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 ......

I notice one of the parents on the Kingston Facebook page has posted this in response to a letter from Zac Goldsmith saying they all need to work together to open a free school: "But I don't want a free school! Just a normal, non academy, non faith secondary school open to all. Zac is parroting the party line here. I know he is not one who normally follows Tory dogma (I'm trying to be fair, Nat!) but in this instance he doesn't have any understanding of how most people experience education systems ie non private."

Though the table I downloaded lists only 23 MSOAs (Middle Layer Super Output Area - see my post on the previous page) in the borough, the map appears to show 26.

If the map is correct, the wards that are divided into 2 MSOAs are: Kew, North and South Richmond; and: St Margaret's, Fulwell; and Teddington. Ham & Petersham = 3.

The two pink [low scoring] areas are:

Ham: Proportion passing English, maths and 3 other GCSEs: 56%; probability of a bottom quarter finish: 30 %. No. of 16 year-olds: 63.

And the eastern end of North Richmond: Proportion passing English, maths and 3 other GCSEs: 61 %; probability of a bottom quarter finish: 28 %. No. of 16 year-olds: 18

The 2 next lowest scoring [light blue] areas are: Heathfield 68 %, 18 % and N = 117; and East Kew: 64 %, 18 % and N = 72.

The best scoring MSOA is E02000801, which is a strip running east from Fulwell station to the river, part in Fulwell and part in Teddington wards: 77 %, 4 %, and N = 47.

The bit of Ham & Petersham by Richmond Bridge is so small that its scores are: 60 %, 0 %, and N = 5!

Those MSOAs, and the related SOA (Super Output Area), definitely have to be used very carefully. There's a poverty indicator based on the SOA, called IDACI (Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index), which can give some interesting results if you compare postcodes either side of an area boundary.

Lottie - As we have discussed on this thread before, as per new rules the Council cannot open a new school. They have to invite proposals for academy / free school. So I am not sure why Zac (despite being out of touch with state education ) should be saying anything else.

I think Zac Goldmith is on a steep learning curve when it comes to local schools - having had very little experience of them he's made some tactless comments in the past. Although I can understand why Kingston parents just want a decent non-faith non-selective school, the idea of whether to expand Grey Court for both boroughs' benefit or set up a new seems to have got party political. However, maybe instead it is better for GC to stay medium-sized with an Olympic sized swimming pool (saw it in the RTT but can't find a link).

Wikipedia says: Goldsmith was educated at four independent schools: at King's House School in Richmond and The Mall School in Twickenham, followed by Hawtreys School, near Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire, and Eton College in Berkshire, and later earned four A Levels as a student at the Cambridge Centre for Sixth-form Studies, after having been expelled from Eton for possession of cannabis.

I was just making the point that it seems that parents in Kingston have not quite woken up to the realisation that, despite years of consultation having decided on a new, non- religious, inclusive, normal sort of community secondary school run by a consortium involving their local council, that is not what they are going to get. ZG is obviously both "parroting the party line" and correct to point out that it's a free school or nothing now. Not sure whether he and others will be able to lobby successfully for Kingston to be put to the front of the queue for free school funds in view of the fact that it's been let down before. Doesn't seem to have worked for schools that have been promised funds for rebuilding for years.

Zac is out of touch on state education in fact featured in the independent schools edition of RTT last yr. Could be difficult with politics . Zac can't seem to work with neighbouring Lib Dem MPs. And Ed probarbly has the job Zac would want to do :)

Just posting a link to an RTT story about Twickenham Academy's building progress and the result of their recent Ofsted Inspection.

Full Ofsted report is here.

Just found the article about Grey Court's potential new swimming pool - sounds exciting, and Zac is impressed too. Maggie Bailey, the headteacher, came across well in the cabinet webcast.

Here is the report:

' . . Main Judgements: The academy has made satisfactory progress towards raising standards.

