New Secondary schools for Richmond!

[BayJay]

Richmond Council recently published a White Paper outlining plans for Secondary education in the borough (cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=23719). They want new 6th forms in every school, and would need to decrease current Yr7 intakes to accomodate that. To offset those decreases they are talking about creating two new secondary schools. One of those new schools would be a Roman Catholic school.

The Roman Catholic community in the borough are currently disadvantaged by the "link" system (www.st-marys.richmond.sch.uk/Newsletter%20Link%20letter%20for%202011%20links%20(2).pdf). Because the Catholic primaries are not linked to any secondaries in the borough, their children tend to go to a combination of out-of-borough Catholic secondaries (which are mostly rated as Outstanding), grammar schools and private schools, though some of the girls do go to Waldegrave, which is not part of the link system. Note that there is no reason, in principle, why the Catholic Secondaries couldn't be linked to local community schools, but because many of their children have other options, they simply don't meet the "25% rule" required to form a link. (See an example set of transfer figures at www.st-james.richmond.sch.uk/Admin/Uploads/Docs/StJamesSchool_Parents_NewsLetter_270910.pdf).

This raises several questions in my mind:

1. Does the problem necessarily need to be solved by providing a Catholic Secondary, or are there alternative solutions that would benefit the community as a whole (e.g. reforming the link system)?
2. Does the majority of the Catholic community specifically want to be educated separately from the rest of us, or is it the case that, like everyone else, they simply want an outstanding education for their children, and find that the Catholic route is often the best way of achieving that?
3. If Catholics had more options for transferring to outstanding community schools locally (as many already do, to Waldegrave), would they choose those options over travelling to a single-faith school in a neighbouring borough?
4. I accept that there will always be very religious people who want to segregate themselves, but would I be right in asserting that there are also large numbers of Catholics who would be happy to attend community schools, provided that gave them the same level of academic excellence that can be found in many Catholic options?
5. If a new Catholic secondary school is created, it is likely to have an entrance policy that requires a priest's reference (as per the majority of existing Catholic schools). How do people feel about that?
6. If a state-funded Catholic School is created in the borough, would non-Catholic parents also like the option of sending their children there, provided they weren't barred by the admission system?

I'd be interested to hear your opinions!

Bayjay - here-s a proposal to square the intractable circle.

How about RISC support a Catholic VA school on the site and the church agrees for the first 3 or 5 or 7 years or the school to adopt an ;inclusive; admissions policy - say 30% non catholic in the first year, 25% in the second, 20% in the third etc.

This might unlock those Catholic coffers for investment in the site, offer the prospect to the non Catholic community that there would be places for their children while not compromising the rights of the Church in relation to its schools.

Would that or something like that work. Would RISC ever make such a proposal - or are do they have an essentially humanist-accord, though respectable, position in outright opposition to faith schools. If not RISC would a sub-set of RISC support and promote such a proposal as it seems to me that it is the only thing that might work.

Littlemissmuppet - just seen your post to the effect that you don.t thing the head of a catholic school needs to be a catholic. If so,and if there admissions to the ;catholic; school is open to all where do you thing the catholic ethos springs from? Does it just grow like Topsy because the sign at the front of the school describes it as a Catholic school or does it come from just everyone being nice to each other as per other posts. If really does suggest that you have no idea about what makes a catholic school - any school - tick in terms of leadership.

"bayjay i haven.t done the maths"
Yes, well I have (in the other thread). The church contributes £25 per child per annum to its VA schools nationally. That money comes from a maintenance fund, which maintains churches as well as schools. Parents pay into that maintenance fund an amount per year (I don't know what the current amount is. In my own children's CofE school it is £45 so I'm assuming Catholic school payments are comparable).

"you say interestingly that a Catholic academy would be partly funded by a party other that the Catholic church. Who is this funder"
The money would come from a government grant. Here is the information about Academy Funding.

Yes, this will come down to economics in the end, but I hope that won't be at the expense of community cohesion. That is priceless.

It is £50 per family (more welcomed if possible) for the maintenance fund at ours.

