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 ......

Everyone, the 2012 admissions report has now been made available on the council's website.

www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/07/26/gove-i-wont-relax-rules-on-catholic-free-schools/

Latest news update on Sixth Form plans.

Bayjay very difficult to understand what the admissions report data is telling us . What do u think has been the impact of removing links and increase of non borough applications on school places ?

JoTwick: the links will be removed next year so this year's numbers tell us nothing about the effects.

Gmsing: the Catholic Herald - and the Church no doubt - doesn't understand that Gove, not being a Pope, has no say in what schools do - they must obey the laws enacted by Parliament, like it or not - except, in appears in Richmond borough.

Jo, Chris is right. You'll need to compare next year's report with this one to see the impact of removing the links. The links have been removed for September 2013 and beyond, so the children just about to enter Year 6 will be the first affected.

The Guardian reports: Primary school pupil numbers to rise by 700,000 by 2020:

. . The 33 local authorities that cover London say they will need a further 70,000 primary school places by 2014 . . Some councils have called for the legal limit on class sizes to be increased so they can put more pupils into each classroom . . In Barking . . officials are looking at "split shift sessions", where schools teach one group of pupils from 8am to 2pm and a second from 2pm to 7pm . . The DfE figures also reveal that pupil numbers in secondary schools are expected to fall until 2015 . .

There is no link from the Guardian to the DfE report and no sign of it on the DfE press page

I have found the DfE Excel table osr01-2012v2, a forecast of primary and secondary school place totals in England to 2017/18. The forecast increases are startling. Here are Richmond?s, with Kingston, Hounslow and Barking for comparison:

Primary:
Borough: 2011/12; 2015/6; increase; %; extra forms of entry/year.

Richmond: 13,832; 15,404; 1,572; 11 %; 13.
Kingston: 11,545; 13,136; 1,591; 14 %; 13.
Hounslow: 18,817; 23,009; 4,192; 22 %; 35.
Barking: 20,288; 26,879; 6,591; 32 %; 55.

Secondary:
Borough: 2011/12; 2017/8; increase; %; extra forms of entry/year.

Richmond: 6,733; 8,325; 1,592, 24 %; 9.
Kingston: 10,125; 11,100; 975; 10 %; 5.
Hounslow: 16,395; 17,541; 1,146; 7 %; 6.
Barking: 13,712; 17,759; 4,047; 30 %; 22.

I leave it to BayJay or someone else more au fait than I with the different forecasts from the Council, RISC and the Lib Dems to tell us how this compares with them. It implies that parents will face a tightening contest for sought after places and residents long running battles over school expansions for many years to come.

Hi Chris. It would be interesting to see all the assumptions that fed into the DfE's numbers. Perhaps there's a report that goes with the spreadsheet that gives details of that (?).

The notes just say its the number of pupils "expected to be educated in maintained ... schools". I expect they've taken the numbers known to be coming up through the primary system, and assumed the same % will continue to transfer to maintained secondaries as in previous years. As you point out, their figures show 9 new forms of entry will be needed by 2017, which is equivalent to one very large (or two very small) secondaries. However, if their forecasts were correct then 7 of those new forms of entry would be needed in 2012, so whatever they're based on they're obviously out of date.

RISC argue in their analysis that school improvements and changes in the economy will increase the number of children transferring from state primaries to state secondaries. They say (sorry can't find the quote but I know its somewhere) that the council should be planning for two new secondaries over the next 2 - 5 years.

As we all know, the council's forecast says that no new inclusive secondaries will be needed until 2016 at the earliest. They will have used the same basic figures as the DfE (i.e. pupils coming through primary), but, as has been discussed at length here and elsewhere, they have made lots of assumptions about changes in patterns of out-of-borough demand, numbers of approved free schools etc.

We know some of the council's assumptions are now out of date (i.e. the North Kingston school figures, and the numbers of secondary Free School places from 2013). I expect they will update their forecast in the Autumn in line with recent events.

Actually, my previous post is wrong.

The DfE figures (which are from May 2011) aren't necessarily showing how many more forms of entry will be needed, because they're assuming that existing spare capacity will fill up.

So, for instance those 7 extra forms of entry that appear in the system by 2012 must be assuming that the academies will be full in 2012 (in October 2011 there were 210 space Year 7 places across the borough).

Like I said, we'd need all the assumptions behind the data to understand it properly.

Besides its hard to make comparisons when they present "whole school" numbers rather than just Year 7. For example, Table 3 seems to show that only one Richmond Secondary school is full to capacity. Of course that means that there are spaces higher up the school, rather than in Year 7.

These newly published DfE stats on Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 destinations may be of interest.

There are also some headlines for the data here.

The extra forms of entry/year are estimated by me = Total increase/[no. of years * 30]. So these nos. are only rough estimates of the expansion needed.

I found the table by a Google search which pointed directly to it and not to any report or press statement that accompanied it. A search within the DfE domain :education.gov.uk might yield this if it exists

Very interesting link to stats on participation in higher education, BayJay. So it looks like the nationwide average for students going on to Oxbridge after A-level is 1% with 8% going to Russell Group universities. Richmond LA doesn't appear to be doing well at 0% and 5% respectively but a big bucket of salt to be taken there as there are no sixth forms and less than half (or even only a quarter) of those at Richmond College are actually living in Richmond. Also, private schools don't seem to be included.

Still, I think the introduction of sixth forms could have a positive impact and if these figures continue to be published we will be able to see how our community and academy schools are performing at that level.

