New Secondary Schools for Richmond 3

[BayJay]

Hello and welcome to the Mumsnet thread about Richmond Borough Secondary Schools. The discussion started in February 2011 in two parallel locations here and here.

In November 2011 the most active of those two threads, in Mumsnet Local, reached 1000 messages (the maximum allowed) so we continued the conversation here.

Now its May 2012 and that thread has also filled up, so the conversation will continue here ......

Cat2405 That is very interesting indeed!!

So see the part below in that article - that I have put into bold - means there was not enough demand for Catholic Places at this school so it switched to Anglicanism!

So was there no demand frm Catholics beacuse this school was not rated highly/performing well? 1997 is pretty RECENT isn't it !!
What about this huge demand for Catholic places in borough?

Why should we start up another Catholic school, (to erase this huge diadvantage of being a rare london borough without one) just to have Catholics abandon it again like the last one. Or they won't will they because this one is in a 'better' area and thought likely peform well?!

SO the demand from Catholic parents is TRANSPARENTLY, from this example, NOT for just 'A Catholic in Borough school' but instead....
for a 'Catholic Borough school that performs better than average'.

We all know this, but the Catholic 'side' should just admit it!

Apart from they won't because it makes their so-called deep held committed religious beliefs look very convenient.

-------------------
Ecumenical school drops Catholic link

BY JOE JENKINS AND PAUL HARRISON July 1997

CHRIST'S SECONDARY School in south-west London last week became the first ecumenical school in Britain and Northern Ireland to abandon its Catholic arm in favour of Anglicanism.

The move by the 284year-old Richmond school was rubber-stamped in April by Gillian Shepherd, the former Secretary of State for Education and Employment, and is the first of its kind. Fifteen ecumenical schools nationwide were set up by Shirley Williams 18 years ago under Labour in an experiment to integrate the two religions in a single school.

Catholic demand for places at the school is limited, with only 10-15 percent of pupils practising Catholics, despite Christ's being the only Catholic secondary comprehensive in Richmond. !!!

However, there are numerous Catholic schools in neighbouring boroughs, including Hammersmith & Fulham, Ealing and Hounslow.

There are also plans to consolidate the school on its east site, involving a building project to be funded by the DfEE at a cost of kl million. Christ's is to be renamed Richmond High School, bringing to a close five years of wrangling between Catholic, Anglican and local education authorities.

The changes mean that the school will draw more pupils from Richmond and Kingston than from areas like Hammersmith and Clapham, in line with the current trend in south-west London.

Headmaster Peter Jenkins said: "We are very conscious that at a time when the peace process in Northern Ireland is so fragile, that people may get the wrong message that this is a reversal in the postitive direction towards peace talks. This is not the case.

"There are too many players in the field at the moment. There is a lot of funding available to schools at the moment and to get it you have got to act quickly."

Tony Barnet, a governor, told the Herald that the school had found it difficult to settle on a syllabus that satisfied both Anglicans and Catholics. While "intellectually close", he said, the approach of the faiths to moral issues are "attitudinally deeply different" and this had caused a conflict of interests.

Fr Anthony Logan, who retired as the Catholic representative on the board of governors, said that his only thought about the end of the 18-year partnership this week was "the success of the school from now on".

Twocotbeds - Do you seriously believe central Twickenham is a better area than Richmond? Wow ... Also stop thinking all Catholics are conveniently hiding behind our faith in order to achieve some elitist school. Although you may not be happy with the councils decision, it was a fair and democratic one. Maybe it is time all this energy be put towards bettering existing schools that DO have spaces.

ok NoUggscuse...( good name btw)....Can you give me any idea why these Catholic places at Christ's weren't taken up then? I would like to know your answer, genuinely.

If there is such an overwhelming demand for Catholic 2ndry Places in Borough then why relatively recently, 1997 did these spaces not get snapped up?

...... and also NOuggscuse, according to the last Ofsted report on Christ's school I could find (2003) this school, despite being near Richmond park apparantly has....

