Dean of St Albans, Jeffrey John is @Out4Marriage

Jeffrey John is currently the Dean of St Albans. He would have been a Bishop now except for two facts. He is gay and he is honest about it.

I used to know Jeffrey when he was a Parish Priest in London back in the 1990s. He actually conduct my own wedding and has long been a supporter of homsexual relationships being regarded in the same way by the Church as heterosexual ones. Back in 1993 he wrote a book entitled Permanent, Faithful, Stable: Christian same-sex partnerships.

Jeffrey has been in a relationship with a fellow clergyman called Grant since Theological college. A relationship he has always been completely honest about.

A new updated version of this book with with a slightly different title has been published this year, now called Permanent, Faithful, Stable: Christian same-sex marriage. The difference is the word marriage rather than partnership and this shows the progress made since 1993.

Well the progress made by civil society that is. As a High Church Anglican (part of the Affirming Catholicism movement) Jeffrey has always had a strong doctrine of the Church regarding it as important as central to christianity. It therefore says a lot that he basically says in the Preface of his new book and in the video below that the Church is wrong and should be ignored:



The You Tube video is part of the Out4Marriage campaign that is supporting the proposed change in the law to allow homosexual couples to marry in the same way as heterosexual ones.

I think Jeffrey gives a powerful message in favour of gay marriage. I know he feels that the Church should actually be leading this campaign rather than opposing it.

It is sad that despite the progress of the last 20 years the recent bed and breakfast case and opposition to gay marriage shows that there is still a way to go in equal rights for homosexuals.

I think the Church of England has rather shot itself in the foot with Jeffrey John though. An outstanding scholar, priest and public speaker he would have made a brilliant Bishop and who knows might have even been in contention for Canterbury now.

Discrimination is not only wrong it also damages those doing the discriminating as the tale of Jeffrey John shows.

We need to fight ideology from the left and the right to Save Suffolk's Libraries

Front page of today's EADT

If you read the EADT this morning you may well conclude that Suffolk's libraries are under threat again. I think you would be right but not in the way the EADT article suggests.

Having defended Suffolk's libraries from an ideological attack from the right who were determined to see the service broken up and "divested" handing it to local communities or even private companies to run sadly it looks like a similar ideological attack from the left has begun.

This new attack from the left seems to be due to the insistance by some that the library service "must" be run by the County Council and that as such the IPS must be a bad thing. Some would appear happy to see a worse service just so long as the it was still under Council control.

I have already written about the disingenuous suggestions that the library service is "close to breaking point" which was based on a list of problems all of which the IPS inherited from the County Council.

The subject of today's EADT article is UNISON's response to the IPS's proposals to restructure the services in the back office of the IPS mainly because it now needs to deal with issues such as HR, Finance and IT that the County Council previously covered.

In fact none of the staff in any of the 44 branches of Suffolk Libraries are directly affected at all by the consultation. This, however, does not stop UNISON claiming:

“It seems incomprehensible that the IPS proposes to reduce the staffing and resource to this front line service which reaches out to some of the most vulnerable and isolated people in Suffolk – and yet can find the money to appoint more staff at higher grades in the organisation.”

They are able to make this claim because the consultation does include the reduction in staff and service to the mobile library service. However, as UNISON know full well, this reduction was made by the County Council and the IPS have no choice but to implement it. In point of fact the County wanted to go further, cutting the number of mobile vehicles so there would not even be a spare but the IPS were able to get them to drop this.

So actually we are discussing here a restructuring of back office staff. You can read the proposals that the IPS made and the response from UNISON on Suffolk Unison's website (click on Suffolk Libraries on the menu on the left hand side)

Now I completely understand that it is the job of trade unions to support their members and my guess is they have quite a few of those amongst the already higher graded "central" staff of Suffolk libraries than they do in the front line branches.

Whilst the UNISON response makes some sensible points sadly it appears to consist largely of a what begins to look like a personal vendetta against General Manager Alison Wheeler. One of the most absurd of the anonymous comments is:

It's A***ea all over again!

Clearly a reference to Andrea Hill, former Suffolk County Council CEO.

These kind of references make the document lose all credibility and there are other dubious claims, for example UNISON suggest that:

There was considerable concern expressed about the proposed grading of the Personal Assistant to the General Manager. Staff felt it was not appropriate for this post to be a suggested Grade 5 when Library managers are only a Grade 4. 