I still can't see how the expected numbers in the sixth form at the proposed Catholic school are justified, however - 150 places, presumably one for every child in a year group. This is more ambitious than at any other school in the borough, even Waldegrave, which intends to recruit additional students (boys) from outside the school. There has been no discussion about how this will work or affect other schools in the area.

Chris, I've used the DfE forecasts to create a simple excel model of secondary capacity up to 2017.

I've assumed for simplicity that the initial capacity of 6706 pupils in 2010/11 is spread evenly across the five year groups, so that they all start with 45 classes of 30 pupils.

I've also assumed that the DfE's forecast increase each year is all coming in through Year 7 (e.g. I'm not including additions for new sixth forms, as they weren't agreed at the time the DfE's numbers were created).

The outcome is that, as you originally said, 9 new forms of entry are needed by 2017.

However, that assumes no changes in cross-border take-up patterns (which the LA are assuming will occur) and no changes in private-state take-up patterns (which RISC are assuming will occur).

Let me know if you spot any errors.

BayJay: thanks for your spreadsheet: I suggest that your second column should be ?projection? instead of ?estimate? in line with DfE usage; in statistics an estimate is a measurement of something that exists now, a projection of something still in the future.

?2012/11? should be ?2011/12? and ?6706? should be ?6733?. My simple method tacitly assumed the schools would be full after 2012/13 so it agrees with your projection that 9 extra forms will be needed. I think we can label this projection ?Business As Usual? (BAU) as it shows what will happen if nothing changes. A BAU projection should always be included when doing scenario forecasting as the frame of reference against which possible changes are assessed.

A search on the domain :education.gov.uk has yielded:

DfE: School capacity 2010/11 (OSR01/2012) was updated on 26 July 2012. [It is] based on information collected from local authorities as part of the school capacity 2010/11 collection. It is a DfE Dataset.

The School Capacity Collection 2012 is a statutory collection of school level data on school capacity and local authority pupil forecasts. The data collected allows the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and the DfE to identify those areas where there are pressures on school places and where significant shortfalls of places are anticipated by LAs. The Department uses the projections of pupil numbers to calculate how much Basic Needs funding local authorities should receive, enabling them to provide enough school places to meet future demand. Collection start - 25 June; end - 3 August.

Chris, yes I'd just spotted those errors too. Here is the corrected spreadsheet.

Its interesting that the numbers are based on LA-supplied figures.

'Richmond top for schools, but influx under control', council says. reports the RTT:
Experian PropertyCheck, which conducted the study, measured the category on average Ofsted scores and the result could explain why so many parents are moving to the borough.
. . A spokesman for Richmond Council said: ?We are continuing to provide both sufficiency and choice of schools, by enabling a number of new schools and expanding existing schools. We are therefore fully confident that we will meet the demand for places from families who are drawn to the area.? . .
Details of the survey were published in the Evening Standard on 18 July.

after reading a lot of posts about a new catholic school in Twickenham i am rather sad unfoftunatly since the uk was opened to eastern europe the school places in catholic schools be it primary or secondary have become a joke. Most of the people coming into our boroughs from eastern europe are catholic and are therefor entitled to a place in school of course if you just move into the area you go to the top of the list. My children go to a catholic school where 20 percent do not speak english on polish there are no secondary places for the children going up know let alone in 4 years when these primary children go up. I wpuld love my son to carry on his catholic education this is why the new catholic school in Twickenham is such a good idea

Shuby to my knowledge none of the eastern european countries provide state funded catholic schools . So why do they expect it here and feel they cannot attend our community schools . Richmond borough does not just attract eastern europeans . It is a favorite spot for large no of city professionals and melting pot for people from Asia, USA,Europe, Oz, etc with different religious beliefs.
So giving exclusive privilege to 1 group seems unfair and also illegal and hopefully the court will overturn the councils decision

Just posting this good news story about London schools from the BBC.

BayJay: Here are links to the articles about London's schools by Chris Cook, FT Education Correspondent (free blog):

London state schools best in England
London?s big lead and social mobility
Race to the top:

'. . Something I touched on in today?s coverage of the London school system is ethnicity: in short, everyone does better than white children, with poor white children particularly far behind.'

@shuby: you are probably referring to Central European countries (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Rep, etc), as those are the Catholic ones. Eastern European countries are mainly Orthodox or other religions.

And there are no state faith schools in most of the Central & Eastern Europe countries, so nobody expects to find them here.

You are using Eastern Europeans as scapegoats to blame for the council's inability to provide for community school places, when in fact the problem is with the state-funded faith schools and has nothing to do with new immigrants, not in this case anyway.

And FYI, Richmond is about 75% White British or Irish, which is very high compared to the rest of London area. Also, only about 20% of the people in Richmond were born outside UK, and of those many have been living in the UK all their life, so again, newcomers are not really an issue in Richmond.

Not to mention that Richmond is way too expensive for newcomers - especially those coming from East & Central Europe. They service the households in Richmond, they don't live here.

Laura, I wouldn't be so harsh on Shuby. Its great to have new voices posting here. However, often when new people join the debate they see the issue as a simple one of "why shouldn't there be a new Catholic school if that's what lots of people want?". All those people who have followed the issue for a long time (and its all here on Mumsnet, for anyone wanting to catch up) know that its much more complex than that, whichever side they're on.

Two Richmond schools officially academies (RTT Aug 08):
' . . Waldegrave School for Girls and Teddington School will employ their own staff and handle their own finances after converting to the new status on Wednesday, August 1. Orleans Park School, Grey Court School and Christ?s School are due to become academies later this year or in 2013 . . '