Council Leader Defends School Decision

Cllr Howard Sykes in his office at Oldham Civic Centre yesterday.

The leader of Oldham Council has defended the government’s decision to scale back its school-building programme, which included the scrapping of the planned new Saddleworth School. Cllr Howard Sykes also admitted to Saddleworth News that it was “not the best news” for our area, adding that firm details on the future of school funding wouldn’t become clear until after the Whitehall spending review this autumn.

Cllr Sykes leads a new Liberal Democrat/Conservative administration in Oldham, while at Westminster it’s the Conservatives who are the senior coalition partners. Saddleworth School was due to be rebuilt on a new site in Diggle under the Building Schools for the Future initiative, but the programme has fallen victim to government cuts. Cllr Sykes said the coalition had no choice, “The government’s had to do what it had to do because it hasn’t got the money.”

He went on: “Obviously what we need to do is work together to try to provide the best education we can for our pupils, it was one of the things that motivated me to get involved in politics… Saddleworth’s a good school producing good results and let’s not forget that.”

When I asked Cllr Sykes about whether money would be available to properly maintain the current Saddleworth School buildings, which have been described as inadequate by some parents, he said: “You’re asking questions that you’d need to ask to a government minister. The honest answer is I don’t know, and nobody does at the moment.”

Saddleworth School, along with St Chad’s C of E Primary School in Uppermill, have both expressed an interest in becoming so-called academy schools, which would take them out of council control, giving headteachers much more power over how their schools are run. Cllr Sykes said he was “relaxed” about the prospect of schools becoming academies, adding: “I think there’ll come a point with a significant number of secondary schools in particular not in the system… I think most of them will go down that route.”

However Cllr Sykes expressed concern about the potential effect on school admissions. He said he didn’t want to see schools, “creaming off or competing one against the other, because somebody will lose on that scenario, if we haven’t got some kind of broad agreement about criteria and admissions.”

On a more general point about the relationship between Oldham Council and Saddleworth, Cllr Sykes said: “I think we’ve done a lot, in terms of the biggest cultural festival that’s just happened in this borough (this year’s Whit Friday contests)… and I’m keen that we build on the success of doing that.”

Although widely regarded as a success, the tragic death of a man who was hit by a bus at Greenfield somewhat overshadowed the contests. Cllr Sykes said meetings with organisers and other bodies had already begun to see what improvements could be made for next year. He added: “Some of it is accepting that if you put that many people into a small area there needs to be a bit of give and take and what’s our approach to that in terms of risk, because you are dealing with peoples’ safety. That’s a responsibility of ours and it’s a responsibility of the police as well.”

I interviewed Cllr Sykes in his office at Oldham Civic Centre yesterday. To hear the part of the interview in which Cllr Sykes discusses Whit Friday and schools, download it from here.

We went on to talk about other issues including roads in Saddleworth, lessons to be learned from last winter, the future of Crompton Moor and the potential impact of the Tesco at Greenfield. I’ll post parts two and three of the interview later this week.

Author: Jude Gidney - Editor

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