Priorities for further improvement: Develop greater consistency in teaching and assessment across subjects, ensuring that:

all teachers build on the good practice identified across the curriculum information on students? abilities, knowledge and skills is used to plan more consistently challenging lesson activities and tasks which extend their learning and support those who are less confident

the checking of learning is consistently implemented in lessons so that students can accelerate their progress

the marking of students? work fully informs students about how to achieve their goals and how to improve their presentation and literacy skills.

Improve leadership of teaching and assessment by ensuring that:

the monitoring of the quality of teaching looks closely at students? learning and progress middle leaders develop strategic and operational capacity for self- evaluation and implement greater consistency in teaching and assessment across subjects.'

I note that Her Majesty?s Inspector Meena Kumari Wood has not bothered to learn how to punctuate! It is no wonder that the kids can't do it either.

She also writes: ' . . There are 710 students on roll. Two thirds of these are White British, with the rest from diverse minority ethnic backgrounds. The proportion of students for whom English is an additional language is high. The proportion of students known to be eligible for free school meals is much higher than the national figure. The proportion of students who are disabled or have special educational needs is low. However, the number of students with statements of special educational needs is high, the majority of whom have been identified as having behavioural, emotional and social difficulties.'

Satisfactory progress does not pass muster . Even RPA got good progress rating in their similar Ofsted inspection.

TA is performing below par and I am afraid not made the changes needed to improve teaching standards and inspire confidence in our community .

ChrisSquire I'm dyslexic so the last person to make a judgement on punctuation, and especially, you may have noticed, spelling, but the extract you print was bulletted (that's probably a dyslexic word as well!!) in her original letter. In my former bastion of traditional Civil Service standards it was always accepted there was ambiguity about how you punctuate bullet points, since they essentially postdate traditional punctuation conventions. Rigourous use of punctuation could be repetitive and unnecessary and, according to the design and branding geeks, spoil the appearance of a report. As long as you were consistent there were a number of options, including using the bullet mark itself as the punctuation. But I would say that wouldn't I!

I find the TA academy OFSTED report quite concerning not just because of the disparity in the standard of progress compared to RPA but also that the leadership is also rated as only satisfactory. Surely with an Academy with a very clear mission to improve it is a strategic imperative that the leadership should be at least good and preferably outstanding? It does explain why Whitfield and Hodgkin aren't predicting parents will be won over to TA more quickly.

Completely off topic just discovered Twickenham had an important role in the journey away from the traditional 11+ for assessing pupils. From the Plowden Report 1967 ^415. The NFER, in their enquiry in Twickenham in 1956 (4), found the greatest accuracy was achieved when account was taken both of attainment tests and of the head teacher's order of merit scaled by the results of an intelligence test. Nevertheless, the order of merit was the best single predictor. Only a slight reduction in accuracy was caused by leaving attainment tests out of the calculation. This loss of accuracy must be weighed against the effects of externally imposed attainment tests on the curriculum of the primary school. Some teachers undoubtedly prepare for attainment tests and give this preparation undue weight in the curriculum. Some authorities try to reduce the backwash on the curriculum of standardised attainment tests by including English composition in the tests, or by new English tests which allow a greater freedom of response than did earlier types. Arithmetic tests have been constructed in which speed and computation are reduced in importance and items included which attempt to measure understanding. Although these tests are improvements they will not allow enough freedom to primary teachers if they are externally imposed. We conclude that where selection procedures continue to be used, a slight loss of accuracy is better than the risk of a harmful backwash on the curriculum, and that externally imposed attainment tests should be abandoned."

I didn't do that deliberately

Copthallresident: I was criticising the absence of any punctuation within the bullet points - after 'those who are less confident', 'accelerate their progress' and 'learning and progress'; a semi-colon is the correct mark to indicate that what follows is a separate but related sentence.

The ends of the two bullet points are correctly marked with full stops.

I have no truck with 'design and branding geeks' - ugh!

ChrisSquire I did say don't ask me to judge punctuation, my brain does it's best to live in a virtually detail free world... Totally offthread but can't resist responding on design and branding geeks. I shared your cynicism. I once had to sit through a whole day of options for branding a service, only relieved by one of the options being almost identical, from font to uniforms, to the branding of Hitlers SS, bar the swastika . And they hadn't noticed.. and they still persisted in working on what they saw as the positive "forceful" and "efficient" elements of the brand! Ugh indeed.

