What do you think of the plan for a new free School in Islington?

[nlondondad]

This January an Islington Community School, Ashmount, vacated its old building and site near Hornsey lane, London N19 and moved to a magnificent new building on a lovely site in Crouch Hill Park N8 a short distance done the road in January of this year. The future of the school has been secured.

Islington expected to raise at least some of the cost of the new building for Ashmount by selling the old site, at a discounted price to a housing association. They thought they would get about 3 million, but if sold on the open market, the site large, and in between Highgate and Crouch End would have raised ten million. The Council were in effect making a political decision to sacrifice money for social housing. Housing which they had promised to build in their election manifesto on which they had successfully defeated the outgoing Liberal democrat administration.

Last week it was learnt that the Education Funding Agency has chosen to requisition the old Ashmount Site from Islington Council, which they have the power to do, without paying any compensation to the Council.

The site is to be transferred without charge to private ownership; the site will be given to Bellevue Education Limited for a Free School. Bellevue Education Ltd is a commercial (for profit) company, which runs a chain of nine for profit fee paying schools here, and in Switzerland. Bellevue made profits last year of £1.5m on a turnover of £3.7m, so it?s what I believe one would call ?a nice little business?. Although if you want to rush out and buy some shares you cannot at the moment as they are not publically listed. Instead the investors are venture capitalists based in Switzerland using Russian money. Perhaps there will be a flotation at some point in the future. I am sure we will be all poised to add a bit of diversity to our share portfolios.

@LondonSwede

I agree that as the place we are talking about is right slap on the border between two boroughs it would be silly just to talk about one borough... which is errrr... why I dont do that.

In the area we are talking about there is a lot of border crossing by parents, in both directions, so it is sensible to look at the school place position taking into account both boroughs.

The up to date admissions position is that for the area in the borough of Haringey containing Highgate, Crouch End, Hornsey, Stroud Green all applicants now have a place, with a total of three reception places unfilled. So no shortage of places this year. In the relevant part of Islington all places are filled with five places vacant.

So no shortage this year.

Or to put it another way the "the particular area where Ashmount (new and old) and Coleridge are situated", is not oversubscribed this year as it has a surplus of seven places.

But there have been two bulge years at weston park school n8 - which means 60 kids. This will cause massive problems over the next few years when it contracts back to one form entry - as the siblings number will be up.

So if you take into account the bulge year there is actually a deficit of 23 for this year.

daytoday, if you do not mind me saying so, what an odd message.

Are you saying that the places at Weston Park this year are not "real" places? Either children have a place in a school or they have not, and this year, all children in the area have a place AND there are seven places over..

You might have had a point about NEXT year except Haringey say the extra provision will continue...

There is a petition against this proposed Free School here:-

www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/secretary-of-state-for-education-michael-gove-reverse-the-decision-to-approve-the-islington-free-primary-school-n19

The Islington Schools' Forum met last week and considered school place planning for next year.

The number of applicants for Islington Primary Schools, which rose last year, will rise again next year. In order to accommodate these extra numbers Islington plan to re expand schools which contracted during the past period of falling rolls. Over the next few months all schools will be re surveyed to check how many children, under strict government rules which aim to guarantee enough space per child, each school could in fact accommodate, and how much it would cost to re instate the space. ( in most cases basically new fittings)

They will be looking at a combination of factors; the particular areas where demand will rise, mainly to the south of the Borough, choosing popular schools to expand, and value for money.

All children will have places in schools that meet the government standards for local authority schools and do this at low cost.

Oddly, although Islington are required by law to adhere to certain minimum standards for school accommodation, Free Schools are not. Should the Free School open on the old Ashmount Site, albeit in a building abandoned by Islington as not fit for purpose for use by a Islington Primary School, there will be a surplus of places in that area of about 20 per cent.

Without the proposed Free School, there would be no shortage, especially as applications in Crouch End, in Haringey, just across the border, now seem to be on a downward trend for the third year running. Also in Crouch End this year there was no shortage of places.

Thanks for the info nlondondad. Do you think Tufnell Park and Hargrave will expand again next year?

green: Short answer is YES.

I think they will. Will add longer answer, later.

