Russell Education Trust/Russell Group Universities

I honestly think that parents should look long and hard at sixth form provision in Cambridge (for example). Hills Road produces the kind of academic results to satisfy any aspiring parent (and pupil), whilst Long Road is less academic, but also produces good results. The local regional college runs the kind of vocational courses one would expect, whilst a new university technical college looks as though it will plug a need for high-quality science and hi-tech 14-19 education. I don't think that kind of range of provision could be provided by individual school sixth forms.

daphnedill I think you have analysed the sixth form problem correctly - amazing how popular they are though. The Catholic school was also a manifesto commitment but one that generated as much opposition as support (the inclusive ('anti-Catholic') school campaign inspired the free school proposal supported by RET, but still didn't secure the site).

Shooting the private schools are too successful in the LA to want/need state funding and want to preserve their selective status. But you are right that if RET hadn't supported the proposal, and in the absence of a plan by the council (which was announced later), another altogether more aggressively profit-driven operator may have put in a bid. And that seems to be happening at primary level.

I mistook it for this one:

www.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/137487 (You'll have to click on the link to the report, because I can't link directly.)

Interestingly, the Section 8 report states that it was the LA and partnership with other schools which was responsible for the subsequent improvement.

Thank you for the link.

I just wanted to clarify that you didn't mean another free school in Bradford:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24677371

www.bggs.com

Daphne www.bggs.com Also a former Direct Grant.

Which school in Bradford do you mean?

The secondary school I attended as a teenager was direct grant, then fully independent, then became a state-funded academy.

The word was that it needed the money for capital refurbishment and the move wasn't popular with many of the parents of existing pupils. Since "academisation" the results have gone down. Only time will tell whether it will be distinguishable from any of the other secondary schools in the area.

Nationally, there are a number of former direct grant and grammar schools, which became comprehensives and are still trading on their history, but are actually struggling. Some of the better comps are former secondary moderns. In the end the results depend to a great extent on the intake.

Mumble grumble mumble...if I had my way, I'd abolish all faith schools. They seriously complicate admissions and I bet everybody knows of at least one person whose devotion got forgotten once his/her dc secured a place at a "good" faith school. I've taught plenty of Catholic Poles in secular schools and they were perfectly happy.

As for school sixth forms...the borough is nuts! There are only three sixth forms which could sustain a full range of post 16 courses. If they do indeed attract the better teachers, the difference between the higher and lower achieving schools will become even greater. None of them will be able to run courses such as Latin or German, which attract very small numbers. You will probably also find that pupils are pushed on to A level courses which aren't appropriate, just to push up the numbers.

My local comp's PAN is 290 and it has a sixth form of nearly 600. The size of the sixth form means that it has a huge range of courses and is one of the most successful non-selective sixth forms in the country. However, it loses pupils to local further ed colleges, so has to attract pupils from surrounding schools, whose sixth forms are now struggling. Richmond doesn't have any schools anywhere near the size of my local comp and only has one school which achieves similar (in 2012 the same) GCSE results.

What a mess!!:-(

(Anyway, I've strayed. Sorry!)

straggle we could, and have debated this for hours, but the crux of the Catholic case, as well as travelling times (though it is hard to imagine any member of the Catholic community deciding not to send their boys on the long journey to Oratory given the opportunity) was always that increased demand in the Catholic Schools in West London, particularly arising from demand from the Polish community in Ealing, would lead to pressure on places in schools that traditionally served Richmond's Catholic community. However the Dioceses Head of Education maintained there would be enough places in those schools for at least the next five years. Hence the case being that there was a desire for a Catholic School, not a need.

straggle For what it is worth this is the background on school place forecasting www.richmondinclusiveschools.org.uk/files/view/risc-briefing-on-richmond-s-secondary-school-plans/RISC_BRIEFING_ON_RICHMOND'S_SECONDARY_SCHOOL_PLANS_-_28_Dec_2012.pdf The Council have yet to update their forecasts in the light of developments in relation to their assumptions. The proposal for The College site is proceeding and was always, even in the Council forecasts, in addition to a new Free School coming from another source, whether it was Turing, or another proposer such as The Maharishi School which made a bid last year with an interesting campaign to attract demand..... However it is a complex proposal involving the College and Haymarket and has many Planning as well as funding hurdles to clear. By 2018 the secondary transfer cohort will be 600 pupils larger than it was this year. The neighbouring borough of Hounslow which accounts for the highest proportion of out of borough students in borough schools will increase by 40 %.

However as I posted earlier all of this has been more than fully aired locally, and is covered on the RISC website, and we are where we are, not least getting into the pre election silly games season. As I said before the main point our experience highlights is the diversity both in the local environment and the Free School proposers. There may be problems of process and implementation, the debacles rightly get a lot of publicity, and the odditys, but we don't hear about the schools that are quietly succeeding because they don't make good newsprint. Regardless of the challenges they face with a non selective intake and meeting OFSTED standards it would certainly solve Richmond's problems if a fully formed independent school were to become a Free School as happened in Bradford, as a result of there not being enough parents with the funds to pay. That ain't going to happen, venture capitalists are actually setting up new independent schools in the borough in anticipation of increasing demand.

I think it's a net importer but wouldn't be if the percentage attending private schools weren't so high (40% at secondary level). See here page 80.

But a big destination of exports was to Catholic schools in nearby Hounslow, as well as to more selective ones in inner London. That was one rationale for the Catholic school but debatable as Hounslow isn't far away.

"how many out-of-borough pupils does Richmond have?"

Lots. It's a long thin borough, split into 2 halves by the River Thames, and some of its schools are very near to the borders. (An assumed future reduction in cross-border transfers was one of the aspects of the council forecasts that was disputed).