Except out of that came one of the UKs most copied brand names, so you had to concede some truck with them

Though not totally irrelevent. Isn't that what the Academies have done, attempted a rebrand? And these things do stir powerful perceptions. TA appearing to turn it's back on it's heritage within it's own community Whitton, hasn't gone down well with some of the people I know who live there. They feel it has a whiff of middle class snobbery and suggests the school wants to attract in Twickenham children rather than their own, and has devalued their pride in their education. With all the focus on improvement and standards we tend to forget that the academies weren't all bad and were capable of giving a happy education and a decent crop of GCSEs.

Jo - I support your points. Academies that have not made the changes are doing a dis service to their local communities. They are not offering the quality and stopping the Council from creating more quality places. Changes should be made at leadership teams in academies that are failing to deliver the education the community wants. Its time to stop blaming the community and focus on improving the quality of education.

Good point - the assessment in RPA's inspection report rated leadership and teaching standards more highly by comparison:

The strong and clear leadership of the headteacher has galvanised self-belief in staff and students.

The distribution of responsibilities to create a wider leadership team has injected ambition and energy into converting satisfactory teaching to good, and good to outstanding.

So who can parents and the community turn to in order to get Twickenham Academy to raise its standards? Does the council have no further responsibility?

This was just a monitoring inspection. As part of that they will have been told what they need to do to score a 'Good' in their full inspection next year (bearing in mind that 'Good' is the new acceptable standard of education under Ofsted's new rules).

They need to throw everything they have at acting on that advice over the next year. I expect they're aware of that, and the local community will be watching closely.

Heli - If this was a business enterprise, this report would be unacceptable and require the CEO to step aside. But irrespective of the report, we all know that TA is not making the changes the community wants. Parents get inspired or discouraged by the headteachers and the seniors supporting the head. HA is an example of how a good head can win back the community confidence.
TA and RPA need to gracefully make leadership changes in order to win back the confidence of the community.

concparent, Ofsted judged RPA to have 'strong and clear leadership' - just wondering by what measure you are judging the leadership? I do think parents are quite understandably influenced by results and popularity in terms of admissions, but we haven't had the most recent update on that.

Oftsed does not collate feedback from parents . We should not assume that parents just follow the herd mentality . A lot of them go and meet teachers and make their own assessments.

I'd respect any parent's views if they have put that sort of effort into looking at schools. I also have a lot of respect for teachers, especially when they are dealing with a diverse range of abilities and backgrounds, and I welcome any sign that schools are on an upward curve. It did strike me that there was a marked difference in tone between RPA's Ofsted monitoring report and TA's.

This talk of parents ?looking at schools? is by the way in this case; it seems to me that for those families in Fulwell and West Twickenham who now live outside the shrinking catchment areas for Orleans and Teddington schools, it is a case of Hobson?s choice:

?Choice . . 2. c. Hobson's choice: the option of taking the one thing offered or nothing . . Named from Tobias Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, . . who let out horses, and is said to have compelled customers to take the horse which happened to be next the stable-door, or go without.
. . a1708 T. Ward England's Reformation (1716) 326 Where to elect there is but one, 'Tis Hobson's choice, Take that or none . . ? [OED]

The keen teachers at TA will no doubt welcome an influx of demanding parents and diligent pupils to help them push ahead with transforming the school.

The keen teachers at TA will no doubt welcome an influx of demanding parents and diligent pupils to help them push ahead with transforming the school.

Of course, the council are hoping to shoe-horn in as many such parents as possible. The results will then improve and that will to help mask the fact that the teaching isn't improving as fast as it should be.

In the meantime, large numbers of families will move house, or stretch themselves financially to go private, and the community will suffer as a result.

It would be much better to allow a bit of competition into the system, so that TA has no excuse but to weed out the teachers that don't measure up, and are letting down the whole school. There are far too many of the pre-conversion teachers still there.

All of our children deserve a 'good' education. There should be an obligation on councils to make sure every school place offered is of that standard.