Now here is the longer answer. For years there were falling school rolls in Islington, which meant that more and more Islington Schools had surplus places. Islington were under a legal duty to reduce surplus school places. (The alternative option, to reduce class sizes was never available, neither Labour nor Conservative Governments would fund it). They did this by reducing the Planned Admission Numbers of Schools, so Hargrave Park, for example went from a PAN of 60 or two form entry to a Pan of 30 but the school buildings are still there.

Now numbers are going up again, so Islington are going to do a survey of all schools to find out exactly what their real capacity would be, and how much money would have to be spent to bring the disused accomodation back in to use.

Once they have that information, they can then look at demand, and expand those schools up again which are popular -people want to go to them - and in the right place.

Hargrave Park very much want to go back up to two Form entry as it happens, and I think the request would be likely to be granted UNLESS the Free School IS confirmed for the Old Ashmount Site, AND there is parental demand for it. Free Schools are uncharted territory and no one really knows how to deal with extra places being created outside the planning system. Stritly given the Governments official view that Parental choice, increase of, is what it is about then Islington would certainly be justified in expanding Hargrave.

What an impressively ugly building - I can't believe anyone would resist pulling it down and starting again.

Well rabbitstew I completely agree: Although the building is less ugly from the inside, as you cant see it so clearly. But this lot dont agree with us:

www.c20society.org.uk/press-releases/cadbury-brown-school-should-be-listed/

Ss I write, the building 3 minutes from my desk shimmers in the sun. (As it is basically a big greenhouse the "solar gain" tremendous.)

I secretly rather like the old Ashmount building. But then I like the Acland Burghley buildings as well, and the national theatre. Clearly I am a brutalist at heart.

@frogs I do not disagree that its an interesting building; not least because the school opened in 1957, and so was probably designed by Cadbury Brown before 1955. When you realise that you can see, that at the time it was avant garde, being up to 20 years before its time in architectural terms.

Indeed part of its interest should be in "lessons learned." It seems that Cadbury Brown worked to a rather specific brief from the London County Council (yes, the school is THAT old) which was for two separate schools sharing a site. Infants and Juniors. And further to that it embodied a number of ideas of the time, just post war, as to what was needed for education. It was also built in the era where not only was energy cheap, there were expectations that it would get much cheaper through the development of Nuclear Power. (In fact it did get cheaper for a generation due to cheap oil)

Moreover two critical features that Cadbury Brown had in his original design did not survive to the build.

The glass cladding was supposed to have been double glazed which would have made a big difference to the heating bill in Winter. What it would have done about the solar gain problem in Summer on the other hand difficult to tell.

There were supposed to be toilets on every floor, whereas in the final build, in the Juniors they were on the ground floor accessible only from the playground.

We learnt two lessons from this which were used when building the new school at Crouch Hill........ which I will post about later if there seems to be a demand....

Holds hands with Frogs. I rather like the old Ashmount building.

I LOVE Acland Burghley, I drool when I go past. My DD hasn't even started school yet, so it's a long time before I am going to see inside.

Balfron Tower, mmmm

As you were

Some porn for the ladies, control yourselves.
viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/search/detail.aspx?uid=75284

Am feeling sweaty just thinking about the old Ashmount and what it would be like during this heatwave.

nice Farewell, thank you.

It would be wrong to choose your child's secondary school purely because you like the architecture of the building, wouldn't it?

Well we certainly had parents put off Ashmount by the building, despite being a "good" so far as Osted was concenred and all that, until the school move to a new building was confirmed the school was seriously undersubscribed. Once it had been confirmed we were moving we immediately became oversubscribed, and this for autumn 2013 having actually moved into the new building the admission radius halved! The quality of the school unchanged, the staff the same,...

but my typing in the last post terrible.

(Goes in search of beer)

Nlondondad, I think some schools get a reputation as being desirable and others as not desirable which I think has very little to do with the actual quality of the teaching and learning in the school, and everything to do with people's perceptions of the type of parents that send their children there. And if a school makes a quantum leap into a shiny new building and location, that will have a knock-on effect on the lemmings the school's perceived desirability, again without changing anything material about the quality of education.

