Andrew Dismore

Dear editor,

Your report ( Mayor receives tour of new school site, 31/10/13) of the Mayor Melvin Cohen’s  visit to the  building site of Millbrook Park primary  school on the former Mill Hill  Inglis Barracks would be of even greater interest if you had been able to report who will be running  the school when it opens next year,  a small  detail which remains  shrouded in mystery.

On 25^th February, Conservative   Barnet  Council’s Cabinet put forward the private company. E-ACT as the preferred provider of the school. They clearly did no background checks on E-ACT, as in May the Education Funding Agency reported  E-ACT to have awarded extravagant salaries, excessive and unjustifiable expenses, huge profits out of school funds elsewhere and an utter lack of financial controls, issuing them with a formal notice over their string of “weaknesses”.

As a result, I understand the Council, quietly and unannounced, dropped E-ACT – but have so far failed to say what or who is being put in charge instead.

On 11th July, I wrote to the Leader of the Council about this, and have yet to receive  a reply. And on 17^th September, I met the Council Chief Executive and raised the same questions with him: I am still waiting for the answer he promised me, too.

It is high time the Council stopped its dithering about with private companies in our schools. Barnet Conservatives should stop pandering to the latest gimmicks advanced by Education Secretary Michael Gove. Barnet should provide a normal primary school at Millbook Park with normal LEA funding arrangements and normal management controls, so that the children and their parents can have confidence in a good well run school, based on educational attainment and not private profit.

yours sincerely

Andrew Dismore

Labour London Assembly member and parliamentary candidate for Hendon