They contacted us to speak to them. Not always fast to react, we fielded the message to Leila, and the mothers were later that afternoon recorded live talking to reporter Jonathan Savage, who had picked up on the story that Tidemill Academy will be charging parents £20 a day for a play scheme when the school shuts early before Christmas so that it can make the move into the new Deptford Lounge accommodation.
Listen again here. This blogger gets a headache listening to the Radio London evening news show, so advises you fast forward 6 minutes in for the 4 minute slot recorded in Deptford with Leila and Esther.... and to a quite good intro and pretty accurate synopsis from Jonathan Savage – go Jon!...
From the Tidemill ''calendar'' page:
ReplyDeleteTidemill takes a tough stance on both attendance and punctuality and has beaten the Lewisham and National averages for the past 5 years. We firmly believe that every day lost is a day that cannot be made up...
Let's remind ourselves that the school is taking 2 weeks to move 200 yards, not 200 miles. That teachers and support staff are being paid very handsomely for this removal work and they then get paid for the holidays afterwards. That parents don't.
This sounds like a candidate for a Freedom of Information request to establish quite how much public money was spent paying teachers, etc, to not teach but act as removals personnel. I have a hunch that paying removals professionals to move would have been a great deal easier on the public purse. And parents' purses.
Go for it
ReplyDeleteI suppose you think the teachers wanted to stay till 10.oclock at night heaving great big heavy crates around and damaging their backs in the process!!
ReplyDeleteMarmoset, Am sure removalists would have been able to pack all a classroom's resources and then unpack it into a new environment on there own. Sure everything done that way would have been much better,
ReplyDelete