£93,000 for 866 school responses

CONSULTATION on Oldham’s plans to overhaul its secondary schools cost £93,000, the council has revealed.

But only 421 people returned questionnaires, 371 attended consultation events and 74 contacted the council by telephone, e-mail or letter.

However, Councillor Kay Knox, cabinet member for children, young people and families, said the response compared favourably with other local authorities.

She added: “What we in Oldham can be confident of is that we did a thorough job in giving people a range of opportunities and ways in which they could have their say.”

The consultation on the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) proposals to rebuild or refurbish Oldham’s high schools ran from September to November and was split into two sections.

The statutory part on the plans to replace five schools with three academies run by sponsors, amalgamate the two RC secondaries and extend Hathershaw School cost £45,016. This included brochures, leaflets and meetings.

Consultation on the full package saw around 36,000 information packs sent out at a cost of £48,071.

More than 63 per cent of respondents agreed there was a need to transform secondary education. Opposition to academies rose from 50 per cent to 78 per cent at the schools affected while support for the new Catholic school was 56 per cent.

Oldham will submit its BSF outline business case to the Government by the end of the month.

Councillor Knox added: “When we were elected in May we knew that the people of Oldham felt they did not know enough about BSF. We made a commitment to invest in ensuring that as many people as possible had the opportunity to find out more about the proposals and to have their say.

“The scale of our consultations was much larger that what would normally be the case but it needed to be because of the scale of the changes.”


LEGAL notices have been published this week to close Breeze Hill, Counthill, Grange, Kaskenmoor, and South Chadderton schools and replace them with three academies; close Our Lady’s and St Augustine’s and open a new RC High School; and extend Hathershaw.

People have six weeks to object or make comments by writing to Lynne Taylor, BSF school organisation worksteam lead, level 6, Civic Centre, West Street, Oldham, OL1 1XJ.