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 ......

Thanks a lot BayJay for sharing that post. I agree that it was out voted and we have seen again now that due to the make up of the committee, the only thing that will be voted will be what the 5 Tory and 2 Church reps want. No matter how strong the views of the other 6 and 1 ( who cannot form a view on anything!), they will be out voted again and again and again.

But the point here is about not following acceptable level of standards in making forecasts. Is there no way for members to raise that to the Councils standard committee ?

Is there no way for members to raise that to the Councils standard committee ?

I don't know much about the standards committee, but I assume any member of the public can raise issues with them.

Looking at it again I think the Standards Committee is only for investigating complaints against Councillors, so it wouldn't coer something like best practice in school place planning. The buck would stop with the scrutiny committee for that.

We have now written to Democratic services highlighting the the inaccuracies and inadequacies in the Scrutiny committee report. They have been requested to correct them and publish an updated version

Perhaps the poor forecasting methods used by LB Richmond will be part of the argument in the judicial review ie. it did not correctly identify the fact that there was a "need" for a new secondary school very soon because it didn't follow best practice. However, I'm still unclear whether a "need" for a school in the next few years (ie. 2014 or 2015 or 2016 rather than 2013) is enough or whether it has to be a more urgent need. Given the shortage of sites, the cost of land locally the time it takes to build a school from scratch, funding shortages etc. I would have thought that showing a "need" for a school in the next few years would be enough but I have no idea if that's how the court would see it.

JoTwick: There is indeed a Standards Committee, concerned only with the conduct of councillors; it will disband on July 1; see the minutes of its meeting on January 19 to find out what will replace it.

It can do nothing to improve the skills or change the attitudes of the Council officers.

These were the areas of risks to forecasts I outlined at the Cabinet Meeting - obviously with only 3 minutes you can't spout numbers but these were the back up stats I had drawn off (thanks to those who posted the ones I used from here!) in the vain hope they would ask questions.
here

 The Council admits that there are many variables in predicting and providing school places which make it difficult, and yet all their focus on risk is on the possibility of unfilled capacity.

 With just 3% spare places in the borough in 2014 surely there should be an equal focus on the risk that the Council will fail to provide enough places, again

 Here are just a few of those risks, both probable and will have a high impact

 The Council proposes no new places in it's maintained schools, and a reduction in academies until 2016 or possibly later and yet the primary school cohort, all in our schools now, will have increased by 23%.

 It is assumed that there will be a halving of out of borough pupils. We were assured by The Council's officials that the the 2012 figures were confirmation enough of those forecasts going forward to 2016. Not surprising since they were made a few months ago and undermined by ignoring the risks that

 the Kingston School is still not certain of finance, it isn't in the Government priority building list issued today, and may be built too far south to meet demand near the boundary
 and there is no immunity from the 17% increase in pupil numbers that will hit Hounslow in 2015 far exceeding their capacity.

 It is also assumed that there will be 95 places in Free Schools from 2013. The only school that would deliver that won't know until August if it has funding and Clifden Road will be the most easily and quickly delivered site

 The parents who the Council has always relied on to opt for private education or move from the Borough when faced with no place at a local school are no longer as able to oblige. Economic forecasts, especially for the Financial sector which employs many of them, continue to be bleak.

 In 2013, the removal of links will mean many parents will have wider options, catchment areas are bound to shrink and the pressure on spare capacity increase, especially in Twickenham.

 The impact of the risks on the parents in my road is that as early as 2013 Twickenham children will have only a long journey to Richmond Park Academy as an option. And Richmond Park Academy are planning to be fully subscribed by 2014. Why wouldn't they be? There is no reason why local demand for an improved school will not be as great as it is for Orleans

 The new School at Egerton Road, is still largely spin, there may have been meetings but the feasibility and timing, of the site, funding, design and building are all uncertain.

And now we know what a bullett point in Word comes out cut and pasted into Mumsnet! Sorry!

CopthallRes: Doesn't matter about the styling, your points are excellent, so valid. It is really schocking the Council's complacency.

I feel really upset at the decision taken about this school.
Really upset that my own children matter less than one select group.

But I must say, congratulations to the Catholic Community locally who fought for this school, exculsively for themselves.

Well done!

Now why don't you carry on that sucess and campaign for your own new and exclusive Hospital, Library and Shopping Centre??

After all at Hospital people like to be with their own friends and often want some pastoral care while they are there.
And can be unpleasant waiting in Line in A and E with strangers you don't know.

