New Secondary Schools for Richmond 2

[BayJay]

I'm starting this new thread because the other one of the same name has filled up.

I think the council document must have a typo and it was 64 allocated, 62 actually going to OP from St Stephen's.

I think the figures in this Linked Schools document are only children who get in on links and distance so it is less than the total as other children get in because they have a sibling already at the school. I know percentage of children going to Teddington from Collis and St John's is very high.

Of course, that's it. Thanks LottieProsser.

Thanks a lot all for these statistics. Its a shame that the Council did not provide a holistic view of secondary school trends in the borough in the consultation document.

I think it was up to individual schools rather than the council to publish profiles which contained secondary transfer information. But that seems to have changed - schools don't need to publish profiles any more and the schools finder website has been revised. So that info may be harder to find in future.

muminlondon - that is true, however the counsultation presents a biased picture of the secondary school transfers. Only stats for catholic schools are shown and it fails to provide the picture of what happens for non catholics who send their kids out of borough or to private schools. It also shows a negative outlook for the progress in the academies. Clearly when the councillors dont set an example by sending their kids to these academies, they struggle to promote or secure parental buy-in for them

Academy schools attain fewer good GCSEs, study shows reports today's Observer: . . a new analysis of Department for Education figures shows that, while 60% of pupils in non-academy schools attained five A to C grade GCSEs last year, only 47% did so in the 249 sponsored academies . . there is still a significant gap in attainment between academies and schools that both have 40% of pupils receiving free school meals. In the 40 academies with such an intake, 38% of pupils achieved five A to C grade GCSEs in 2011, including English and maths, while similar schools in the rest of the state sector achieved 44%. . .

Chris, I don't see the point of that study, other than to try and frighten parents away from the word 'academy', or to otherwise push an anti-academy agenda. It would have been much better if it had looked at the outcomes for individual schools to see whether they had improved since becoming academies. Many of them will have become academies because they were failing when they were council-run. If they are improving from that position then that is good, if not then there is a problem with that particular academy provider. If a large number of them are not improving then there is a problem more generally with the programme. However, the Observer article doesn't allow us to make that judgement - it just compares academies with other local schools that presumably weren't failing in the first place.

Schools thrive when they're well run. They can be well run by councils, and (we expect) they can be well run as academies. Taking our three academies as examples, they were doing very badly when they weren't academies. Now that they are academies they are improving. That might be because they're being run by a third party, or it could be that lots of concentrated effort and money is going into improving them. From a purely practical point of view, if they hadn't become academies then that money wouldn't have been made available to them. A lot of this academy/free school legislation has come about because the government don't trust local politicians to turn around failing schools.

One practical advantage I can see in the case of our academies is that the academy sponsors will not care which borough their children come from. Unlike councils, their duty of care does not stop at the borough boundary.

academy sponsors will not care which borough their children come from - I don't think the head or governors of LA maintained schools care about borough boundaries either. But academies can vary their admissions criteria if distance alone would have them competing with a nearby outstanding school. That's not happened so far in Richmond's academies.

It is true that schools in other LAs can exert the same seesaw effect as within boroughs - e.g. some children near Twickenham academy may opt for Heathlands in Hounslow. Similarly, the Kingston consultation did have a mixed response because the site is fairly near to Grey Court - which local North Kingston residents see as their own.

I don't think the head or governors of LA maintained schools care about borough boundaries either
I agree with that muminlondon. Its the politicians and officers that are influenced by borough boundaries.

Chris - I am really glad that we have the Academies and fully support independence of our schools from the LA. Successive administrations failed to deliver consistency of quality in our secondary schools. I do not trust our messy local political system and the Councillors and Council officers in Richmond.

I've just had a very bullish email from the Maharishites reporting that they have submitted their bid for a Free School; it says '. . The Telegraph reported on the weekend that there will be just over 300 applicants, and that more than 100 will be approved. A far cry from the first round of applicants for 2011 when there were 323 applicants and only 24 were approved ? including Maharishi School Lancashire. So, the odds are much better this time around . . '

Chris, I wonder what the Telegraph's rationale is for claiming that 'probably more than 100 will be approved'. They don't say. If they've been tipped of by the Dfe, then fair enough, but if they're just using some sort of trend analysis approach then I'd question the validity of that.

