School threatened with closure

The problem is that there is only one other "local" school in this LA who have already made a statement about protecting their pupils but clearly understand they will be part of ongoing discussions. There are more schools in a neighbouring LA but that makes dispersal rather more difficult but not impossible. It seems this school would be tiny if it relied on catchment children alone, or indeed first preference children.

The application to sell part of the playing fields by the Governors said specifically the capital receipt would be spent on new sports facilities. This would be a formal agreement and cannot be changed. Capital receipts go into capital projects. This site appears to provide only 37 houses though and the area is in the AONB so large scale housing looks to be unlikely.

Sorry, calculation wrong - in the scenario I outlined:

• July 2018 - Y11 + maybe some other year groups leave
• September 2018 - No Year 7, and year groups who left in the July not replaced
• July 2019 - Remaining year groups, in particular those who entered Y11 in September 2018, leave.

For the school I know of, final appeal decision was in May one year and closure was the following July. However the closure proposal was actually mooted more than a year earlier - so just over 2 years from consultation to closure.

So final closure would probably be Summer 2020, if the decision is taken to close the school this June. It CAN be done faster if there is lots of capacity elsewhere - for example, they may not admit Y7 for this September, if all local schools can be persuaded to take on an extra form group (it is likely that the LA would fund them to do this, as closing the school quickly is more economic), though this is highly unlikely under this timescale where there may be appeals etc. The school is likely to be down to a handful by closure day

Closure usually takes a few years.

If a decision is taken in June to close, then there will be no admission into Y7 for September 2018. It is possible that the remaining 2 KS3 year groups will also close / transfer to other schools OR e.g. that Y10 do so that they can start GCSEs elsewhere and not be disrupted, and Y9 so that they can choose GCSEs for September 2019 while already in their new schools.

At the end of the following year, it would be likely that the school would finally close. Maintaining a full curriculum with any staff at all can become very, very difficult, so it is likely that most pupils will leave before their year group is due to, or to share some lessons / teachers in another school even while registered at the closing school.

You have a phased closure. It is not all done in one fell swoop. No closure is satisfactory and this school has been harmed by poor Governance and SLT. If a new school was needed, the only way this could be built is as a free school. I am not sure why this is a foundation school. There will need to be clarity regarding who owns the land but if it is more than is needed, it could be sold and a new free school established on the site.

Lots of schools are situated in expensive areas and all your nearby schools and many others are in this position. A poor SLT tends to ensure poor recruitment and young teachers electing to move on. Only the settled people stay. Land sale money cannot be used to address this because it is a different pot of money, and so it should be. Why should schools without land to sell be greatly disadvantaged?

I have no doubt the LA will be looking closely at housing development but it appears to be a fact that lots of children in this school are not from this LA. It is, therefore, not their catchment school one would have thought a LA does not have to make provision for another LA's children. No doubt there will be discussions with the other LA about this situation because it is costing your LA a lot of money to keep a school open for other children for whom they are not responsible.

If the Governors had been better, they would have investigated academy status years ago and got on with it, like everyone else. Nothing excuses the lack of progress for very many children and they didn't do anything about this either. It will be interesting to see what happens.

The thing is, the data and the Ofsted say that the school is providing a mediocre education for most children - hence their overall progress fugure is below average.

it doesn't mean they're not honest.

It doesn't mean they're not caring.

It doesn't mean that no children within the school are getting a good education. The Progress8 figure for children who joined the school as higher attainers (Level 5 and 6 in SATs) is positive, and would put it in the 'average' category if that was the same across the whole ability range. The Ofsted report also says that it is the middle and low previous attainers that they are most worried about.

So it is quite possible that if your child fits into this group, you will have a perfectly positive view of the school, and their educational experience will have been average to good. That doesn't change the fact that the data says it is providing a mediocre educational experience overall, looking at the school as a whole.

Within the school I mentioned upthread, certain children were doing absolutely brilliantly - but that didn't mean that the school as a whole deserved to stay open.

OK if this is the school I think it is, it is a foundation with a LOT of land - a proportion of this land is to be sold to a developer for £3.5 million and the houses were included on our village plan....allegedly this has dragged on because the council allegedly have the deeds and have taken their time to pass them on to the school (I hasten to add I am by no means an expert - this is just what I have been told) The school has struggled to employ teachers because its in an expensive area and teachers have to commute in as the cost of property locally is prohibitively expensive, they have also been employing cheaper young teachers who habitually do not stay long - the longer term senior staff at the school are dedicated, enthusiastic and loved by the pupils.

The sale of this land would a) put money in the pot to pay good teachers a living wage and b) is also earmarked for some sports facilities which would be rented to the local community to raise extra funds. Of course if the school closes all the land becomes available and it is worth a fortune.

Bojorojo With a good head and more funds the school could be turned round and will need to grow larger because a massive amount of new housing is going up and there are currently NO spaces available local for these students who will be displaced - a straw poll was done locally and I think they came up with a handful of spaces over the two counties for 500 children. They could close it to make an instant fast buck but within a few they will be spending over the odds for land and a fortune to build a new school - why the hell would you do that instead of improving what is already there?