Sounds dreadful, right? However if you look at the IPS proposal there is not a post that is just the PA to the General Manager but rather a PA and Office Manager post:

The PA/Office manager will have three main areas of duties. They will support the General Manager, they will be the clerk to the Board and they will be the supervisor of the admin staff who work in the IPS Headquarters.

The suggested grade by the way pays between 23K and 26K per year.

UNISON's consultation response and the corresponding news report seem a deliberate attempt to undermine the IPS and in my view will make the future of Suffolk's libraries less secure. Incredibly UNISON even include this comment about working with local community groups giving their own time free to help save their members jobs:

Staff wish to know who will be attending meetings with local community groups after hours. There is a need for reassurance that staff will not be expected to do this either in their own time or be forced to change their pattern of work to take on these tasks.

Perhaps the local groups should just pack up and find something else to spend their time on.

It was notable that the unions had a low profile during the library campaigns and somewhat strange that they appear more interested in attacking the IPS than they were the County Council.

Ideology is once again the enemy. Be it from the left or the right it is little different and pragmatists that want to see the library service continue need to resist it.

Ixworth Free School: The battle for book bags

Throughout the free school controversy in Suffolk there has been something of a battle over whether schools should send out leaflets on behalf of the free school groups or opponents.

In Stoke by Nayland an agreement was eventually made to allow both Seckford and the group that opposed the free school called Compass to distribute leaflets to parents.

In Thurston the position was more varied. Ixworth Middle sent out Seckford leaflets. Blackborne Middle and Beyton Middle leaflets from both Seckford and Suffolk Coalition Opposing Free Schools (SCOFS). The Primary Schools and Thurston Community College took the position not to send either leaflet out.

This led to the intervention of Matthew Hancock MP who put pressure of the County Council and local schools to send the Seckford leaflets out. The County Council advised they were powerless to force them to and the schools stuck to their guns and did not send any leaflets out.

But when the possible bid from the Diocese was announced last week the primary schools (who are mostly church schools) did send out the leaflet from the Diocesan Director of Education. This prompted immediate anger from members of the Ixworth Parent Group who backed the Seckford bid.

Here are a few of several comments they left on my Blog:

This seems unfair, I know the parent group (Seckford), have tried to engage in meetings with the primary feeder schools, asked them to distribute information and been turned away, and generally been given no access to distribute information at all, hence them standing on the street giving information out and attempting to blanket leaflet areas. This all seems really bizarre since now they are giving info out about the diocese bid, because Thurston has given it the nod to say they can!! It's all one sided, how can you make an informed decision when you do not have all the information, the Primary schools should be ashamed of themselves and I personally am quite upset that they think parents are not going to shout about this. Thurston, scarily appears to have a huge amount of dominance...

Why also are the primary schools sent the letter but Beyton Middle School parents havent been sent it nor i assume other middle schools. It is, after all, the middle school children caught up in this. 

However today it became clear that Ixworth Middle School have refused to send out the letter from the Diocese. Apparently their Governing Body (which contains several Parent Group members) voted not to send it.

Blackbourne Middle on the other hand not only sent out the letter but also a strong letter of support which is perhaps unsurprising as they are a church school.

It has also been reported that Ixworth Middle School have refused to send out an invitation to an open day for parents at Thurtston Community College which seems even more bizarre.

Given the strong views expressed here over the weekend that the primary schools were wrong not to send out Seckford leaflets I hope that the parent group members will now be asking Ixworth Middle School to send the Diocesan leaflet out. Perhaps Matthew Hancock will too.

After all how can you make an informed decision when you do not have all the information?

Cabinet Member Colin Noble dabbles in education

Colin Noble is the Suffolk County Council cabinet member responsible for adult social care (or as a Twitter follower of mine put it “closing council-owned Old Folks homes”). Last week however he hit the local headlines for something rather outside his brief. Education.

As the Newmarket Journal report  this all comes from his comments at a parish council meeting:

At last month’s Mildenhall Parish Council meeting Suffolk county councillor Colin Noble made it clear he was less than impressed by results achieved by pupils sitting both GCSEs and A-levels at the college. At last month’s Mildenhall Parish Council meeting Suffolk county councillor Colin Noble made it clear he was less than impressed by results achieved by pupils sitting both GCSEs and A-levels at the [Mildenhall] college.

