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| Bury councillor quits Tory party over schools re-organization whip |
| February 18th, 2008 |
| Bury St Edmunds Councillor Paul Hopfensberger has resigned from the Conservative Party, saying he could no longer remain a member after the party's leaders enforced a "whip" on last year's the supposedly free vote on county education. |
| Hopfensberger told the Bury Free Press he could "no longer hold his head up" after the March 22, 2007 vote, in which Suffolk County Council voted 42-28 to scrap Middle Schools across Suffolk, replacing three-tier education with a system of large Primary and Secondary schools. |
| "I was told: 'You were elected as a Conservative councillor and you will vote for that'," Hopfesnberger said, quoted in the newspaper. |
| "I had my speech ready to abstain on the schools vote – but I was told 'if you don't vote for this you are not a Conservative and you won't get a seat next time'. I had to sit there, listen to all these people and press the yes button." |
| Council leader Jeremy Pembroke has denied his party enforced a whip on the vote, pushed through despite a huge campaign by Parents Against Change to dissuade the Council from wasting its money on the ill-researched and ill-advised reform. |
| Read the full Bury Free Press story here. |
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| Union says "lemmings" on Council are not listening |
| February 29th |
| The NUT has charged that Suffolk County Council is "not listening" to teachers' concerns about their proposed schools reorganization, in particular in the Lowestoft area, and is proceeding "lemming-like, |
| IInstead, "lemming-like" SCC continues "to push through in Lowestoft a disastrous plan that will disrupt every school in the areas affected, create staff redundancies, and land up with a system which will not even be capable of delivering what is required in 2011,” the union said in a press release. |
“Suffolk’s plans for schools in Lowestoft and perhaps in Haverhill will clearly not meet the needs of education in the 21st century. But it is not too late to amend them to make sensible adjustments which will,” said Martin Goold, County Secretary of the NUT for Suffolk. |
| The NUT said SCC's plans would cause disruption by closing Middle Schools, creating schools for 11-16-year-olds which would almost immediately be out of date, displacing staff, and creating a quite unnecessary sixth-form college in the Lowestoft area. |
| The union said it had repeatedly suggested an alternative based on bringing Middle Schools and Senior Schools under single management structures and planning properly for the government's proposed extension of compulsory schooling to the age of 18. |
| Click here for the NUT's full proposals. |