Admission: it is the neighbouring LA that has mentioned alternative schools. Most children in the school come from this LA and not the LA that funds the school and is consulting.

For the record this school has 509 pupils in it. The County Council has severe budget problems and is educating children from another LA in fairly large numbers in this school. It seems unlikely they would want to continue to put money into this outpost of another LA.

Again, please do not think GCSE results count for much in these circumstances. Ofsted are crystal clear that it is lack of progress that is the huge issue. If the school assessed the progress of children accurately, exam results could be predicted to a fairly good degree. The school should know what the results are likely to be. I bet Ofsted do!

Having read the report it is poor progress, lack of accurate assessment of pupils' progress, poor teaching in English, maths and sciences in particular, Governors who haven't got a clue because the info they are given is duff and unsavoury language allowed in class because poor behaviour is not tackled. There is more.

Where is a new dynamic leadership team coming from? They cannot get good teachers as it is. There are other schools in nearby towns, one in the LA and one in the neighbouring LA. They are already working with another school for maths leadership and teaching. The report specifically says SEN children are bullied and that boys do less well than girls. It is also critical of the school for not realising children are under-achieving and has done nothing about it.

Parents are clearly in denial regarding the problems here and the size of the school must make it uneconomic. Why would parents want such a mediocre school? There will be great upheavals if it closes and other schools will be affected as they have already noted, but keeping this school open just seems heart over head!

How has he been doing in English and Maths? Those do seem to be areas of particular weakness for the school (humanities and languages show pretty good progress and results), so perhaps if he is a bit marginal and his next step depends on getting good grades in those 2, it might be worth having a bit of a push / a discussion about what he might do if he doesn't get his predicted grade in those?

Admission, the point is that it is not the LA that the school is in - it is the neighbouring LA, from whom I understand most pupils come, as most schools in that LA are full.

I agree that for the LA with the school in it would be very wrong to be making such recommendations, because it cuts across their own consultation. The behaviour of a neighbouring LA is slightly more moot, though certainly not kind or particularly ethical.

(School performance data www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/ does show a really steep decline over the last few years, from 65% getting A* to C in English and maths in 2014 to just 42% last year. National average for state schools was 63%, so the school is 20% below that.

It actually looks as if there have been 2 years of poor results, more than a 1-off blip, and progress is below average, particularly for low attainers at the end of KS2 and for boys. The Ofsted report does talk about low standards and low progress lower down the school as well, so it does not seem to be just a couple of poor cohorts.)

The LA advising parents to start looking for another school is very wrong. That is in effect not allowing any conversation about the best way forward for the school, to all intent and purpose it is shutting. Parents will obviously vote with their feet as will staff, so the school will go into a death spiral unless those objecting can get the LA to stop making such comments and allow proper scrutiny around a decision of the future of the school.

As funding is on a per pupil basis, the inevitable departure of pupils in this time of uncertainty will make it increasingly fragile financially. Pr-active parents will move their children rapidly to the 'better' of the alternatives, realising that if they wait to see whether the school is going to be closed, any spare places in relatively desirable alternatives will have already have been grabbed.

The better teachers, especially those in subjects where there are plenty of other jobs - Maths, Sciences - will almost certainly apply for jobs elsewhere over the next couple of weeks to meet the end of May deadline for resigning ready to depart at the end of term.

It's brutal.

www.schoolcuts.org.uk indicates about a 9% cut in real terms by 2019, about -7 teachers.

That's actually quite 'good' in relative terms, and probably represents a small cash increase in the underlying calculations - our local secondary faces a 12% cut.

I would say that the 'save our school' campaign is normal, and exactly what ghappened in the case of the school I know of that closed.

There was no rational, educational or budget reason why the school should stay open, but there was a loyalty and emotional attachment to it in the local community, many of whom had attended it themselves in earlier years.

What could have saved it was data - data showing exceptional progress and data showing future projected population expansion. However , if such data doesn't exist, then a campaign based on sentiment and the 'niceness' of the school is very unlikely to work.

What is the projected funding for the school under the new national funding formula? If funding is to be cut as well, it may be that the school - small for a secondary already - is simply not viable.

Are you CE school in SC Oxon?

One rather suspects the LA could see the problems mounting several years ago and wanted it to become an academy. Not that this is necessarily a solution and would not keep it from closure either in the circumstances. If the Governors resisted this but have been part of the problem, then their position is untenable. It really depends if the spaces at the school are needed and future demand is there. If the other schools are full it may be needed. If lots of new housing is planned it may be needed. Try and discover this information. If it stays open it will have a root and branch change of management but could be unpopular with prospective parents for a few years.

Personally, I do not think being entered for exams tells you much unless you were not expecting to take any when entering the school. Being polite is good but teachers can get criticised for setting work that is too easy so pupils are not challenged. Pupils feel supported but progress is slow.