Personally I think London Boroughs should work together on school place planning. Many of the children who cross over from other boroughs have parents who work here anyway, but can't afford the housing here, and often those families live closer to the schools than the borough residents (one of the schools near the border is on the out-borough side of a very busy road which is a physical and psychological barrier to some).

Many children cross the border in the other direction too, to the extent that I can't remember if we're a net-importer or net-exporter. There are figures online, so if you really want to see them let me know and I'll dig out the reference.

"My guess is that it has to provide more sixth form places as a result of the raising of the school leaving age"

That's part of the story, although the college has always had more places than are needed by local families. It caters for other London boroughs too, and many hundreds of students arrive by train every day (sometimes leading to negative stories in the local press which haven't helped the college's profile in the local community).

The sixth forms were wanted by local parents, and the high performing local secondaries have long argued that with sixth forms they would be able to attract and retain staff who wanted to develop their careers into sixth form teaching. The previous council administration were against the change, but the current one had it as an election pledge.

"Why is the borough so keen to establish a Catholic school?"

That's a long story, that's been discussed at length over a period of nearly 3 years on the local Mumsnet site, as mentioned by shooting. There's also a potted history here with lots of links to external material.

Why is the borough so keen to establish a Catholic school? Seems odd.

My guess is that it has to provide more sixth form places as a result of the raising of the school leaving age. If I were in charge, I would have set up a high quality vocational college, university technical college or even a 14-19 studio school.

As a matter of interest, how many out-of-borough pupils does Richmond have? I could imagine that it attracts Kingston 11+ failures and pupils from neighbouring authorities with worse-performing schools than Richmond. If that's the case, I can understand Richmond's reluctance to provide places for other authorities. That's what's happening in Bishops Stortford, where there are enough secondary places, but many of them are filled by Essex pupils, which means that mid-year applications to any of the Bishops Stortford schools are unsuccessful. Hertfordshire's response has always been that it's not going to build a new school for another authority's children.

The Kingston secondary proposal has been on-off for years but may affect a couple of Richmond schools (if successful), so pupil numbers aren't easily predictable.

"and establishing sixth forms in schools in all the borough's secondary schools"

This policy has been very popular with parents, but was politically controversial because of the effect it would have on the local sixth-form college (outstanding, but very large, and considered by some to have grown too large, with many families opting for colleges or sixth forms in neighbouring boroughs instead).

The college will continue, but it will be smaller, and the council have plans for use of its spare capacity, including another new secondary free school for 2017 (yes, another one will be needed by then ... the bulge is that big). The school will have some input from another local school which has recently been approved as an academy sponsor, as well as LA and business sponsors, so is along the lines daphnedill suggests. However, it has taken time for that sort of model to be recognised as an option (following the experience in neighbouring Kingston, which is being used as a model).

The girls' school is acting as a sponsor for a primary that went into special measures, so the LA would be aware of that route too.

Richmond LA has proposed a new secondary free school to open 2017, although I don't know exactly how they are involved in the proposed trust - there is a local employer involved too. And they have a site for that, which RET doesn't yet have. They didn't want a mainstream school to be set up too early, before the academies were full. They have in the meantime suggested an admissions point for RET next to the girls' school, because there are boys in that specific area without a school and girls on the edge of catchment for the successful co-ed schools.

daphne That would not have happened here because the LA were preoccupied with two strategic priorities, establishing an exclusive Catholic School in the borough by giving the Catholic Church an old school site that became available, and establishing sixth forms in schools in all the borough's secondary schools. They could only justify giving away the school site if they could demonstrate that the site was not needed for an inclusive community school.

Nobody will know for years whether the experiment has been successful.

Another way a free school could have been established would have been for an existing outstanding school setting to set up a trust, which is what has happened with two new schools (one a special school) near me. The advantages with both new schools are that no money has been taken by external organisations and the new schools have retained all control over governance, procurement and staffing. They have been led from the beginning by people who know the area well and the needs of all stakeholders have been integrated.

The public accounts committee may address the question of how sponsors are chosen, in general, and what they are for. Labour sponsors included Carphone Warehouse (and chains such as E-ACT or the Priory Federation that have been found guilty of financial mismanagement). You'd think a school improvement specialist would be a more logical sponsor for restarting failing schools. Gove is still forcing academy status on schools by handing them to chains that his own department has criticised.

But as W&G has pointed out, the most improved schools in the country were London local authority schools which could use the expertise of a variety of consultants in a targeted way. They didn't need to become academies at all.

"RET may be more successful."
I think they have the credentials to be very successful. The Ofsted report for their Bristol school was certainly the best of all the 2011 secondary free school openers. The 2012 openers will be starting to have their inspections soon, so the Brentwood school is one to watch.

"why didn't RET put themselves forward earlier"
That's obviously a question for them, not me. EL was certainly supporting academies on a consultancy basis through that time, and I expect they would have developed into an academy sponsor over time. RET are an approved academy sponsor now.

But it is a complex situation when parents have supported a free school as an alternative to academies run by a Swedish for-profit free school operator! There is a wider problem in terms of weaknesses in the sponsored academy programme as started by Labour and subverted by the Coalition as a means of marketising the whole system. There were many criticisms in the Academies Commission Report of how sponsors have been chosen ('beauty parade'), how consultations are run, the lack of freedoms for schools in an academy chain. Free schools are another layer - an experimental conduit for new operators to emerge. Two have been utter failures so far. RET may be more successful.

I have a question though - why didn't RET put itself forward earlier (under Labour) as an academy sponsor?

Sorry wriggling cross posted.

Wasn't wanting to go into that level of detail but I agree with all that has been written, and it is worth emphasising that in the last admissions round the school was almost oversubscribed at initial allocations. It's numbers are already on the up even before new building / new Head etc.