and SCOFS respects this.

Two slightly different versions have been prepared, one for Beyton and one for Ixworth and Blackbourne due to differences in likely transport arrangements.

Ixworth and Blackbourne SCOFS Flyer May 2012

Beyton SCOFS Flyer May 2012

Ixworth Free School: are some supporters trying to prevent debate by ripping down posters and online abuse?

When faced with someone you disagree with you have two main choices, argue your point as strongly as you can or try and prevent debate and abuse your opponents.

Sadly some supporters of the Ixworth Free School proposal seem to have taken the latter approach.

This morning we had reports that posters put up by the Suffolk Coalition Opposing Free Schools had been ripped down and leaflets left for parents removed. You can see photographs below of what has happened:

In addition to this over the weekend a strange looking username appeared on this Blog and on Twitter. It was called “AGraverHotspots”. Strangely this account followed only one person. Me.


There are some funny names on Twitter so it took me a few looks to work out that there was something very strange about this user.

If you re-arrange the letters in the word you get “Hargrave Tosspot”.

To be honest after blogging for a while this kind of abuse is par for the course but still in the words of Margaret Thatcher that my fellow blogger over at Riverside View loves to quote:

‘I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.’  

Sadly there appears to have been a concerted effort since the Ixworth School was first proposed to stifle any free discussion of the issue and prevent parents hearing facts and arguments that might lead them to decide to question the free school. A few examples of this:

• Refusal to allow me to attend an “open meeting” about the free school
• Attempting to keep the names of the proposers secret
• Refusing to answer or ignoring questions asked 
• Failing to correct information admitted to be inaccurate or misleading
• Attempts by local politicians to control information sent by local schools and in the press 

The free school proposers have every right to suggest a free school at Ixworth and to engage with local parents. However others have the same right to oppose it. We have a long tradition in this country of free debate on matters of public policy. Those in public life expect to get challenged and questioned.

If the free school proposal is such a good idea it will stand up to a bit of opposition and scrutiny. Trying to stop opposing views makes it seem the proposers know it isn’t a good idea and don’t want parents to find out the facts.

Suffolk Coalition Opposing Free Schools campaign spreads

The Suffolk Coalition Against Free Schools that launched on Friday has now spread across social media. As well as a website  http://scofs.net  there is a Facebook Page and @SuffolkCOFS on Twitter

Later this week there are public meetings planned by the Seckford Foundation who are behind the Ixworth Free School proposal. Several posters advertising the public meetings have appeared in the Thurston area. You can see a picture of one here with a SCOFS flyer underneath it. This appeared on Facebook with the caption this is what competition between schools looks like.

The public meetings take place:

• Tue 15th May at Blackborne Middle School 7pm
• Wed 16th May at Ixworth Middle School 7pm

Meanwhile the Beccles and Saxmundham schools have still not received final approval from the DfE although they are recruiting for staff still.

The transport consultation that has already caused huge controversy across the County continues next week with meetings (all 7pm to 9pm)

• Mildenhall College of Technology: Monday 14 May
• Samuel Ward Academy: Tuesday 15 May 
• Beccles Middle School: Monday 21 May
• Sudbury Upper School: Tuesday 22 May