School Federations - What are they really like?

[JGBMum]

I have spent an hour of the Dept. of Education website trying to find a list of primary schools that have federated.
Do you have any experience of this type of school? And how successful has it been?

Our primary is consulting on this at the moment BUT we have no headteacher, and the school we are supposed to federate with also has no headteacher - we are being told that federating is our best chance of getting an outstanding and inspirational (catholic) head teacher. I'm not convinced....

Neither school is OFSTED outstanding, and we have failed to find a head teacher for a year now, will federating really make that much difference??

If you've stayed with me this far, thank you, and please let me have your views.

I don't know JGBMum but I suspect we may be only a few months behind you in this process so if you have any luck please let me know! I am a parent governor at a faith school which has advertised twice for a HT with no responses. We are putting some interim plans in place for Sept and will be advertising again but I honestly don't hold out much hope. Nobody has mentioned federations yet but the woman who came from the diocese was making vague noises in that direction. There are several other schools in the diocese also struggling to recruit. Whereabouts in the country are you based?

Hi Annh, thanks for your response, we are part of the Bristol Diocese. Are you anywhere near us?

No, we are Arundel and Brighton diocese. I don't think it matters whereabouts people are, the recruitment situation is difficult everywhere. We find it particularly bad because we are near London so it is expensive housing and commuting problems as well.

Hopefully someone will come along and offer you some hope about federations!

Hither Green Primary and Brindishe are two schools in this borough (Lewisham) that are in the process of forming a formal federation, having been in 'partnership' for three years.

They are community schools though so don't need to attract one of the few spare Catholic Heads which I imagine is a lot of the issue.

Blackheath Blue Coat School (secondary) in Greenwich is linked to, although possibly not fully federated with, another CofE secondary but in Southwark/Lambeth/somewhere so it might be worth looking for CofE federations online and seeing if that throws anything useful up.

Thanks for the advice, I will try that.

Well we had our meeting last night, and tbh, parents were definitely underwhelemed with the proposal - and even less impressed when the Chair of Governors announced that there would be no parental vote on the issue and that he only had a duty to consult parents and was already doing more than he needed by holding a meeting .

Words being bandied around the playround today included no confidence and vote and chair(rearrange as you will)

ATM the deputy is acting head and has been for a year. She should have retired at Christmas but is staying on - she is an able deputy but is not inspiring as the head.

The acting deputy is leaving to take up a role at perm deputy at another school, he is superb and we will be much worse off when he leaves.

The school we are supposed to federate with have their own problems, and we found out last night that they have virtually 100 empty places in their school!!

MaamRuby - , yes the head MUST be catholic - I'd prefer a srong head teacher myself, but those are the rules.