Russell Education Trust/Russell Group Universities

Daphne are you still assuming this is a project aimed at setting up a school that will somehow, be it by means of geographical or faith or gender selection, predominantly serve the middle classes whilst elsewhere in the borough everyone is forced into "sink" schools that no one wants to go to for reasons of, what is effectively social segregation? I have already highlighted that one of the Borough's outstanding comprehensives, one of the schools Turing seeks to model itself on, is right in the middle of one of the borough's areas of greatest social deprivation. It is, like the other outstanding comprehensives, oversubscribed. The success of the initiatives taken to improve London schools have gone a long way to unhook that outstanding / middle class connection. There are now no secondary schools in the borough that could be described as "sink" schools, they are either outstanding or in the process of improvement, having been given the leadership and investment needed. The Council and community expect those will become oversubscribed, it is really just a matter of when, not if. The sheer size of the pupil bulge means we need at least two new secondaries by 2016 at the latest, the question is just how quickly increased quality persuades families to stay in the area / not to go private and further increases demand.

Turing Houses catchment is not determined by any sort of attempt at social segregation. Admissions will be determined by distance from a point that is midway between schools that are (very heavily) oversubscribed or on the verge of being oversubscribed, where the area that will not be served by any school at all will emerge.

"Will this school truly benefit the pupils who will still have to go to the sink school?"

It's not a sink school. It's a school that was allowed to consistently underperform for many years. It takes a lot of time, effort and money to turn something like that around. The whole community are willing that to happen.

With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to reflect on what might have been if the LA had participated in the London Challenge, like other London Boroughs that have shown significant improvements in similar schools. Instead they chose to transform it into an academy, sponsored by a Swedish group with an innovative approach to education (very successful, but certainly not mainstream in their home country where they have some very small but popular schools, that people can opt into if they think that model will suit their child).

The sponsor had no record of school improvement, so the initiative was experimental to say the least. Nevertheless, the community has been very supportive on the whole, and you will find very little criticism online because people are willing the experiment to be successful.

The school's most recent open evening (the first in their striking new building) attracted huge crowds, the Head gave an inspiring speech, and many people who would never have previously considered the school were talking very positively about it in the playground over the following weeks.

I expect there will be a sharp rise in their application numbers for 2014, and they could easily be full in September. Unfortunately, their recent Ofsted report wasn't nearly as positive as people hoped, but it was still a dramatic improvement on its previous report, and with a new Head on its way there is still every reason to assume it is on an upwards trajectory.

There is certainly no reason to assume that people who liked what they saw at the open evening will automatically switch preference to a new free school in temporary accommodation, with no track record in preference to their original choice.

The fact remains that there are more than enough children in the area to fill all the existing schools and the new one, provided parents have confidence in the education they will receive. Forcing people into schools they don't like is not the answer, especially in an area where people are extremely mobile and will move house at the drop of a hat rather than risk their child's education on something they're nervous about.

There is no substitute for solid school-improvement initiatives, and the school in question will continue to benefit from intensive support until it is as good as its neighbouring schools. There is no reason why it shouldn't be.

Daphne what sink school?

Anybody who takes public money has to be able to stand the heat!

This thread is about RET and it just so happens that somebody closely involved with the Turing House bid has contributed to the thread and, in the absence of an actual RET director, has chosen to defend the organisation.

Education will always be political. It involves finance, issues of democracy and most importantly what people want out of life.

National government HAS taken the initiative and local government's hands are tied. Will this school truly benefit the pupils who will still have to go to the sink school?

Well this debate long ago strayed from the original OP and I could provide links to Council minutes and webcams that provide evidence of the issues, alongside the aforementioned near 5000 posts on the local site that reflect the local frustration, not to mention the column inches in the local press and lots of evidence here www.richmondinclusiveschools.org.uk/latest-news/ but that has all been more than thoroughly aired and we are where we are.

However the real point is that local situations are rarely as cut and dried as those who wish to criticise national policies would wish them to be. The people proposing Turing House were not making political points, indeed they have worked closely with the Council. They have sought to address a need in the best way they could given the current environment, which is why I find it unacceptable that they come in for criticism that so far no one has, as your rightly point out straggle, provided any evidence to support. They are blind it seems to the possibility that they may actually be doing their best as responsible members of civil society, in a situation where local and national government can't or won't take the initiative.

