Oasis Academy founder says he's not surprised by strike action at Sheppey school

KentOnline / KMTV

Steve Chalke has concerns about the calls for stricter exclusions as being at home might fuel further problems.  It comes as parents were planning to counter-protest outside the Sheppey school this morning.

Transcript

00:00 Well, we had been informed that this morning there was going to be a counter-protest by

00:04 parents over the teacher strikes we've been seeing at the Oasis Academy in Sheppey. However,

00:11 we got here at the time it said on the closed Facebook post no protesters were here. We

00:18 saw many students going into schools but no parents at all. There are two sites in the

00:24 Isle of Sheppey. I was at this one here. We had a reporter at the other site. Neither

00:29 of us saw any counter-protests. We've seen from the stories we've put up in the past

00:34 couple of weeks that some parents have said, well, the teachers should be going harder

00:40 on the pupils and they have a lack of experience. And we believe that is one of the reasons

00:45 why those protests were thought to have happened. But for one reason or another, no parents

00:51 have turned up to the school today. Students have already missed three days of school.

00:57 The National Education Union have been forming picket lines over the behaviour policy at

01:03 the schools. Today, classes are taking place but at previous strikes, teachers have been

01:09 claiming they're abused on an almost daily basis. The strikers are calling for fixed

01:14 term exclusions but a founder of the Oasis Academy says, well, it's not that simple.

01:21 So if you automatically send every child home, what are you sending them home to? That's

01:26 the big question. Where are they going and how are they being safeguarded at all? The

01:32 wider socioeconomic issues that were already on the island and are long standing and I

01:37 think working together. I'm not trying to excuse us, but I do want, I hope you know,

01:43 that I have given every ounce of energy I've got and that Oasis has to this. The trust

01:52 Oasis recognise for school has its problems and recognises the challenges with the amount

01:57 of vacancies and supply staff filling the gaps. Earlier this year, the school did receive

02:04 an inadequate Ofsted inspection. We've been aware of what's taking place in that school

02:10 for some time and we judged it inadequate. Recently, we also noted the work that the

02:17 head and teachers and others in the school are doing to start to try and turn around

02:21 the situation there. And we're really sorry that it's reached the stage that it has. That's

02:25 an extreme example, but across the country, some of the norms around the way that pupils

02:31 behave, again, we're lost in the pandemic and we see that in Kent too. So far, there

02:37 have been three strikes held by teachers of the NEU union. They're striking over the behaviour

02:44 at the Oasis Academy. Next week, they're set to be three consecutive days of strike action

02:50 by the teachers and that will see students off school between Tuesday and Thursday.

02:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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