Also in Libraries and Shopping Centres wouldn't it be be nicer for people to have total 'continuity' in their lives and mix with the same people, their friends?

Apparently some Children really need places outside their own home or church exactly to exactly match those 2 places.

Apparantly it's essential to keep these children together as one group seperately!?

**These were all the same reasons used to argue in favour of the unfair School proposal, so I am sure our lovely Council will back anymore similar ideas and more ways to segregate children, you just need to ask them.

And they will do it free for you, using Taxpayers money too. A new local Hospital for Catholics only would easily get set up because most people are too complacent to do anything.

Also you could use your network of chuches to flood any consulatation to show majority support.

You could get a lovely Hospital like a Private one but at no cost to yourselves!

I wish Catholic families who supported this school could see how divisive, insulting and unfair it feels to the rest of us.

I hope the legal challenge delays it for ages and ages then good sense may prevail at last.

Thanks BayJay and Chris. I did not mean about standards in the sense questioning the conduct of councillors or council officers . I meant is there an office in the Council that looks at quality of internal processes, benchmarking, continous process improvement ? perhaps an internal process audit or governance group ? I am not familiar with local govt, but if our Council is not using best practice - how does one encourage them to move in that direction?

It should be what we should expect Scrutiny committee members to look into and take the matter with the Internal audit or governance group. In case they are outvoted and have serious concerns, they should so something, rather than just shrug their shoulders and move on.

This is where I feel the SC make up is too political - 9 politicians, 2 Church reps and only 3 Parents. It does not help that Lib Dems are not forceful enough and one of the parent governors does not understand her responsibilities.

Fairtoall - I would not want the legal case to be dragged. Its not in the interest of our children and would not be a good use of tax payer money, if it is a long legal battle.
Of course the Council could have done the honourable thing of admitting that the law had changed and invitied a Catholic academy proposal. Insted what we got were disingenuous statements and attempts to cover up/ spin on needs and wants. Good luck Mr Whitfield - try that line in front of a judge !

JoTwick: Performance is the key word, not ?standards?. You should let Cllr Tony Arbour, Cabinet Member for Performance [Conservative, Hampton Wick] and Cllr Brian Miller [Liberal Democrat, Ham, Petersham and Richmond Riverside] chair of the Finance and Performance Overview and Scrutiny Committee whose next meeting is on Tuesday, 12 June know what you think. These Search results may be helpful.

In case they are outvoted and have serious concerns, they should do something, rather than just shrug their shoulders and move on

Jo, if you really think that's what happened then you're either mistaken or being remarkably unfair.

JoTwick: you put ....."I would not want the legal case to be dragged. Its not in the interest of our children and would not be a good use of tax payer money, if it is a long legal battle."....
A long legal battle not my first choice of what should happen, and would indeed waste taxpayers money, but it is far preferable to instantly wasting £15 million traightaway by the Council signing over the site to the Catholic church for 150 years!

I'd prefer a long battle that lasted ages as it probably would cost less than £15 million. And if it drags on, then there is more chance of the council changing to a more reasonable one.

Of course the best outcome would be a quick legal ruling that says the council should consider a Free school on the site instead. The rise in need for secondary places will be here in just 2 years so we need a site up and running as soon as possible for an inclusive community school.

BayJay Apologies if I was being totally blunt. But has anyone already raised the point on performance/ standards / best practices around Councils school places forecasting process ?

Another committee which keeps an eye on school place planning is the Audit Committee. In November they raised the level of school place planning risk to Amber.

I think the Judicial Review will be about defining the precise meaning of the law and the precise context in which a Council has or has not to seek academy proposals. It's a new law and untested. The Council are saying it's about needs and wants but that is not necessarily what a judge will interpret it as saying. It's on that judge's interpretation, not the Councils, that the rest of the case will hinge

I would have thought it would be difficult for a judge to rule on whether the current forecasts, and their quality negate the Council's judgement on whether it has or hasn't a need for a new school. My point was as much about the way they were not called to account with a detailed justification of the figures, and to assess the risks (indeed both Whitfield and Paul seemed quite irritated that anyone was daring to question them at all!) as it was about the actual, what would be regarded in business as, mainline forecasts themselves. They will argue to a judge that they use the best practise for the context, lowest per pupil budgets in Outer London, and money following the pupils, making full schools essential, and difficult to predict local conditions (those pesky west London middle classes move around too much ) . If you are coming at the problem with the view of minimising the risk of the academies ending up with spare capacity then forecasting the lowest likely level of demand is arguably reasonable. However it means by definition that there is a high level of risk it will be an underestimate, and it can't be presented as the most likely outcome, so obviously as parents we don't find it reasonable , and you would hope the politicians representing us wouldn't either! And if they need to no doubt they would rustle up some alternative models and risk assessments to satisfy a judge, that said what Lord True wanted them to say.