I think daphnedill is right to have stuck to the topic. Shooting refers to a few different issues over several years, under the responsibility of different administrations and different education directors. It is a small LA that tends to react at the last minute to changes in government policy and occasionally has a pet project. There's no more a conspiracy to deny school places or otherwise force parents to accept crap choices than there are signs of any criminal activity by RET.

Oh, and as others have highlighted the LA did facilitate the opening of a new school this September, in the teeth of Judicial Review, sidestepping the Free School process on the basis they had never said (the robustness of their forecasts were not the subject of the legal point) a new school was needed, and so could proceed with the establishment of an exclusive Catholic School that was "desired" .......

That officer should be named and shamed and held to account
appalling
but I bet his list of paid for lunch meetings would make interesting reading - a few FOI requests might not go amiss

The point remains how do parents create the new schools they need?

I really couldn't have less time for Gove and all his dogma. I wish he and all politicians would leave education to the professionals.

However how do the parents in a community faced with the prospect of not just no choice of school, but no school places, make sure they get the schools they want for their children?

Talkin How they do it is they plan to 0% spare capacity (yes, against the NAO guidelines of 4%). So they underestimate demand by quite some margin, leaving hundreds of parents with no place at initial allocation, and then manage down demand by offering places in unpopular inaccessible schools (expecting one local family to undertake a 40 minute walk busride in each direction with a 4 year old and toddlers) or procrastinating about offering bulge classes. They can rely on a good proportion of the parents without school places or offered places that are logistically impossible to access to go away. And when parents get up in arms, write to MPs, the local paper etc. they plead unexpected influxes of new families to an area, less surprisingly going private in a recession etc. etc. except that those excuses have been trotted out year after year for 17 years to my knowledge and in earlier years they were actually quite open about the fact that initial demand could be relied on to subside. The Education Officer is proud of the fact he fills every last primary school place, with scant regard for the parents left with no school places until well into the Reception year as a result.......

results from the Council's long term strategy of deterring demand rather than create sufficient capacity, by consistently underproviding and making parents feel forced to move away or go private, a strategy incidentally that was actually made explicit in Council reports 15 years ago.

really?
because that is such a catastrophic breach of their legal duties you could probabl call a judicial review on the issue
BUT
remember that since 2010, LEAs have been blocked from opening new schools - and round here been given grief when academies they fought against went into melt down

London's LEAs have been too small to be sustainable since ILEA was abolished
interesting that a lot of the data is now held on the London Grid for Learning site - full circle

Talking Peace it matters not a bit whether parents object to Free Schools or agree with them, for a community like ours with a clear proven need it is the only way that we can get a school to provide for a Year 7 pupil population that will increase 17% by 2017. We have three outstanding comprehensives within a mile and a half radius that each have over a 1000 parents making their 250 places first preference. There is also the pent up latent demand that results from the Council's long term strategy of deterring demand rather than create sufficient capacity, by consistently underproviding and making parents feel forced to move away or go private, a strategy incidentally that was actually made explicit in Council reports 15 years ago. If the proportion going private at 11 were to become just the average of the ten most affluent boroughs (and it isn't one of the five most affluent) it would mean that two new 150 place secondaries would be needed.

Turing House's proposal is for the sort of school the local community want, inclusive, co ed and not bound by any educational dogma, not, as the LA have delivered, academies sponsored by a Scandinavian organisation that uses it's own idiosyncratic educational approach or an exclusive Catholic School that was just gifted the site of the former community school that served the area in the past. As I previously said the catchment has been devised with the Council to serve an area that will very soon cease to be served by any school, not to serve the needs of any individual families. I am quite sure that in creating a school rooted in community need it will indeed long survive any individual's involvement, just like the other outstanding comprehensives do.

As wriggling said how else do we go about creating excellent schools for generations of children to come in our community?

"they should be open to ALL children, not just those connected to steering groups..."

They are. They have to adhere to the same admissions code as other schools. They can prioritise children of founders. Not all do, but where they have I think objective people have acknowledged it was well earned.

"those of you involved in setting up such schools, will you still be there in 15 years"

Will the Governors of the LA-run schools still be there in 15 years? What about the LA education officers? No, they will move on and be replaced as part of normal succession planning, as they would be in any well run organisation.

"will you adapt your criteria to fit?"

The admissions criteria will evolve appropriately in consultation with the LA and local people, as they do for other local academies.

That's a strawman argument, shooting. Just because other organisations are even worse doesn't make the one which has been chosen good. If it were up to me, I'd abolish organisations such as GEMs and chains' ability to control schools...but I'm not in a position to do so.