Bayjay you are not right on this one. The idea that 25 quid per child is the contribution of the church to education in the UK is absurd. In my children.s school is more than that each month but more importantly you are not factoring in the value of the land, buildings of schools and teacher training facilities.

As for govt grant I say great - if the govt wants to invest in education in Richmond RISC should get a firm proposal on the table perhaps via Vince Cable so that a real debate on options can take place.

"Bayjay - here-s a proposal to square the intractable circle"

Florist, I don't represent RISC. I'm just one of their (many) supporters. Certainly if an inclusive Catholic school were to be proposed for Clifden, many of their supporters would be happy (though not all). My impression from this thread is that many Catolics would be happy too (though, again, not all).

However, I don't like your theoretical proposal. I think the admissions should have a proportion of open places (at least 30%) in perpetuity.

"Would RISC ever make such a proposal"
I imagine a lot of bridge building is going on behind the scenes. Don't be surprised if some sort of compromise is reached. It is in everyone's interests for that to happen.

Just to say I have read through the last few days of this thread having dipped in and out of it and I think there are still some misunderstandings going on about numbers. My main reason for concern as a local parent with many other friends who are local parents is that there is going to be a huge overall shortage of secondary school places in a few years time. I therefore don't believe it is sensible to give the Clifden site away on a 125 year lease to the Catholic Church unless it is willing to allow substantial numbers of non-Catholics into its school. Even half of the places in a five form entry school (75) wouldn't be that many. Some posters seem to believe that large number of places currently taken by Catholics in LB Richmond community schools would be freed up if there was a Catholic school at Clifden, but currently only about 40 Catholic children a year from Richmond Catholic primary schools go on to Borough Secondary Schools and they might be the ones whose parents wouldn't chose a Catholic Secondary anyway. The reason I support an inclusive school is that many people have no choice other than a community school and they may soon be left with nowhere to go. The projections that Bay Jay refers to show the places running out in 2014-15, even if Richmond Park Academy expanded to its theoretical maximum size which might not be sensible. That's before the added expansions of primary schools last year and this year which will mean an additional 300 or so children coming through by 2017 and 2018. That seems to mean we need at least two more secondary schools to meet the need. All these conversations about the moral ethos of the school are interesting but it's the numbers that matter so far as I'm concerned.

"The idea that 25 quid per child is the contribution of the church to education in the UK is absurd"
florist, its not. The Catholic Education Service put £20 million into their schools nationally. They have 784,808 pupils, so that works out as £25.48 per pupil.

In contrast, LBRUT contribute £4,814 per secondary school pupil. So the Catholic contribution is 0.5% of the total funding per pupil.

I did that maths in the other thread in response to someone who suggested that the number of places reserved for Catholics in Catholic schools should be proportional to the amount of money that the Catholic church puts in. The answer is that it works out as less than one child in each year group.

The Catholic church does not train teachers. The Government trains teachers (including Catholic ones). The church's required contribution to VA schools is 10% of the maintenance costs. All running costs are met by the local education authority.

bayjay - ok you have an in principle opposition to the Catholic church deciding admissions (subject to the admissions code and in accordance with the law of the land) in the event the school is over subscribed with Catholic applicants. I was trying to square the circle but clearly it is not a circle that RISC and-or you think can be squared. Seems like the proposal will remain as you say just theoretical though it neednt be that way. I hope the bridge building works that you talk of.

Lottieprosser - assuming two secondary schools are needed where is the funding coming from. If the Clifden Road site was to be a community school who would fund this - local council tax payers should but they don.t seem to have voted in a party to do that. And the Lib Dems in govt - with a minister alongside of Gove - is cutting radicallty capital and revenue budgets. Who is going to fund the Clifden Road site as a communitzy school.

"If the Clifden Road site was to be a community school who would fund this"

Community Academies can apply for government funding in the same way that Faith Academies can.

Right, I'm off to bed now. See you all tomorrow!

