CROYDON IN CRISIS: The fee-paying girls’ school in Old Town has been shortlisted for a prize at a national awards event to be staged at a 5-star hotel where tickets cost £245 per head. By GENE BRODIE, education correspondent
With little more than a month before it is due to close its gates for the final time after 136 years, Old Palace School is up for an award.
Prize time: Old Palace is shortlisted for one of 23 prizes to be dished out on the night
The girls’ fee-paying independent school is to close at the end of the summer term, after the controversial decision taken by its owners, the Whitgift Foundation.
Yet at the Times Education Supplement Schools Awards, due to be presented at a glitzy ceremony in a plush 5-star hotel on London’s Park Lane on June 20, Old Palace has been short-listed in the category of “Staff Wellbeing School of the Year”. Trebles all-round!
Yes, that’s right. A school which is making all of what’s left of its teaching staff redundant is receiving plaudits for “wellbeing”, however that might be judged…
As one loyal Inside Croydon reader noted: “I thought it was some kind of bizarre, sick joke when I first saw it.
“So making people redundant due to financial mismanagement is now good for staff wellbeing?” the reader asked, quizzically. “Only in Croydon, I suppose.”
According to a release on the Old Palace School website, “The Tes Schools Awards recognise the very best teachers and schools from UK state and independent schools, across early years settings, primary and secondary.”
Tough gig: Andrew Christie took over at Old Palace for its final year
And according to Jon Severs, TES‘s editor, “The TES Schools Awards are a highlight of the year, and it’s important that we properly recognise the fantastic work that’s been done in education across the academic year.”
Insiders at the £20,000 per year Old Palace School suggest that the shortlisting is the result of the school having submitted an entry, to reflect the difficult pastoral work done in the past year by Andrew Christie, brought in as a one-year stop-gap headteacher to preside over the trauma and turmoil caused by the closure, following the early retirement of Jane Burton.
And even if Christie leaves the awards evening empty-handed, having the shortlisted status at the TES awards on his CV will do him no harm whatsoever when it comes to seeking a new position following Old Palace’s closure.
Attending the awards dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel in Mayfair – a bit of a money-spinner for the TES magazine publishers – doesn’t come cheap.
The standard ticket price is a snip at £245 per person. But don’t panic, the organisers are offering a generous discount of a mere £1,386 for a whole table, usual price £2,200… With schools and teaching staff nominated across 23 different award categories, there may be plenty of takers, although probably not many of them impoverished teachers working in the state sector if they have to fork out for their own rubber-chicken dinner.
Shortlist: just weeks before the school is being closed
There are other notable south London schools on the shortlists. Sutton High, another local independent girls’ school, is among eight in the reckoning for independent senior school of the year.
Fiona Robinson (Bensham Manor) and Melissa Hendry (Red Gates School) are both in the running for the mouthful that is “Specialist Provision School Leader of the Year”. Somewhat oddly, both these Croydon state schools are listed by the organisers as being in “Surrey”.
And the Harris Federation, the Croydon-based multi-school academy chain, is shortlisted for “Trust Team of the Year – 10 or more schools”. Harris is in dispute with its teaching staff over widescale redundancies. Perhaps TES didn’t get the memo?
So if Old Palace does emerge from this process with a trophy, it will surely be bittersweet ahead of the school’s closure as a victim of the Whitgift Foundation’s £1billion property gamble with Westfield and the Whitgift Centre shopping mall.
Old Palace’s prep and primary school on Melville Avenue closed last summer, and the Whitgift Foundation has already sold that site and is close to securing the sale of much of the Old Town site to an operator of special schools.
Read more: Old Palace head announced retirement days before new term
Read more: Foundation abandoned new school plan after taking £70m loan
Read more: Falling rolls and rising fees: how Old Palace got squeezed
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TES was bought out by a US private equity firm in 2018 who clearly are using their acquisition to raise funds through this awards scam!