" The percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals is above the national average. A higher than average proportion of pupils are identified as having special educational needs; these are mostly of an emotional and behavioural type.
The percentage of pupils with statements of special educational needs is broadly in line with the average.
There is a greater than average percentage of pupils whose mother tongue is not English. The most common other languages spoken by these pupils are Korean, Spanish and Arabic. Most pupils in the school are of white-British background, although a greater proportion of older pupils have Caribbean, African and Asian heritages."

.....and The school is only graded as Satisfactory with "Standards are below national expectations, but pupil achievement is satisfactory overall."
__

....Of course this would could never be the reason that the Catholic places there were left unwanted, would it?

I understood that it is SO essential that Catholic families must have provided for them in-Borough Catholic School places?? So it is very relevant that this school was abandoned so very recently.

Still like to hear your answer...... if you have one?

TwoCotbeds, if the ecumenical school was underperforming then its not surprising that the places weren't popular, especially if there were plenty of places in the out-of-borough Catholic schools at the time.

At various times during this whole debate people have raised the issue of St Edward the Confessor having failed, but the answer has always been along the lines of "times have changed, modern Catholic schools are very different. Just because that one failed doesn't mean this one will". Its a reasonable answer. Schools fail because they're badly run, not because of the type of school they are or the area they're in. Unless the new school has exactly the same management team as the old one I don't think any parallels can be drawn. No one is doubting that a Catholic school at Clifden would be successful, so long as it is well managed.

TwoCotBeds - it was not a Catholic school in 1997, it had merged with the local church of England school (St Mary Magdalane) in 1976.

I am really not sure of the ins and outs but I understand that the two churches struggled to adopt a mutally acceptable ideology and Catholic parents shunned it and sent their children to Catholic schools elsewhere.

In 1997, by mutual agreement, the Roman Catholic Church withdrew from the management arrangement and Christ's School returned to being a Church of England maintained Secondary School.

I think there are a very large amount of Catholic Families who use the claim of Faith to try and obtain a better quality of School than otherwise. In fact I have met lots of people who have said they do this.

I think it is very hypocritical and unchristian not to admit this.

Lets be clear, there is not now, and was not in 1997 a desperate need for a school place to match a families perscnal belief,as the most important thing.

The fact that, so receently, Catholic places at an underperforming school were left unwanted really does point towards quality being the most important
factor, and distance to travel and supporting a faith as coming as less important.

Overall religiousness, including Catholism in the UK is in decline, and has been for ages. With each generation it is less. We all know this !

I think they would be a lot, lot, lot less baptisms in Catholic churches if there wasn't the incentive of more school choice! *

We all know this is true so I think it should be said it openly. No more hypocrisy.

TwoCotBeds - you keep presenting your opinion as fact getting more and more rude in your tone as time goes on.

You asked why Catholic families were not using the school in 1997 and I gave you an explanation to the best of my knowledge, this does not suit your narrow view of why Catholic families wish to have a Catholic school in borough now and so you choose to ignore it.

Catholic church attendance in Richmond now is higher than it has been for a long time, and this is despite their being no Catholic secondary school.

Richmond primary schools are all good or outstanding, faith schools and community schools - one does not need to pretend to have faith, or church attendance to get into these schools.

With regard to the transfer of Clifden I believe the sale is not due to be completed until RACC are ready to move which may not be for quite a long time as they have to rebuild their Richmond site in order to fit all the activities that happen at Clifden in (or those activities that they still intend to offer). By then the judicial review may be over so it is not necessarily holding anything up. However, if the judicial review is successful, presumably the Council will be forced to act in accordance with the new Education Act and allow others to express an interest in the site for a free school or Academy so that may take some time although no doubt it will still lean heavily towards a 50:50 Catholic school.

Glad my memory of the St Mary's playing fields school attempt was not faulty although I am amazed that it was only in 2005 - time isn't flying as fast as I thought it was! Funny that St Mary's has not been mentioned this time around. It does show that at that time it was assumed that the Catholic Church was going to find its own site for a secondary school not have one bought for it by the Council - but that, even in 2005 before the explosion in numbers of children needing places, it was clear that there was a severe shortage of suitable sites for new secondary schools.