I am somewhat weary about this, having dc in another local school that is fantastic with top-quality ofsted but nonetheless not perceived as 'sought-after' by local m/c parents. But tbh I think not attracting the lemmings aspirational parents who want a school to be full of people like themselves is a bonus for those of us who chose the school for the qualities that actually matter to us.

@frogs I agree with you about this. In fact I feel rather curmudgeonly about the way, once the new building was confirmed as definitely being on its way - contracts signed, then builders on the site -, we had the "quantum leap' in applications.

Before then, we were undersubscribed with places being taken by parents who saw past the awful building to the really good, highly motivated staff - Teachers AND TA's. Parents who not only got the good school but also, due to the undersubscription small class sizes as well...

I suppose there may have been an element of good morale in adversity as well as we have a really active PTA. The new parents have a legacy to live up to. (In short I think in terms not of whether the school is worthy of them, but whether they are worthy of the school!)

But my heart still leaps when I see the building the children now get, with its spaces, vistas, and surrounded by trees.

But it still raises the question: if the Free School are really going to use the old building who will send their children there?

On 25 July at about half five in the evening I received a phone call from a pleasant man who told me he was carrying out a telephone opinion poll on local political issues. He said he was working for a company called "UK Ground Comms" A google search shows that a company of that name exists, but it does not seem to have a web site. I suppose a bit of effort at Companies House might throw up some more information.He said he wanted to ask me four questions. I got him to repeat them, and wrote them down immediately after the call.

1. Did I know about the controversy regarding the Old Ashmount Site? - in order to find out more I said "no'

He then read me a set script thus:

"Local residents have successfully campaigned to obtain government money to put a new primary school on the old Ashmount School Site. Islington Council do not want this, but want to build 140 homes on the site instead."

Following this he asked

2.. Do you support having a new primary school on the site/

1. Which political party will you be voting for at the next local election?

1. if a particular party were to say it supported the putting of a new school on the site would you change your vote?

When I asked he said he could not disclose who the client was.

Interesting bit of research dont you think?

There are a lot of well informed Islington parents here. So I'd like to take a different tack on the question and ask about secondary schools.

Looking at the DoE website there are 16 secondaries in Islington of which only 4 are co-ed and non-denominational, i.e. actually comprehensive.

One of those is Highbury Grove which has seen a remarkable turnaround in the last few years and is now hugely oversubscribed. It's catchment area is heading towards below 1,000m. This leaves huge holes in the "comprehensive" education available in the borough. Especially for boys as many girls go to a larger supply of girls schools. Highbury Grove has only 27% girls on the roll.

Add into this the number of parents shipping kids out of the borough to nearby boroughs, grammar schools and fee paying schools - kids that could/should be educated in borough?

1. Do we need more comprehensive secondary schools in Islington?
2. Should we have at least one grammar school in Islington?

Gosh is it only 4 co-ed, non-denom schools? Though to be fair, Mary Mags is v. denom-lite given that the majority of places go on distance.

Re. your questions.

1. I don't know, I presume that the council would argue that they are enough places. Certainly I do wonder what happened around Liverpool Rd area before Mary Mags.
2. Well that's not going to happen (nor should it imo). Though part of Highbury Grove's success is due to how the head marketed a sort of 'grammar stream' by promising pretty rigorous streaming which appealed to wavering parents.

Re. those educating their children in fee-paying schools, I don't think there's any state school that would persuade some of the more wealthy Islington residents. My neighbours didn't even look at our local school because they said that would be pointless as it's an 'inner-city state school' and opted for a pretty ropy private without a playground merely because you had to pay for it. Another perfectly reasonable-seeming woman told me that although the Gower wasn't a great school it at least 'doesn't have any pupils from council estates'. Another lives 200 yards away from the enormous Victorian redbrick could-only-be-a-school and when I said where my kids go, she asked 'oh where's that then?'

These people will never go state unless there was some seriously dodgy selection going on.

Farewell,

I think you're right about diehard fee payers. Although I think there must be some correlation between wealth, education and peer group that bears scrutiny even for the most average of private schools. I guess it's simple "insurance" for those that can afford it.

However, doesn't that also argue for a decent grammar school open to all able students?

On the other hand, I doubt there are enough "bright" kids in the borough to bother.