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 ......

RISC write (to supporters): ?We had a phone conference last week with the British Humanist Association and the lawyers to consider whether to go ahead with legal action following the Council's decision on the exclusive Catholic schools. The result was that our lawyers sent a letter to the Council today saying that their decision was unlawful and that, unless they withdraw it, we will apply to the Court for permission for a Judicial Review.

. . Assuming their reply to our legal letter is negative, the next step is "Commencement of Proceedings". Because of the Court's summer recess, there is a risk that the hearing could be delayed until after the Council needs to invite applications for school places for September 2013, which happens in October 2012. Obviously we don't want to create uncertainty for parents, so we have asked the Council not to take the full time that is allowed for them to respond to each stage in the hope that we can get a Court date in late September. So that's the currently expected timing.?

Bayjay I think it is fair to say that there were Anglicans who wanted to keep Anglican schools exclusive, Anglicans that genuinely wanted to reach out and ensure the benefits of their schools were shared as far as possible with the most disadvantaged, and not be quasi private schools for the Middle Classes that filled up church pews, and all kinds of shades of opinion in between. Their debate was carried out to some extent in the public domain and what the Daily Mail would probably describe as a "liberal Archbishop of Canterbury" (because he couldn't actually be the Christian Archbishop of Canterbury )probably helped deliver a more inclusive compromise. Catholic canon law is something else entirely, certainly not subject to liberal compromise! and the underlying reason why we would never win the debate on the basis of any other brand of morality and principle, because for the Catholic Church, Lord True, Whitfield etc. there can be no immorality in their decision, according to their subjectivity, a Catholic School is always going to be right and a right ( and it seems the means to achieve it ). One of my contacts in local government (still not managed to get hold of them, jubileeing?) said that most Councils planning how they will meet the needs of the borough effectively disregard Catholic Schools as so socially exclusive as to be quasi private and so it would be very difficult to justify putting resources into a new one, perhaps that is why Ealing, the real seat of the Catholic "need" for new schools is not delivering a new Catholic school? However there are other Councils where a strongly Catholic leadership (actually my contact used the word zealots) have been able to deliver new schools, I think they mentioned Kent and somewhere in the North West. Anyway I gather the letter has gone to the Council now confirming legal action.

The same is true for the parents involved in this debate. We all make decisions on schools based on a whole range of subjectively arrived at and decided on considerations, the nature of the school, the quality of the school, the nature of the child, their wishes, their needs, distance, culture, family history, what we can afford etc. and to be fair for some Catholics I know that decision is determined by being devout (but then of course that generally puts them in a better position to get into Oratory and Sacred Heart, and will continue to do so according to the admissions criteria Oratory has fought Paul Barber to preserve) However the leaver's statistics for St James's show that many parents in Catholic Primary Schools make the same decisions we all do. It is just that compared with the rest of us they have had at least one additional option and from now on that will be the Clifden School School. It remains to be seen how many of them actually choose an untried school which may not be that local for them......

Or should I say if the Council has it's way will be the Clifden Road School....

I am really pleased to see that RISC is pushing the Council to co-operate to get the JR completed as soon as possible. Its in everyones interest to get this done as quickly and cost effectively as possible

A court date in late September will surely not be the end of it if the Council's decision is ruled unlawful since it will be directed to go away and make the decision again? If it has to go through the process of inviting proposals from interested parties to set up a Free School/Academy I would have thought that there could be a considerable delay as there may well be several parties interested in opening a school on the site - Catholic Church, NLS4T, Maharishi if it doesn't get Oldfield site, possibly others. LB Richmond will surely have to go through at least the same process of report, Scrutiny Committee, Cabinet etc, and why not another public consultation if there are several options?

These two documents show how a competition for an Academy is run and decided:

New Secondary School Competition, Kingston upon Thames Report from the seminar for potential proposers held on 18th May 2010
and
'Determination: Under the powers conferred on us by schedule 2 to the Education and Inspections Act 2006, we hereby determine that the proposed new secondary school in North Kingston shall be established by the Kingston Education Trust from 1 September 2015.' (04.01.11)'

Free Schools are chosen and set up by Government under a different Act of Parliament (2010) and therefore a different set of rules that BayJay knows about but I do not.