Twocotbeds - Whether intentional or not your posts are quite offensive to those of us who are practising Catholics. I could sit here and argue why would people fake Catholicism in places like Strawberry Hill, Marble Hill or Teddington, places with outstanding schools, but why bother. Cynicism is hard to penetrate.

Again why not put all this energy into improving local schools that need supportive and proactive parents?

The Diocese could not get planning permission for the St Mary's site as far as I am aware.

Interesting to see the Cllr Eady's response...
Lib Dem spokesperson for education, Cllr Malcolm Eady, said: "It will be very hard for the Catholic church to get planning permission for the site, and it is a great pity, that instead of embarking on a controversial proposal, they do not put their energy, time and money into finding a site closer to the centre of the borough, preferably on a brown field site.
"If this search were successful, then the bid would have my full support."

Well, now we have the central site. Maybe he is happy after all.

noUggscuse "Again why not put all this energy into improving local schools that need supportive and proactive parents"

There are lot of people who are doing this already. Unfortunately it is the Catholic group that has decided not to be with us and work shoulder to shoulder to support and drive admisions in these community schools. Sadly we are not all in it together

Fine you have made your choice and used your overwheleming influence and power to get the political outcome, disregarding the rest of the community views. But please do not preach us on working for our local schools - we are doing that and shall continue to do so, with or without your support.

TwoCotbeds, I would agree that people have varying motivations for wanting a Catholic school. That's why I personally think that church schools should have open admissions, so that people's motivations for choosing the school are not an issue (though I realise others would disagree).

However, I think its also fair to say that the people who are fighting hardest for the VA school, and participating in debates like this, do have genuine Catholic faith, and are obviously going to get quite cross about any suggestion to the contrary, so its worth bearing that in mind.

Again why not put all this energy into...
NoUggscuse, that is also provocative. People are genuinely upset about this decision, and want to sound off about it.

Magic cant comment on Eady. That statement was made before the Lib Dems made inclusive admissions as their national policy in 2009. So they cant support a Catholic VA school. Cllr Knight was suggesting a Catholic academy instead. But apart from him, the Lib Dems have been pathetic .
The Cabinet meeting was just a show and not any real attempt to consider the genuine issues raised by those against the proposals. The Council also spun their way, being scared on the legal position. Hopefully justice will be done in due course and they will not be able to bluff thei way out in the court.

Chris - I dont think the RISC legal action can stop the purchase of RACC site. It may prevent though the lease of the site to the Catholic church to start the VA schools.

At various times during this whole debate people have raised the issue of St Edward the Confessor having failed

There's no evidence that St Edward the Confessor RC School failed. St Edward's RC merged with St Mary's CE in 1978 and became Christ's. It was full with 900 pupils and a waiting list when it opened, suggesting that both schools were well regarded at the time of merger.

Jeev: I agree: the purchase of the freehold is a done deal; I intended to refer only to the lease.

From today?s statement from the Lib Dems: Teddington & Twickenham 11-year-olds face journey to East Sheen secondary school within 15 months

?THE Council's decision to use all the spare school land available for expansion for a Catholic school and 6th forms instead means it is likely that 11-year-olds from the Middlesex part of the borough will face a daunting commute to school in East Sheen from September 2013 . . Liberal Democrat Group Leader Stephen Knight said:

Every parent in our borough knows that our primary schools have had to expand over the last 5 or 6 years to cope with a rapidly rising population of children. Now we are beginning to run out of capacity in local secondary schools. Only three of the borough's eight secondary schools have any spare capacity for this September's intake and next year, according to the council's own projections, without a new secondary school on the Middlesex side of the borough, only Richmond Park Academy in East Sheen will have spare places.

The Council's decisions on 6th forms has effectively removed the option of expanding existing schools and the decision to hand over the Clifden Road site in Twickenham to the Catholic Church removes the only obvious site for providing a new community school. This means that 11-year-olds in Twickenham, Hampton and Teddington could well face a daunting commute to East Sheen as soon as September 2013.

"why would people fake Catholicism in places like Strawberry Hill, Marble Hill or Teddington, places with outstanding schools" because at primary level they have good schools?

