Just thought I'd add an update about Maharishi Free School Richmond to this thread.
I've been the proposer for both the existing Lancashire Maharishi Free School and the new one for Richmond.
Right now we are proposing a two-class-per-year Primary School and 3-class-per-year Secondary School on the Oldfield Road site. We are planning to have 24 children per class.
Maharishi Free Schools are non-faith, 100% inclusive - with CofE, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Hindu, Catholic and atheist children of every socio-economic group attending the existing School. 10% of our current intake have special educational needs, and 15% qualify for free school meals.
If any of you came to our first public presentation at Oldfield you will have witnessed first hand the widespread popularity of the School - in a room which could only accommodate 100 chairs we had 150 people, some of whom ended up queuing right down the corridor. We have already secured 100% pre-registrations for the Primary School intake for 2013, and the Secondary School intake is filling up fast. Most of the pre-registrations have come from Hampton post codes. Most of our proposed Board of Governors are local educators and parents. We are still accepting pre-registrations for primary and secondary for both 2013 and 2014.
I'll share a question that was recently asked by a Richmond parent - is there a particular type of parent who sends their child to Maharishi School?
Hmmm... given the mix we have in our current school I had to think about that one for a moment. What I realised was that the ONE thing that our parents had in common was that they were better informed than the average parent and more likely to take an active interest in their child's education. The more informed a parent was, the more likely they were to send their child to Maharishi School.
Academically Maharishi Schools are consistently rated 'outstanding'. More information on our academic results is available from our website www.maharishischool.com and for a quick summary have a look at the short video on our home page.
Anyway...sorry if this has turned into a long, drawn out summary...
If you would like to find out more you are invited to our next public presentations Saturday 7th of January at 10:30 at the Oldfield Center, Oldfield Road, Hampton; and Thursday the 12th of January at 19:30 at York House, Richmond Road, Twickenham, TW1 3AA.