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 ......

So what if NLS4T is told only site is in say mortlake in 13 or wait till 16 for egerton ?

Site and local community is core part of any new school - I feel the process of subsequent site selection strange

"So what if NLS4T is told only site is in say mortlake in 13 or wait till 16 for egerton ?"

And what if its not?

We could spend weeks discussing imaginary scenarios. Much better to sit tight and wait to see what happens. Frustrating though that might be, it's better than catastrophising about all the things that could possibly go wrong.

Hopefully there should be an announcement about Free Schools in the next few weeks, and then things will become clearer.

Interesting to see the discussion broaden to Kingston. There is merit in doing school planning at a cross borough level - think broadly and then execute locally. I was speaking a few days ago to a Councillor from Hammersmith, who mentioned who H&F, Westminister and K&C have been sharing services and departments. Not only has this saved £m's of costs and reduced Council tax bill, but also they are seeing the improvement through more holistic and effective plans.

"If the Michaela school can be approved for Lambeth yet switch to Wandsworth then presumably the Maharishis could look at the North Kingston site if approved without the Richmond site"

Looking at the Michaela School website, their target community seems to be "inner city London" rather than a particular borough, so that might explain why they can justify looking over a wider area. Their vision is to bring a particular type of school to a relatively deprived inner city community. Presumably they proved the demand for that type of school at their original site, so perhaps they've been able to argue that the concept was transferable. Or, perhaps not. I don't know how up to date their website is, but it looks like they're now having to defer opening to 2013, and haven't yet been given permission for that. I don't know what the permission will be based on.

In contrast, the Maharishi Richmond proposal has always been targeted specifically at a Richmond community, and NLS4T are specifically aiming to serve Twickenham, so it wouldn't be logical for them to move too far away from their originally proposed sites.

"There is merit in doing school planning at a cross borough level"

Hi gmsing. I expect that will be one outcome of the Achieving for Children agenda, with Richmond and Kingston ultimately working together on their planning.

Katherine Birbalsingh the proposed Head mistress of Michaela has a high political profile and agenda. The proposed school is all about that so a move to another community will not be an issue for her or Gove, more about it here. Not sure which I want less to guide my children's education, pseudoscience, religious dogma or political dogma...

And this is the say the community are having in it

Thanks BayJay for the link. It would make sense to include Hounslow and Wandsworth along with Kingston.

A mumsnet thread on the Michaela free school gives an interesting view. If you move borough you may compete with other schools for a very different intake. I'm not clear who would be founding or governing this school if she is the head.

To be fair when you look on her website she cites a Toby Young (!) article that highlights how the Guardian are also channelling a political agenda and much of the criticism comes from the left. The Mumsnet thread highlights though where that leaves parents, as with the Maharishi, suspicious of other agendas and scrabbling around trying to get to the truth behind all the rhetoric, so they can make a decision as to whether they can trust these schools with their children.

I have a 19 year old who has been in the pilot year of just about every bit of tinkering there has been in the education system from SATs on, she was fed up to the back teeth of it by A2 (another newly tinkered curriculum). As a Scientist she is greatly relieved that her education didn't have any religious or pseudoscience agaenda. Why can't we leave the professionals to do their job, based on years of experience, and embracing innovation based on sound academic research, rather than someone's pet theory, or nostalgia for 70s Grammar Schools (which actually made many of us miserable)! I know many teachers feel the same.

"Why can't we leave the professionals to do their job, based on years of experience, and embracing innovation based on sound academic research"

Sounds ideal, but I don't think it would ever be possible to have no tinkering at all. I like to think we're slowly iterating towards a mythical 'perfect' system. Rather like a pendulum swinging backwards and forwards, we'll eventually settle on something that suits the majority (though occasionally somebody puts a spanner in the works by giving the pendulum a shove ).

I have to say that my children's primary school is streets ahead of my own primary back in the seventies, so we must be doing something right as a society.

BayJay: a pendulum slows down and stops because of friction; once stopped, it never moves again unless perturbed from outside, because of its inertia. Is that really your idea of an ideal society? It sounds deadly boring to me. And likely to be far from perfection - whatever that may be.

I remember former Cllr David Cornwell (chair of the education committee for many years) grumbling to me 20 years ago about the upheaval and expense caused by the move from 40 to 30 pupil classes: My kids went through primary school in classes of 40 and it never did them any harm . .

"Is that really your idea of an ideal society?"

No, it was a hasty metaphor used to illustrate a point.
Thanks for the physics lesson Chris. Remind me to return the favour sometime .

Copthallresident: your dd may be interested to know that evolution is to be added to the primary national curriculum in England, gratifying scientists and educators who have been campaigning for its addition over the last three years. In 2009, the British Humanist Association coordinated a letter from top scientists and science educators in Britain calling for the addition of evolution to the primary curriculum . .
Now, in the new draft of the primary national curriculum for science, posted at the DfE's website on June 11, 2012, students in year 4 (ages 8 and 9) are introduced to the ideas of adaptation, inheritance, and evolution, and students in year 6 (ages 10 and 11) are introduced to the fossil record as evidence for evolution . .
It?s 153 years since the Origin of Species was published - better late than never I suppose. I certainly learnt nothing about evolution all through my school days 50 years ago. I wonder if there will be a conscience clause exempting those who say they don?t believe in evolution.

Anyway, it was a pendulum on a train that I meant, but you can stretch these things too far.

Bayjay I agree with you to an extent and I think there have been a lot of areas in which change has been a huge improvement. Improving the professionalism of teachers with tighter management of processes in schools including appraisement and training to improve standards, the increased focus on the child and building their confidence and the emphasis on stimulating the love of learning and giving them the skills to be able to use as well as learn facts. The best years of my daughters' school years were in an International School (just when one of our daughters finally got offered a place in a Richmond Primary, at St Mary's ) where they benchmarked themselves against the best state primaries and could take the best of what was happening in British Schools and discard anything that didn't fit their central ethos and values. It really was a special place, and a complete contrast to my own schooling which was designed to cram me with facts and knock any signs of spirit or confidence out of me, and my daughters certainly remember it as the best and most formative years of their education.