According to the BHA, 337 groups expressed an intention to make an application, which seems to corroborate the Telegraph's 300 figure.

Another part of the Telegraph Article that I would question is its suggestion that Free Schools aren't 'comprehensive'. They are subject to exactly the same admissions code as LA-run schools. They are not allowed to select on the basis of ability as the old style grammar schools did, so I don't understand why the author feels justified in making some kind of analogy there. Its very misleading.

BayJay, the claim that 'probably more than 100 will be approved' will have come from one of Gove?s SpADs (Special Political Advisors) whose role is to tell journalists what their master is thinking and intending. It doesn?t mean that the DfE will actually be able to fund that many bids.

Actually Chris, I think the source of the 100 number might be the Chancellor's Autumn Statement in which he announced £600 million to fund 100 new Free Schools, though over a three year period.

Gove's speech on 4 October 2011 to the Conservative conference in the Evening Standard reports him as saying he wants to see 50 free schools in London in four years. "Super-grammars" are mentioned as part of his overall policy but that must be in connection with grammars like Tiffin converting to academies. Whether the new Education act allows them to expand their numbers, or establish new sites and still keep their selective admissions criteria, I'm not sure.

Muminlondon, It does refer to the existing grammars because they are the only ones that are allowed to be selective. Becoming academies will allow them to expand, so presumably that's what Gove wants to encourage.

Just passing on this link to a proposal for a completely inclusive Catholic
Free School in Chalfont St Peter: www.freeschoolgerrardscross.org/,
in case you haven't seen it.

The Richmond and Twickenham Times has a report on 2012 secondary school offers for children in the borough - 62.8% offered first choice, 85.7% one of first three choices and 9.3% not offered any of up to 6 preferences.

I can't find the national figures but in 2011 it was 84.6% top choice, 95.6% getting one of top three choices and about 5% not getting any of preferences. So Richmond is low down the table on this score and it will be interesting to see how this changes over the next few years.

The official stats for all LAs are due 22 March. In 2011 2.8% weren't offered any of their preferences - so if LBRuT has reduced that 'not matching preferences' figure from 10% last year to 9.3% this year it is making very slow progress.

To come near last year's national average they need to match one of the top three preferences of another 300 pupils.

last year's national stats

The RTT also has a letter from Beverley Somebody on page 26 saying that the proposed new free secondary school has 'more than 140 children registered and all all future year groups are well oversubscribed'. It will be interesting to see what casuistical argument Lord True comes out with to disregard this evidence of unsatisfied demand for an 'academically focused' school

Chris, I've just got to that page, and it says 1,400 children registered their interest in only 4 weeks, not 140. Which is very impressive.

I meant to say that about 300 more pupils need to be given their top choice to match the national statistic, not one of top three choices.

I see from the RTT that Twickenham Studios is now going to be another large housing development - I hope for their sake that the buyers will all be Catholics or will they be close enough to get into Orleans Park and push another lot of children into the black hole of Twickenham?!

I agree that there is obviously very strong demand from concerned parents for the free school and the organisers have done a fantastic job getting the application together in such a short space of time. But given the very short timeframe I can't understand how the application can be allocated funding if there is no suitable site available anywhere in the Twickenham area - surely that's just tying up money that could be going to a project that has a suitable site already sorted out?

MuminLondon: thanks for the correction.

The borough's 'Sixth Forms Forum' - comprising the headteachers, elected members, and senior officers - has approved in-principle the proposals to establish sixth forms in the five non-academy secondary schools. It has also agreed that the sixth forms would be established under the umbrella of 'Richmond upon Thames Post-16 Partnership', with a degree of commonality in various matters, such as marketing, the application process, daily and weekly curriculum structure.

As a result, the Council has issued statutory proposals to establish a sixth form at, among others, Christ's School, Richmond. You can formally register your views about a sixth form at Christ's school or Grey Court.