I think what might work better would be to demonstrate through their record on primary school places that they have consistently failed to meet the need for new schools? That what they have delivered has been too little, too late? Whitfield said it was regretable some parents weren't accommodated until the last minute (or after, last year at least) but it was a necessary evil because of the need to keep schools full. It really really irritates me that no one in the Council acknowledges that implicit in this strategy is that it deters parents away, so it doesn't meet need. But then that hinges on what constitutes sufficient provision, and need!

Mr Whitfield is out of touch. Even my Catholic friends said to me after the debate, they were uncomfortable with what he said about no need for Catholic school.
They will not back him on this, as they feel there is a desperate need for a Catholic school - A desperate need to provide continuity and consistenty of Catholic education from primary to secondary, to repatriate all the kids who want to continue their Catholic education in the borough.
I respect their need and their values that will not support a false argument to try and beat the law.

Funding bid for new Kingston school falls through reports the Kingston Guardian (May 30): ? . . The government released a list of 42 schools prioritised for cash under the Priority School Building Programme (PSBP), but the proposed school for the North Kingston Centre site, currently an adult education centre, was not one of them . . Kingston?s executive member for education, councillor Liz Green said the government "unfairly" changed the funding criteria and demographic needs were not considered when allocating the money. She said: "It?s a bit of a shock. We could have been told several months ago. To say we were disappointed is an understatement."

. . Cllr Andrea Craig described the shortage of school places across the borough as a "deepening crisis" and warned that the situation would only worsen unless planning was improved. She said: "We have got to start using our brains and to protect the community. We are the nappy valley of Surrey and we are not building with the forethought and sight of what we will need."

. . Director of education at the council, Duncan Clark, . . said one option could be a free school, for which there is separate funding available: "The council remains open-minded to all options and would especially support a proposal that would increase the capacity of non-selective, co-ed places in the borough that were open to all resident children." (my emphasis)

So why did Nick Whitfield mislead the Cabinet saying that they should have not been expecting funding in this round ?

gmsing, I think he meant they weren't expecting funding in the announcement last week, which was about school rebuilding. This one, about new schools, is a new announcement, and the one they were waiting for.

It just struck me that this idea of the Council aiming always to have schools 100% full, because funding follows the number of children; may work at Primary but is totally inappropriate at Secondary level.

Its because if a child does not have a school place at Reception Primary, there is some slack until that child turns Five, there is not a legal requirement that the child is educated. So you could have a bit of a lag in theory and could scrabble around sorting out places last minute in August, sept and Oct or even the months after that, as many are not turned five yet.

However with Secondary places it is a legal requirement for a child of eleven to have an education, afterthey h ave left primary. There is no slack at all ! And also it is much more stressful to the child, as unlike primary there will be aware of what is going on and will want to know what is the next school they are going to.

In the Swindon study I linked to earlier, the following recommendation is made:

"Recommendation 1 - An explicit statement be made setting out a reasonable level of surplus places expected for infrastructure planning purposes at primary and secondary level. Although the Swindon School Organisation Plan refers to 6% for both, this is an aim rather than the norm and may be too low for primary schools. We recommend that these overall levels be set at 8% and 6% respectively for primary and secondary schools for the reasons given in this report."

I haven't found the "reasons" bit yet.

Think I've found it ...

"5.11. We regard a reasonable level of surplus places to be 8% for primary schools and 6% for secondary schools. These reflect norms across the country and the expectations of government departments and the Audit Commission. They allow more places at primary schools where surpluses are less easy to use since younger children find it more difficult to make their way to schools that are some distance away."

So with 4% at secondary and must be less at primary (are there any primary Schools not filled at Reception?) are Richmond vulnerable to criticism from Dof E / the Audit Commission? Don't Swindon sound warm and cuddly in comparison to Richmond, acknowledging that small children finding it hard to travel is actually a consideration!

On the Kingston school Whitfield actually said that the list issued that day, which was called the Priority Building List, addressed condition not need, hence it was actually rebuilding, and that need would be addressed through separate channels, which is consistent with what the Kingston Councillor says about demographic needs not being considered. Except she seems to think it puts the school at greater risk whereas Whitfield was dismissing it, as he does, with a world weary "why are these people sent to try us" air ......