This thread started about Russell Education Trust and I've generally stuck to the topic. I could go on and on about the mistakes in education and the waste of billions of pounds over the last forty or so years on countless new initiatives, but this isn't the place to do so.

Shooting
I am against Free schools.
Labour were effing stupid to force LEAs to sell of empty buildings just as city populations started to rise again.
Schools should only be opened after an assessment of need on an area wide basis
and they should be open to ALL children, not just those connected to steering groups

I am also against Sponsored Academies
I have posted extensively about the car crash that is my local one

those of you involved in setting up such schools, will you still be there in 15 years when the demographic of the area has changed outside your control?
will you adapt your criteria to fit?

Talking Peace What was the implication in posting the Turing House steering group? A list of people who I know to be working hard on behalf of the community together with their advisers (and I am certainly not someone who takes all at face value since with a background in public sector planning, and indeed preparing select committee submissions, working with government and the NAO, I was very much involved in analysing and highlighting the dodgy assumptions used in school place forecasts the LA used to justify actions that were fundamentally driven by politics and vested interests, and questioning them publicly, in front of Council Cabinet, the impotence of that process shows just how accountable Council Leaders and Officials are) . If there was any derogatory implication then this is looking more and more like a witchhunt since you have absolutely no reason to impugn the motivation and reputations of the people involved.

How about acknowledging that however the process may be vulnerable to being manipulated / exploited, and in need of improvement, in this case a group of local people have worked on behalf of our community to deliver what we need in the only way that it could be delivered. We have two outside organisations, GEMS, who are openly talking about their ambitions to make money out of the process and another organisation that run a chain of independent schools,now coming into the borough to propose much needed primary schools in the vacuum left by there being no similar parent led initiatives. I would welcome you and Daphne asking the same searching questions of organisation that have certainly not rooted their proposals in the community's needs and wants. Hardly surprising local parents have not come forward to meet the challenge when it exposes them to this sort of cynicism and unfair cfritisism.

and ^those written by your little chums
and take the rose tinted glasses off^ is just downright patronising and rude. Surely we can have a debate without sinking to the level of insult.

"Even the NAO is unhappy with the free school funding model"

Then it will evolve in line with their scrutiny. And all the Free School trusts will evolve along with it.

As I said before, the individual trusts are just trying to operate within the framework that is set out by the DfE. If the framework is "crap" then it needs to change, but that doesn't mean all free school trustees are criminals in the meantime.

W&G
Take a break.
Go read some documents OTHER than those written by your little chums
and take the rose tinted glasses off.
Even the NAO is unhappy with the free school funding model

"I am an accountant"

Yes, I know. That's why I'm conceding that I'm not the best person to explain this. However, I don't think you can expect to audit them via Mumsnet.

"the Free school funding model is crap"

You mean you think the Model Funding Agreement is flawed?

"I use Duedil to see who is connected to whom in the little web they are weaving and the multiple changes of directors etc etc rings alarm bells even to the credit agencies as per my news feed."

Not sure what you mean by all that. Which "multiple changes of directors"?
And where is your news feed?

I'm not an accountant ..... but I do know that it was all agreed in consultation with the DfE
thing is I am an accountant
and I know crap when I see it
the Free school funding model is crap.

I use Duedil to see who is connected to whom in the little web they are weaving and the multiple changes of directors etc etc rings alarm bells even to the credit agencies as per my news feed.

Talkinpeace, I'm not an accountant, and I'm certainly not going to try and explain the sub-trust funding model used by the first two RET schools because I'm sure I wouldn't do it correctly, but I do know that it was all agreed in consultation with the DfE. It was complicated though, and the new MAT model is much simpler.

They're a non-profit trust, so you would expect their P/L to be around zero.
Good gracious, I hope not.
If they have not understood how to carry an annual surplus over to provide capital funds and contingency reserves then their business model really is pants
or is it relying on regular bailouts to cover up the lack of forward planning from too many SLT salaries

"They're a non-profit trust, so you would expect their P/L to be around zero."

And, if the report you looked at is the one from June 2013 then that would have been before they signed the multi academy trust funding agreement. Following the signing of that agreement the trust would have received Gvt money for running the two new schools that opened in Sept 2013.

And before setting up EL, its director was involved in the Building Schools for the Future programme. The link also mentions her role in leading the secondary school improvement support contract for Westminster.

"Incidentally, the latest company report I found shows that RET is in debt"

They're a non-profit trust, so you would expect their P/L to be around zero.