We, the undersigned, are opposed to the way in which the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) are managing Tendring Technology College (TTC) and are asking that the leadership and governance of TTC is removed from AET. We would like our local school, which we are deeply passionate about, to be re-brokered and to come out from under the leadership and management of AET. There are many reasons for this, some of which are listed below:

• The amount of money which AET are taking from TTC, plus the way in which finances are being managed is disgraceful. Using the government schools financial benchmarking website, it can be seen that in the academic year 2019/2020, AET took just over £2.25million from TTC’s budget. This is just over 20% of the school’s budget, which is allocated to the children of this school for this time. Whilst some of this money is used for central services which are crucial to the running of the school, we are horrified that this amount of money is being stripped from the school and the students. We fail to see how this money has been used to benefit the school, especially in a time of restructuring, redundancies and national crisis. AET have taken so much money from TTC that it is no longer able to function to the best of its abilities or provide the level of staffing to keep our children safe. In their letter to parents on 20th May 2021, AET claimed that the amount taken from each child’s funding at TTC was £575. However, by doing the simple maths of dividing the total amount taken from TTC by AET (which is £2.25m, using the benchmarking website mentioned above) and dividing it by the total number of students at TTC (which is 1800), it is clear to see that did indeed take £1250 per student last academic year. This is not acceptable and is an unethical use of money which has been allocated to the education of these students in this school for this time.

• Following on from the shocking figures above, AET are constantly insisting upon cuts to the number of staff being employed at TTC. It is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to offer the pastoral care and support that our young people so desperately need and which the staff at TTC are longing to offer. Cuts to the number of teaching staff and support staff mean that subject specialists are no longer able to teach their subjects as they are having to teach other subjects in order to make up for a shortfall of teaching staff. Support staff roles and pastoral support workers are being cut and this is therefore resulting in less pastoral care for our children and young people.

• Also from the letter dated 20th May, AET cited that TTC, “is significantly overstaffed at senior management level in comparison to other schools, both within AET and nationally.” Using Ofsted reports and school websites, it is easy to find out the number of senior leaders and students on roll at other schools and this shows that this statement from AET is completely false. Clacton Coastal Academy (AET) has 118 students per senior leader. New Rickstones Academy (AET) has 160 students per senior leader. Clacton County High School (Sigma) has 165 students per senior leader and TTC (AET) has 164 students per senior leader. These figures show that TTC’s senior leadership team is fully in line with other schools but if AET continue with their proposed cuts to the senior leadership team, TTC could well have up to 264 students per senior leader. This will result in the senior leaders having much less capability to be on-call for supporting teachers with behaviour, pastoral care or in being able to lead the aspects of the school which they are responsible for.

• Services such as HR, finance and site management are being centralised. This is resulting in simple tasks and administration queries taking much longer to be resolved as they are no longer dealt with in-house, and in students reporting that the school site is not as clean as it previously was because cleaners and site managers are having to work across several sites and not able to quickly deal with simple issues.

• AET are pushing for TTC sixth form to merge in some ways with Clacton Coastal Academy’s (CCA) sixth form. Whilst we agree that sharing best-practice and resources is an effective and powerful tool, trying to merge aspects of these two schools is not viable or an option that we want for our children and young people. Whilst our two localities are close on a map, what our communities need and the context of these two areas are vastly different. Spending time travelling to and from Clacton is not the best use of our students’ learning time when we already have a fantastic sixth form here. TTC and CCA are very different schools and whilst we celebrate these differences, we are not happy with AET trying to merge the schools in various ways. The pastoral needs and contextual differences between these two schools will make this an unsuccessful merge and one that we simply do not want.

• Our local school is more than just a centre for learning; it is a core part of our community and one that we will fight to protect. Since AET took over the management of TTC, standards have consistently fallen and staff and student morale has continued to decrease. By continually stripping the funds from TTC and imposing a barrage of routines and expectations that are not contextually right for our school, AET have shown time and again that they are not acting in the best interests of TTC, its students, its staff and our local community. Shortly after TTC joined AET, it was rated by Ofsted as Outstanding (2013). It has since been inspected in 2016 and was rated as Good and again in 2019, where the opening statement of the report states that, “Tendring Technology College continues to be a good school. However, inspectors have some concerns that standards may be declining...” This shows that AET’s leadership has resulted in a decline in standards and that they do not provide TTC with the leadership or services that will benefit; in fact, it has had a detrimental impact on the school. Not only this, but AET have stopped TTC from using local suppliers for their catering, food, site services such as electricians and many more. As mentioned above, TTC is a core part of this community. In this community, we believe in working with other people and businesses, reducing our carbon footprint and using local produce and services wherever possible. AET do not appear to share this same view and insist on centralising all aspects of our school, removing the community aspect from our very core.

• There is a clear culture of fear within the staff at the school and staff are afraid to speak out against the immoral and unethical actions of leaders within AET. They have seen people speak out and challenge AET and then lose their jobs and this culture of fear is having an impact on their mental wellbeing. As members of this community, we are angry and are standing against seeing our friends, family and loved ones suffer with poor mental health due to the mismanagement and bullying tactics of leaders with AET. The way in which AET have responded to the staff and their proposed strike actions in recent days has been diabolical and has reduced dedicated, committed, professional individuals to tears. The impact of AET’s actions and words on the staff’s mental health in recent days has been shocking and we no longer stand for this. As a society in general, we are encouraged to speak out against injustice and bullying and we now do the same for the members of our community who are working so hard to provide the best possible education for our children and young people. We teach our children to stand up for what they believe is right and to fight injustice; we as a community no longer stand for this kind of negative behaviour from those who are trusted with taking care of our schools and the staff who work there and we feel that this has gone on for long enough. Families have been destroyed by the actions and poor decision making from AET and we do not want to see one more person’s mental and physical health damaged by this behaviour.

• We would like to make it very clear that we support TTC and its staff. We have no problem with their actions or the way in which they would like to lead the school; we have seen their passion for our young people and the care and dedication that they have for this school and we now stand with them in solidarity.

• In conclusion, we, the parents and members of the local community, strongly feel that AET are no longer acting in the best interests of TTC and its students. We are petitioning for TTC to be released from the leadership of AET.

We support our sister petition running alongside our campaign...PLEASE SIGN AND SUPPORT BOTH: https://www.change.org/p/giles-watling-mp-stop-aet-destroying-our-school-9e48b921-3017-4303-a3ee-b4697c258ff8?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&recruited_by_id=0c5317c0-baf8-11eb-910b-357f6cff3ef6&utm_content=fht-28977579-en-gb%3A6