May I gloat please? Free school fails ..... before opening

[TalkinPeace2]

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jul/18/free-school-withdrawn-lack-parent-interest

There remains a huge disparity between the fact that, as you say, certain areas are experiencing a desperate school shortage and a central government policy that is allowing people to set up schools wherever they want with no coherent policy to provide places when they're needed.

The situation is becoming more acute because of the rising birthrate - it's imperative that something is done for the future now.

According to the Mirror, there were set to be 3 pupils at the Newham Free School.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/newham-free-academy-plan-for-free-1150362

There wasn't a need for it, that's why no-one wanted their children to go there.

If there were more pupils than places, people would have used it as one of their preferences as a 'back up' or been allocated it as a last preference.

And I agree that it's somewhat topsy turvy to advertise a school which doesn't have a location - but it still would have had pupils wanting to enrol is there was a local need.

Ooooh, don't let TY hear you suggesting that not many people wanted their children to be the guinea pigs! He spent hours and hours online and blogging about how over-subscribed it was last year (turned out that he counted each applicant twice as he decided that each child = two parent's preferences, regardless of the fact that every single other school counts one application as, eh, one application and the inconvenient fact that not every child has two parents ).

You can gloat if you like, but the system is still crap.

The school planned to make French, German, Spanish or Mandarin compulsory to 16, and all pupils would have done at least eight GCSEs, including history and science.

Was rather struck by this. A pretty ordinary offering. And definitely doable at most secondary schools.

What I don't understand is how it can only now realise that it doesn't have enough students. Applications are made in November and places given out around Easter. So by the end of 2011, you would have an idea of whether or not you were going to get the numbers.

numbertaker
Why do you say the system is crap?

In London there is a desperate shortage of places, and 'parental choice' has resulted in children driving all over the city.
LEAs should be allowed to borrow directly from the PWLB at 2% with no fees and build schools without delay. It can be done in six months.
BUT the schools need to be flexible.
The schools were shut 15 years ago when London's population was declining
www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/london-figures-interactive-guide
now it is growing rapidly, and the pressure will be on secondary school places soon.
BUT
London has been hamstrung by the tiny size of the LEAs since Maggie abolished ILEA. They are grossly inefficient and too political.

Out in the sticks - or the real world as I prefer to call it - much of the system is most definitely NOT crap.

Or at least it wasn't till the idiot Gove undermined the management of all the good schools by making them turn into Academies and take on tasks that they had neither the skills nor the staff for.

Free schools are a really stupid idea as parents and sponsors have not the knowledge or the motivation to plan 30 years into the future - which is what is needed with schooling.
If new buildings were the answer to everything, why is Eton not crap?

Tiggytape
despite living in the sticks, I am 100 yards from an LEA boundary
my LEA (Southampton) ranks pretty dire - the next LEA (Hampshire) ranks extremely well. The buses over the boundary are full of kids (including mine)
and it's a vicious spiral.
My catchment school is nearing completion - sponsored academy - at a cost to the Government of over £14 million ; but it will open with around 400 kids on roll despite over 1300 living in its catchment! My kids school has over 300 kids PER YEAR ....
Central Southampton has no secondary school. At all. 15 years ago nobody lived there so they closed the school and built flats on it. The yuppies that bought those flats now have children and face a 55 minute round trip to drop their kids off at a (dire) school to get back to work near where they live.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but policy makers are generally from central London so (rightly) do not trust LEAs to make judgements and decisions.
Sadly it means that excellent LEAs have been handed the same shitty end of the stick of the Academy programme.
IF a private school needs a Bursar it hires somebody with the competences and experience to run that school as a free standing unit.
When a state school becomes an Academy it is stuck with the lovely admin staff who got through the day by phoning the LEA for help three or four times. It shows in what has happened in converter schools.
Ofsted will be under HUGE pressure to fail converter Academies on SMT weakness so that they can be handed to Academy chains who will extract huge fees
and I know what prh47 will say about the 'rules' - but inflated management fees are par for the course. Oasis have already been slapped on the wrist for it but paid their bung and all was well.

I guess all I can say is think long term and keep your eyes and ears open.

tiggy, I have not said that there is no need for more school places.

Indeed, I have repeatedly said that there is a desperate need for more school places in some areas, which needs to be addressed by coherent strategies which respond to local need, not ones that allow people to set up schools wherever the hell they feel like it when it's not needed, as in the Newham case (and also Beccles free school which has a total of 37 pupils).

You can drop a new school practically anywhere in London and it wouldn't be a waste but I appreciate not all areas have the same urgent need for more places in every corner of their region.

But you can't. This is exactly what happened in Newham and it was a waste.

I think the whole system is a mess. Where we live, there is a shortage of secondary school places. This has been acknowledged for many years, and the Local Authority has made numerous promises about the building of a new school. After many years, they have agreed to build two new schools and the planning authorities are now dragging their feet to approve the sites. We are still at least four years off.

All local Secondaries are Academies and refuse to increase their intake.

In the meantime, a group of parents have got together with a group of teachers, planned, submitted and successfully been grant the go ahead for a Free School. By next year.

I think the current system is a disaster but, in our case, the Free School has at least been a fall back option.

Sitting - where do you live? It matters as it helps the data mining
and I am offensively au fait with reading planning minutes

Herts (Watford/Rickmansworth/Maple Cross).

sitting
Thankyou for being candid - I'm half cut now but will search in the morning.

BUT the LA and the planning authority were one and the same until the 2010 election.
However, since 1999 under Daer leader Bliar and Mellow Broon, public sector bodies had to justify WHY they did not want to use PFI. Luckily since the 1996 Council Finance SI, local authorities were forced to hire qualified accountants who rightly said "holy shit burger off" at PFI. The NHS was not so lucky.
BUT if they said no to PFI, they found that Whitehall stopped all funding in Broon's obsession with keeping things off balance sheet (illegal for companies BTW)
Damned if they did and damned if they didn't !

Secondaries / extra classes - they are restricted by pupils per square metre of teaching space - for sound reasons that can be seen when the lesson bell goes - and portakabins are not the answer

I'll try to track down in more detail tomorrow ...

RE: Newham. Only 6 people signed up and 3 of them got better offers. There simply wasn't need for the school.

LOL at Pob.

Micheal Pobe.

That is all.

As Tiggytape says, want and need are not the same thing.

Newham is currently operating close to capacity for secondary school places, meaning that many parents have no choice of secondary school. Indeed, 20% of Newham's secondary schools are already operating over capacity. Over the next few years Newham needs another 1700 secondary school places. This need will partly be met by two other free schools opening in Newham in September - School 21 and the London Academy of Excellence - but there will still be a need for another secondary school catering for at least 800 pupils. Rather more places than that will be required if parental choice is to have any meaning. So parents may not have wanted this school but there is a very clear need.

That makes absolutely no sense. The Newham school WASN'T NEEDED - it only had 3 pupils. It wasn't going to be full in September - that's why the project crashed.

You are either seriously deluded or having a laugh about 'parental choice'. Gove has no interest in the 'choice' of parents or anyone else (like all the experienced teachers he sacked from the DfE the moment that he came into post) who disagree with him.

Maybe Newham parents would like a new maintained school? I don't see them being given that 'choice'.

It makes perfect sense unless you don't believe in forward planning. There are enough places in Newham at the moment but that will not be the case soon, even with two new free schools opening this year. Another school will be needed.

And I disagree with you on parental choice. I am certainly not having a laugh and I do not believe I am deluded. You seem to be the one who wants to take away parental choice by insisting that we only have LA-controlled schools.