However most of these changes have come from within the profession, or benchmarked against what happens in other organisations. I don't have any problem with tinkering as long as they are listening to the professionals, take it gradually rather than piling successive changes on one cohort, and it is an iterative move forward, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (in planning we always used the metaphor of a supertanker rather than a train, needing to trim the course etc!)

However I am rather fed up with hearing Gove et al quote what top universities want and what goes on in private Schools, when I am now part of a top university, and the academic study of History, and know exactly what goes on in private schools and none of it makes any sense at all! Ms Birbalsingh is coming out with more of the same (For instance both my daughter's have done GSCE woodwork, or RMT as it is known now, and I think knowing what to do with a rawlplug, how to use CAD, appreciating that you have to research the needs of consumers and how to go about it and come up with a specification and design a product, will come in quite useful in their lives as well as being able to quote Grahame Greene! )

Interesting to hear the theory of Evolution is going to be taught at Primary level (I actually was but maybe that was because my teachers were Victorian . On the other hand there has been a lot of controversy at my daughter's uni about whether people on campus should be allowed to prosletyse a creationist agenda (or indeed a purely pro life one).

" where they benchmarked themselves against the best state primaries and could take the best of what was happening in British Schools and discard anything that didn't fit their central ethos and values."

Copthall, that's exactly the strength I think that RET will bring to NLS4T. They're a collective of super-heads, subject specialists, Ofsted inspectors etc who have a helicopter view of best practice across both state and private schools nationally. They normally work on a consultancy basis but NLS4T will benefit from all their combined input to create something really special. If it gets the funding .

And NFS4T will also have the other strength that their latest inspection highlighted as contributing to the school being rated "outstanding" and "exceptional", " There is a real and palpable sense of community. It starts with the fact the school is owned and governed by the parents. This has the impact of promoting and supporting the unremitting focus on the child and their needs, the positive ethos that is notable as soon as one enters through the front door is due to the efforts of all stakeholders"

Hi all.
As I said back here, the amendments of the 2011 Education Act in relation to the establishment of new schools are pretty complex.

To complicate things further, the online legislation website does not yet have the act available to view in its revised form - only the amendments are available to view, so you have to look at them alongside the relevant section of the 2006 Education Act.

Now, I'm no lawyer, but I can follow a few basic instructions, and I've had a go at applying the amendments myself in a word document. If you're interested in taking a look at the result, I've put it here. Of course it comes with a health warning - I can't guarantee that I didn't miss something!

So, going back to Lottie's original question ......

"I notice that the bulletin you quote says "that where a Local Authority identifies a need for a new school, it should ideally be a Free School or an Academy" - so it's just "ideally"?"

Section 6A says that "a local authority in England think a new school needs to be established in their area, they must seek proposals for the establishment of an Academy". (As I said before, the word 'Academy' encompasses 'Free School', which is just a type of academy).

Sections 11-A1 and A2 say that a local authority can only establish a community school if it has exhausted the process of seeking an academy under Section 6A.

Chris Cook, the FT's education correspondent, comments on Michael Gove's plans for the GCSE: O-levels and social mobility (FT Data Jun 21) The Google map he has created shows the social geography of England, and therefore of this borough, divided into 'small (census) areas' very vividly. The high scoring (on GCSEs) areas are dark blue, the low red.

An interesting blog post from Croydon borough, where council cabinet members take the trouble to write about what they are doing and why:

A new Grammar School for Croydon?

A decision on the future use of a potential school site in South Norwood might open the door to the first selective state school in Croydon in a generation, writes Cllr Tim Pollard, Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Learning.

. . Why is this site to be an annexe rather than a new school? The site is only big enough to provide a maximum of four forms of entry and there are sound educational reasons why this is really too small to be a viable school.

. . So we took the decision yesterday to open up the competition to run this school to all types of secondary school . .The criteria the new provider needs to meet are that it should be a Good or Outstanding school in its OFSTED rating, that it should have well above average GCSE and A-level results and that it must be able to demonstrate that it can apply its admissions criteria appropriately and be in a position to receive funding from the Government as it expands.

So does that mean it could be a Grammar School? Yes, it could.

The FT's Chris Cook comments: [[http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2012/06/20/on-new-grammars/#axzz1yXIvvzkoblogs.ft.com/ftdata/2012/06/20/on-new-grammars/#axzz1yXIvvzk On new grammar schools
]]

Interesting map there, thanks Chris. The areas with grammar schools coloured in blue are more often than not next to the pink areas where there is a larger concentration of lower achievers - surprise surprise. Kent has the most divisive system in the area with the best and worst schools/areas within its borders. Imagine if a Tiffin satellite school were thrown into our mix of schools here in Richmond - it would be like a throwing a grenade into a borough that does comparably well, even if there are still areas for improvement.

Worth pointing out that the pinker areas of the borough are unlikely to be densely populated as they cover two cemeteries, sports grounds and a nature reserve. Meanwhile, there must be some very bright Canada geese, rabbits and deer living in Richmond Park, Bushy Park and Kew Gardens, etc.

Middle Layer Super Output Areas . . [have] an average population size of 7,200. You can download them if you wish. Richmond borough's 18 wards, each with a population of 10,000 (equalised 10 years ago), are divided into 23 MSOAs, with an average population of 7,800. Some must indeed be small as they map onto the wards without crossing their boundaries. Conversely some wards will I expect contain only one MSOA but I haven't checked which they are.