There would certainly be intense competition for the right to set up a new school on the site.

Chris/Lottie, this is my understanding of what would happen if the Clifden Road decision was overturned.....

1. The council would be back in the position of having a school site but no school to put on it.

1. Given the timing (September at the earliest), its possible that all of the approved local free schools may have already been allocated sites. Or possibly not.

1. If there were any approved free schools that didn't already have sites then the Government could simply decide to use Clifden for them without any competitive process. They would obviously consult carefully with the Council in doing that, and take their views into account, but it would ultimately be the Government's decision (the fact that the council own the land wouldn't be a barrier to that as the Government have the power to acquire any under-utilised public buildings for free schools).

1. If there were no approved free schools available to take the site, then the council could open it up for competition from the Academy sector (i.e. from pre-approved academy providers), as Chris describes (I think that legislation still applies, but haven't double-checked). I assume the Diocese of Westminster would qualify as an approved Academy provider and so would be able to put forward a proposal for a Catholic Academy at that point.

1. Alternatively, the council could put out a call for Free Schools proposers to bid for the site in the next round. Judging by the mailshots I've been getting from NSN there are a few councils doing that already as they cotton on to the fact that this is now the Government's favoured route for creating new schools. It would be possible for a Catholic Free School to be proposed in this way. If the Diocese of Westminster didn't want to be involved with that, then another Catholic sponsor might be interested, such as St Mary's University, or St Catherine's School.

All of this is just my understanding, so I might be wrong about some of it.

Just one more point to add to the end of the list ....

1. If none of the above resulted in an acceptable school proposal for the site, then I think the council could at that point legally accept the Diocese of Westminster's original VA proposal.

Just seen this www.sacredheartteddington.co.uk/ with a strapline saying "School Admissions: Did you know we have spaces in Years 1 - 5 inclusive? Contact the school for more details!"

If there is spare capacity at this local Catholic Primary School already how can Council justify building a new Catholic school? I've heard all other primaries in borough are jammed full.

The Head of Education acknowledges there isn't a need, or even particularly a want other than for a closer school for East / Central Twickenham Catholics, for a Catholic Primary in Twickenham, but that there is a need for primary schools places for non Catholics and this will provide 10, so that's fine. He did have the grace to look as if he realised this was the weakest link in their argument.

Not entirely tangentially I recommend this if anyone doubts we should be challenging the Council on it's strategies, and their effect on our community. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jt9bv/The_Secret_History_of_Our_Streets_Deptford_High_Street/ How an imposed Council strategy broke up the community in Deptford.

Bay Jay - it's a very confusing situation having a free school and a VA/ academy process going on at once. But it seems unlikely that if the Gov approves a free school proposal in July and then has to help that free school to find a site, that the Gov would rush into buying or renting an alternative site on the open market straight away without waiting for the outcome of the Clifden saga if there was the possibility of buying or renting a publicly owned site for less money.

To what extend does the fact that the Maharishi school signed up parents in Hampton to say that they would send their kids there disqualify it from switching to say that it would be interested in Clifden should it not get the Hampton site? Surely if you move the location too far the expressions of interest you have gathered become invalid?

I would be interested to know to what extent all the primaries in the borough are 100% full from years 1 to 6. Have just done a quick mental reccy and out of the 9 places that have come up in my daughter's junior school class in the last 4 years, all filled up quickly but 6 have been filled by a child moving in from another nearby state school because they have been excluded/bullied or because they were fed up with the lack of room to play football due to the previous school being a building site. Only 3 have gone to children moving in from abroad. Not sure if this means less popular schools do end up with some spaces in the later years but it doesn't really help with the shortage of places in reception anyway.

"it's a very confusing situation"
Lottie, yes, it takes a while to get your head round it all. No doubt things will become clearer when the Free School announcments are made, as it will inevitably cut down the number of "what ifs".

"To what extend does the fact that the Maharishi school signed up parents in Hampton to say that they would send their kids there disqualify it from switching to say that it would be interested in Clifden"
There's nothing to stop them expressing an interest in Clifden. If they're approved and can't have their first choice site, then the Government will need to find them an alternative. They were advertising their places across the whole of Richmond Borough, not just in Hampton.

