A Free Secondary School for Ingleby Barwick

[Frag]

Any MNers out there live in the Teesside or Ingleby Barwick areas and want to know more about the proposed Free Secondary School for Ingleby Barwick (IB)?

The government has recognised the need for more Secondary places there, and the BO2SS Free School bid has been put through to the Business Case stage.

BO2SS are looking for parents and people in the community to get more involved now, and are setting up Focus groups to discuss Admissions policy and Vision and Ethos of the school... any MNers from IB who want to have an input into this ??

For those not familiar with the background...
IB is a new "housing estate" in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees, now with about 20,000 people living there. It will be at least 25,000 by the time they have finished building in another 10 - 15 years.

At the moment there are approx 2200 primary aged children spread between 6 primary schools (yes, some have 90 children in each year group) but only 1 secondary school which can take 640 children. All the rest of the secondary aged children are bussed to other schools (no safe walking route to either and they are 3 - 5 miles away). There is a 5,000 letter petition from the local community to support the new school.

BO2SS is setting up a Free School as this is the only option currently available - years of working with the LA haven't resulted in any progress on a sensible policy for Secondary Schools.