I agree with Bayjay there are parents who send their children to Catholic Primary Schools because of their devout beliefs and there are parents there because they want their children to grow up within a Catholic culture, and there is a continuum towards parents who, in good Catholic primaries as in all good primaries , have taken a strategic decision to go through whatever hoops are needed to get into a good school in a borough where it is sometimes difficult to get into any school let alone a good one. That is why Catholic Primary Schools and some good non Catholic ones fail to be socially inclusive, because disadvantaged children often do not have the benefit of parents motivated or able to compete and find a way in (which is no reason to exclude them). They face the secondary hurdle when they come to it, and then send their children to often accessible or very high quality Catholic state schools out of borough or if they can afford it, move or go private. That is why no one argued that it was a want rather than a need for a new Catholic School.

Although I agree with Bayjay that the history of Christs and Edward the Confessor is not relevent to the future of a new school, that will be determined by the motivated parents from thriving primaries, it is relevent to the points made about quality. I moved to the borough in 1986, Edward the Confessor had been an option and Christ's was an option for Catholic friends and neighbours (it was still considered to have a Catholic ethos, manifested in the mass and the curriculum) just as Shene was for non Catholic friends and neighbours, the regrets were the same, that the schools had been taken over by out of borough children whose behaviour, or rather the failure of both schools to address it, deterred local parents so that they no longer regarded them as an option. It was a little disingenuous of Catholic parents who spoke at the Cabinet meeting to cite their experience of long journeys when, if they were over 27 (no offence intended if they were younger) there was a Catholic option in borough and they did so because of quality.

If the Council had delivered consistent quality accessible to everyone (and I come from a borough, with a similar social profile to Richmond which delivers this) with no link system, then a lot of parents who opted for Catholic schools or private schools or moved away would have opted for community schools (with the resultant need for more than two new schools to have been provided by the Council) and then there would not have been anything like the demand for an exclusive Catholic school, or political influence to ensure it was delivered. And an inclusive Catholic School, catering for those genuinely wanting a Catholic education, and reaching into the community to help the disadvantaged, as you would expect, could have genuinely contributed to choice and diversity ( and that is also what happens where I come from) though it probably wouldn't have ever got off the ground ..... I'm not in the business of what ifs but noone should argue that this debate wasn't driven by quality on all sides.

"There's no evidence that St Edward the Confessor RC School failed"

Good correction Cat2405. It seems it was the experiment of making Christs ecumenical that failed.

Copthallresident - your point about those speeches at the cabinet meeting ocurred to me at the time too. There presumably were Catholic places in the borough when those parents were young, but they were Catholic places at an ecumenical school, and were competing with places at more traditional Catholic schools in neighbouring boroughs.

Chris - thanks for posting the link to the Lib Dem statement. The phrase "better late than never" springs to mind .

We don't know yet how Christ's will adjust its admissions policy with 30 extra pupils. Do you think it will attract more from Twickenham to its foundation places? It would be an option for some, but the 'open' catchment may not extend that far. That's the only expansion proposed so far. The council made assumptions about more open places but it competes with Grey Court, RPA and now Orleans to some extent.

"We don't know yet how Christ's will adjust its admissions policy"
They're planning to go 50:50 when they expand. Sorry, I don't have time to find a link for that at the mo, but I think its in one of the Scrutiny committee papers from about November 2011.

The foundation places at Christs have been undersubscribed in recent years.

I thought it was vaguer than that, 'in practice, it will be likely', etc. If true, it will still be competing with other local schools on the Richmond side. It would be an odd situation if it drew a few more from RPA's catchment then Twickenham pupils were sent to fill the places.

Chris - Lib Dems are again doing " Too little too late". RISC has highlighted this last winter. I have mentioned this before on this thread, either RPA will improve and fill up with their local primaries, or no one except the disadvantaged or desperate will send their kids from Middlesex there.

I was looking at the Teddington school websites today and on Sacred Heart RC main page there's a text that says:

"School Admissions: Did you know we have spaces in Years 1 - 5 inclusive? Contact the school for more details!"

www.sacredheart.richmond.sch.uk/

On the other hand, it's difficult to find a community place in Teddington...