What is strange about this is that results at Midlenhall College of Technology actually went up this year - 7% for GCSEs and 5% for A Levels.

Understandably Susan Byles, Head of Mildenhall College is not impressed by Noble’s remarks saying:

If Cllr Noble makes these sort of statements at council meetings he needs to have all the facts in place as, if not, it can create an impression that is not accurate,”

 I don’t really think he is the best person to be making statements about the college.

Colin Noble is actually the only member of the cabinet to be actively involved on Twitter and he also has his own Blog where he has written a post defending his actions:

As an elected County Councillor representing the residents in my division who predominately send their children to Mildenhall College I think I am representing my community in speaking about the exam results and the performance of the school. It’s performance is a regular feature in my post bag and thus I watch their results with great interest, As a cabinet member of the County Council I also see every performance league table comparing our entire Suffolk school system and comparisons with similar County result from across the country, all of which I read with equal great interest. I am in regular contact with its Governors and its head teacher Susan Byles, even if she does not think I should comment saying in the Mildenhall Journal “I don’t really think he is the best person to be making statements about the college” – If I am not well placed to make comment then I do wonder who is?

I take a keen interest in all the schools in my division and the secondary schools they feed. Equally my views take account of the improving performance, which is to be commented and I have and do but in the context of Suffolk’s other secondary schools, there is much room for improvement, indeed all of our schools could make improvements and I equally think that the county must support that improvement that’s why we have changed from three to two tier, that’s why we support the free school movement, that why we have established ‘Raising the Bar’ with the Royal Society of Arts, all initiatives to see our schools make the improvement we all want to see.

Noble is certainly entitled to his opinion as a local councillor and indeed resident but what concerns me is that it appears unclear if this is his personal view as a local councillor or the administration’s collective view. If it is the latter I would expect that Graham Newman as Education portfolio holder would be better placed to comment.

It does seem strange to me that a councillor who rightly says we should up our performance in Suffolk appears to criticise a school doing just that and improving its results. It does not seem very encouraging to me that a school doing better is effectively told that it still isn’t good enough.

What Susan Byles takes issue with is that anyone hearing his comments would assume the school was doing worse not better.

In fairness to Colin Noble I do think he has a right to an opinion but I do think he should be more careful to be clear who is is speaking on behalf of.

I’m quite sure Colin Noble genuinely wants to see Suffolk Schools do better and I applaud initiatives like Raising the Bar. Creating success clearly does need challenge to do better but it also needs encouragement and praise when schools are moving in the right direction. Sadly we seem to do better with the challenge than the praise.

Perhaps Colin may chose his words a little more carefully in the future. If you’ve increased the results in your school it isn’t that relevant or encouraging to be told that the average results across the county went down or aren't good enough.

Sir John Leman High launches free transport from Lowestoft

Tonight at a meting in the Hotel Victoria in Lowestoft Jeremy Rowe the Head of Sir John Leman High School in Beccles has launched the school’s free transport offering from Lowestoft. This will provide free home to school transport for pupils in the Lowestoft area wanting to attend Sir John Leman in Beccles.

Pupils already qualify for free transport provided by the County Council if they live inside the Sir John Leman catchment area but this does not include the Lowestoft area.

Jeremy Rowe explained that the school had been able to find savings elsewhere in its budget so the move would not affect money available for teaching staff. Other Suffolk Schools already do this such as Bungay High (who also have buses from Lowestoft) and Mildenhall College (from Brandon).

The move comes as the small growth in numbers at the Carlton Colville based Beccles Free School appears to be coming from Lowestoft schools rather than Sir John Leman.

Clearly the transport plan is in part a response to the Beccles Free School threat but also the new sixth form college in Lowestoft might affect sixth form numbers. Apparently the sixth form have been targeting Sir John Leman students.

This is certainly an understandable move by Sir John Leman but if Beccles Free School ever moves to Beccles it looks like the Beccles to Lowestoft road will be full of coaches taking children from Lowestoft to fill two Beccles schools. The impact will then move to Lowestoft which already has an oversupply of places since Pakefield High opened.