Bayjay the govt doesn.t train teachers '- teacher training colleges do.Govt fund them but the pedagogy in Catholic teacher training colleges is not the same as in secular training colleges - it is distinctive based on catholic understanding of the purpose of education - holistic, whole person not the league table race that so many schools engage in to the detriment of the real education of our children.. As has been said before, Catholics pay taxes and fund the revenue costs of education as much as non Catholics.

So it seems that you think Catholics should have their own schools, that they should fund them (20million pds plus the many millions envisaged for Richmond) but that only 1 pupil per year group should be a Catholic - 99% or so open admissions and perhaps no right to ensure the leadership of the school is CathoLic - yet display all of the values you and others value as per previous posts.

My conclusion must be from the past two days and the full thread is that RISC and yourself does not want a Catholic school on the site in any sense that would be recognisably Catholic. You welcome funding by the Church but not if that meant they exercised lawful rights over admissions as elsewhere in UK. It would be more effective from RISC.s perspective to say so - politics in the end is about compromise. I don.t seen any desire to compromise - which is of course your right.

I hope RISC activity in improving community schools in Richmond bears fruit and i will watch what happens in Richmond about the Clifden road site with interest.

Florist - you ask who would fund Clifden Road as a community school but the point is that the Council is buying the site using millions of pounds of local council taxpayers money - the Catholic Church isn't buying it. As I understand it the Catholic church's contribution is just 10% of the running costs, which is obviously something but doesn't make that much difference to the overall financial set-up so far as I can see. If very few local children can go to the school because it is Catholic VA they will still need places elsewhere and there is a legal obligation for those places to be found somewhere and for the Council to pay for their education. Richmond Council has reserves of £65 million as I understand it so it probably can afford to buy this site and another one but probably not two more which it will need if most local children can't go to school at Clifden. The other problem is the accute shortage of sites large enough for a secondary school. They can't just be picked up like houses and at present there don't seem to be any other sites let alone two more.

florist, I can't go to bed without answering that.

"teacher training colleges do.Govt fund them"
I agree. However I was responding to your suggestion that the Catholic church was funding teacher training.

"So it seems that you think Catholics should have their own schools, that they should fund them (20million pds plus the many millions envisaged for Richmond) but that only 1 pupil per year group should be a Catholic"
No, I was giving the facts of the existing funding situation. I wasn't expressing a "should" or "shouldn't" judgement in that post. The "1 pupil per year group" was given in answer to a specific question.

"My conclusion must be..."
Your conclusion misinterprets my position, which is that while I would prefer a Community Academy, I would be happy with the compromise of a Faith Academy (in line with current government policy on new faith schools). I would not like a VA school.

p.s. Now I really am going to bed. Goodnight all!

Florist / BayJay some good discussion on options - do reach out to RC headteachers and RISC with all the ideas. Its worth considering all of them -A proper consultation will lay all options for school at clifden road and evaluate the merits and demerits of all of them in a fair and transparent manner. RISC has issued a press release - Will the consultation be genuine ? www.richmondinclusiveschools.org.uk/files/view/press-releases/Press_Release_-Richmond_Inclusive_Schools_Campaign-_7_Nov_2011.pdf

BayJay, just going back to your questions having tried to match up some data with them:
Catholics just want good schools and probably don't bother/ won't bother travelling outside the Borough anyway (Q3)- from LBRT data about 950 children travel outside the Borough everyday to attend a Catholic Secondary in another Borough. (not inclduing 6th formers) This SEptember 2011 146 Richmond Borough children transferred to Catholic Secondary schools outside the Borough and 53 to Richmond community Schools and Academies. A new Catholic Secondary in the Borough would therefore free up about 150 community places in it's first year as the likely initiaL intake. I understand that if not all places were filled by Catholic demand remaining places would go to other faiths/ non faith pupils.
managed to find a Vince Cable quote from 2009 LD spring conference - "Faith Schools must be a feature of a tolerant society"

hamptonhillbilly, hello, I was wondering where you'd got to .