"I would be interested to know to what extent all the primaries in the borough are 100% full from years 1 to 6"
In the early years spare places seem to fill up quite quickly, but then there's a slight drift towards private schools in juniors, so I think those spaces are more likely to remain unfilled. Some of the private schools take in a cohort of pupils in Year 3 (7+), or Year 6 (10+) which accounts for some of the losses.

In the Sheen/ Mortlake primaries, those lucky enough to have got into them in the first place, started to move out from around Year 3, not just to private schools but also to Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent (and Twickenham and Teddington) anywhere with good secondary schools.

On another thread on Mumsnet Local, some parents on the waiting list (because they have no reception place at all) have said the council has contacted them to persude them to take Sacred Heart Reception places.

To me this seems like we have too many Catholic primary places at Reception as well as above so again undermines the idea of starting a new Ctholic primary.

primal, yes, there was some discussion about that in this thread last week - see here.

The Surrey Comet reports that local parents are petitioning Michael Gove ' . . to provide funding for a new 8 for entry non-selective, non-faith, co-ed community Secondary School in North Kingston to provide school places for our children in 2015 and beyond that currently don't exist . . '; they have 479 signatories so far.

I predict that Michael Gove will write back to them to acknowledge their concerns and to encourage them to set up a free school, as he did here.

I do think it's a cheek to tell parents that they will have to set up a free school or find someone else to do it if they want their teenagers to receive any education - it's like the nightmare PTA meeting at which noone volunteers to run the school summer fair but magnified 1000 times! At what point if noone else offers are the local authority allowed to and funded to do something?! If I was in the position of these Kingston parents I would be arranging to abandon a huge group of junior school children at the Department of Education with notices saying "please educate this child" round their necks!

Isnt Nick Whitfield ex Kingston Council ?

Jeev, yes he was head of learning and school effectiveness there.

I wonder if he wrote Richmond's consultation submission on the north Kingston school? They argued that although places are clearly needed in the future, not all of them are needed in that precise area, and that Grey Court had already increased its intake of Kingston pupils to 35% by January 2009 so was serving that area. But the linked policy report showed only a year or two later, 53% of Y7 getting in on links from Kingston which could have been 63% on distance alone (155 out of 240).

We still don't know what applications look like for 2012 but I imagine that trend continuing. I can't see how even a free school would be helpful for Grey Court. Unless the NLS4T bid is turned down and Twickenham or Teddington pupils choose to walk over the footbridge - not convenient for most.

Mum in London - that's why I asked a couple of pages ago whether there were any statistics about where the children who can't or soon won't get secondary school places in Kingston actually live. I assume Kingston Council wants to build a school in North Kingston because that is the only site that it has, not because that's the location where the places are needed (assuming Grey Court doesn't become unavailable). But the unplaced children might be in New Malden or Tolworth or somewhere else which would be a better location for a new school, including a free school.

Agree that Grey Court isn't a very convenient school geographically for the majority of children in LB Richmond. One of my friend's sons ended up going there from the Fulwell area of Twickenham and it's a very bad journey in the morning via two buses changing in Richmond. She didn't feel happy about him doing that when he was only just 11 so ended up driving him there for the first couple of years.

"that's why I asked a couple of pages ago whether there were any statistics"

Lottie there probably are statistics, and if you hunt around on Kingston Council's website for the relevant committee documents, or do a bit of strategic google searching you might be able to find them. They can then be analysed, either by you or other people who you flag them up to. If you can't find them then you might be able to use a FOI request to get them.

As I said here we all have access to the same data. The more people there are out there finding it, analysing it and using it objectively to strengthen their arguments the better. Its the only realistic way to counter the "I'm in charge, so I'm right" culture.

Have had a look at the info on Kingston's website (mainly the School Admissions Forums minutes) but there is nothing at all about the geographical issue. Kingston has a high number of non-inclusive schools (single sex, grammar and Catholic) which seems to cause problems. For 2011 admissions it had an overall shortage of places for girls and sent a few over the boundary to LB Merton, but it still had some surplus places for boys. The documents reveal that 2015 is the year in which 8 additional bulge classes reach secondary school age and that is why a new school is so critical. There doesn't seem to be a plan B.

I agree Lottie, Grey Court is a good school and Kingston residents with children there are unlikely to support a rival free school.