When you say "Catholics just want good schools and probably don't bother/ won't bother travelling outside the Borough anyway" is that a statement or a quote from another post that you are commenting on? If its a quote then please let me know where from. If its a statement then my answer is that I agree that many Catholics just want good schools (just like everyone else). Its not the case for all of them (including some posting here), as some devout Catholics would always choose a Catholic school over a higher performing non-Catholic school. The relative numbers of those two groups are not known, as no analysis has been done. That is one reason why I started this discussion in the first place, to try and demonstrate the range of opinion behind the "we want a Catholic school" request, and to encourage people to think about other options (such as a Catholic Academy) that might satisfy the demand.

Where are you getting your figures from? Please provide a link to the source or sources so I can see the context. If you scroll down a little below the text-input box when you're making your post it shows you how to embed links in a non-intrusive way.

Are you aware of the effects of the Linked School Policy on current Catholic school transfers? It is something that has been discussed extensively earlier in this thread so I can point you in the right direction if you would like to review that. There is a strong chance that the policy will be dropped following an imminent consultation. That will have a huge effect on transfers. At the moment most Catholic children have a close-to-zero chance of getting into Orleans Park, Teddington or Grey Court (all high performing schools), but if the system is dropped they will have as much chance as anyone else (based on distance). It would be reasonable to assume that those schools would subsequently attract as many Catholic children as Waldegrave currently does, and satisfy some of the demand from Catholic parents for a good school.

For the record, I agree with that Vince Cable quote. However, I would qualify it as follows: "Faith Schools (with inclusive admissions policies) must be a feature of a tolerant society". I strongly suspect that Vince Cable would agree with that qualification.

If only 53 community schools transferred to Borough Schools and community schools, how do you reach the conclusion that the new Catholic secondary will free up 150 places?

I do know a number of Catholic parents that were previously (before the Clifden site was offered) intending to send their children to one of the well-regarded secondaries and are still intending to. I am also aware of quite a few non-Catholics at Catholic primaries who will not have the option of this new school. So I wouldn't be surprised if we are looking at freeing up little more than 25 Richmond community spaces

florist - you seem to assume that open admissions would mean that a school would be filled with non-Catholics. This doesn't happen at private schools as I'm sure I've said before.

Whilst (for obvious reasons), I have no knowledge or experience of a non-Catholic heading up a Catholic school; I have known a Catholic head of a CofE school. She leant heavily on the local Vicar to guide her and provide pastoral support.

The ethos of a school should primarily be provided by the faith community and parish(es) that support it. A head needs to be guided by it in their job, so chances are such a person is likely to be a Catholic. But I don't see why it has to be a rule of law.

I seriously hope that things have moved on a bit since my day when we had Reverend Mother as our head teacher. She might have been a marvellous Catholic but unfortunately her leadership and educational skills were, how do I say this, limited.

LittleMrsMuppet - RACC is an inclusive community college. Dr Oona Stannard - the chief executive of the Catholic Education Service (CES) - taught at Twickenham Girls School but a non-catholic would be barred from teaching at the same site if its a Catholic VA school!

liitlemissmuppet - a number of points on your two earlier posts

• it is the rule of law that Catholic schools can appoint as head a Cathoic, of course they should be qualified etc - it seems to me a leader of a school leaning on somebody else is not a leader at all,
• re open admissions I am saying that may not be sufficient incentive to unlock the investment needed in the buildings etc from the church,

-Dr Oona Stannard is not the CEO of the Catholic Education Service Fr Marcus Stock is (on an interim basis),

florist, in answer to: "re open admissions I am saying that may not be sufficient incentive to unlock the investment needed in the buildings etc from the church"

The money for a Faith Academy would largely come from a government grant. The required contribution of the church would be much lower than for a VA school.

Jeev - a non-Catholic would be barred from teaching at the same site if it's a Catholic VA school! ...you are wrong...non-Catholics are not barred from teaching at a Catholic school. There are many teachers and TAs working in Catholic schools around the UK!

Sorry, I meant to say 'non-Catholic' teachers and TAs !

eh? I wasn't talking about Dr Oona Stafford! But someone, very sadly, long departed!