New Secondary Schools for Richmond 4

[BayJay2]

Welcome. This is the fourth (or perhaps fifth) in a series of threads about Richmond Secondary Schools.

The discussion was originally triggered by Richmond council's publication of its Education White Paper in February 2011. It started with two parallel threads here and here.

In November 2011 the most active of the original two threads reached 1000 messages (the maximum allowed) so we continued the conversation here.

That thread filled up in May 2012, and was continued here.

It's now November 2012, and once again we're at the start of a new thread ....

Congratulations and thanks also for moderating this forum so skilfully - I have learnt much from it.

Here are a couple of quotes from Alan Turing on Science vs. Religion:

"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."

?I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, "And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day" (Joshua x. 13) and "He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time" (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory."

The successful establishment of Turing House is the one good thing to come out of this imbroglio - I trust you will invite us all to join you and meet you at some moment of celebration.

Well, I think the real celebration will come when it's actually open. As shown by the Hove example, it might take a while to get the site issues sorted, but the team will be doing their best to keep everyone informed as the process unfolds.

bayjay I would just like to second lotties comments. Well done, the parents of Twickenham should be very grateful to you , even if they may not have recognised it yet!

Many, many congratulations BayJay! What a massive achievement. Wishing you, and the entire Turing House team, the very best for what will be, no doubt, a very busy time ahead!

Just saw this on the Friends of the Field (Hove) Facebook page:
GOOD NEWS!
Caroline Lucas MP has been awarded a half hour parliamentary debate on the Kings School free school proposal on the 5th June. This will increase pressure on the government to withdraw the proposal to concrete over Bhasvic field.

Richmond Council welcomes new free school (press release):

The Secretary of State for Education has approved a bid for a secondary free school within the borough: the Turing House proposal for a five-form co-educational, non-selective secondary school in Teddington. Turing House is looking to open the new secondary school in ?Building 2? on the National Physical Laboratory site although it is a matter for the Government as to whether the site will become available.

GEMS Education?s proposal for a three-form primary school in Twickenham and Teddington was turned down, but they have been invited to re-submit their bid in the next application round.

Cllr Paul Hodgins, Cabinet Member for Schools, said: ?We have been working closely with high-quality proposers to establish free schools as a key element of our 10-Year School Place Planning Strategy. We are pleased to welcome another provider into our local family of schools. However, even if Turing House can?t find a site, at present we have sufficient places for local families.

?We therefore hope that we can work with Turing House and the Education Funding Agency so that the school can be opened at a point when the additional places are likely to be needed.

?This is an exciting time for secondary education in our borough. Amongst the enhancements being made, we are of course enabling sixth forms in all our schools by 2014. We have established a strong partnership with Richmond College, with proposals to rebuild the college and together create a new secondary for 2017. Adding Turing House to this growing family of schools will provide additional high quality choice, which is great news for local families, and I congratulate them on their successful application.

?I am sorry that GEMS Education?s proposal was turned down, but we will provide further support to them if they wish to re-submit their proposal in the next bidding round.?

I don't like the sound of "However even if Turing House can't find a site, at present we have sufficient places for local families". Surely their own figures showed that they didn't have sufficient places from 2014 and needed a free school? I wonder how many spare places there were this year and whether they have decided that Sir RR isn't going to fill up with Catholics in the next few years?

"Surely their own figures showed that ..."

The most recent forecast is still the one from November 2011. There hasn't been an update since then. There were a couple of different scenarios in the forecast; the first assuming 100 new places in 2013 and 150 new places in 2016, and the second showing 250 new places in 2016. Each scenario assumed different fill-up rates for the academies. There were also assumptions made about cross-border transfers and some of those assumptions were thought to be controversial at the time.

What is really needed to accompany the "sufficient places" statement is an updated forecast, with the latest data and assumptions. Otherwise people will just believe it or disbelieve it based on their entrenched positions, which is never a good scenario.

The RTT reports: Parents thrilled as free school gets the go-ahead (p. 4) and prints two letters about Sacred Heart?s admission policy: Anger over sibling exclusion (p. 24) asking the diocese to think again.

For what its worth...As a parent with children at Sacred Heart I have every sympathy with the parents of the bulge class. I personally feel all siblings should be given a place. Many of the children are settled and happy, and it is a very good school. It's my understanding that the dioscese has the ultimate say. I hope that the pressure from the parents will allow the school to give these siblings a place.

I'm one of the non-Catholic Sacred Heart parents in the R bulge class. No 2nd child though..

We moved to Teddington after the admissions cut-off in January and we accepted the Sacred Heart place simply because it's a 5-min walk and it has very good results. Both Stanley and Hampton Wick are not within walking distance (Stanley is almost 2 miles away!). One year later, we're still on the wait list for Collis, which is also a 5-min walk from our house. Sacred Heart is indeed a great school and my child's Reception teacher is fantastic. However, long-term we're not comfortable with a faith school and I really hope we get a place in the community school sooner rather than later.

GEMS' other free school application, a 'blended learning' school in Marylebone (described in a Ham &High article as a 'hot-desking school' with pupils tracked via GPS), didn't get approved either. Its first entry into the UK state sector was an invitation by Wokingham council to run a primary academy. They have already advertised for a principal designate although it looks like it is awaiting approval from the DfE.

Of the academy chains that got free school approval, ARK did in fact get a blended learning school, location as yet unspecified (I'm guessing London) among its 4 schools, all in London. Harris got 7 schools including 4 primaries and an all-through (all but one in London). There will be three new Oasis schools in London, of which one is a primary. West London Free School now has two primaries approved.

This is Local London has Free school proposal for north Kingston approved: . . The new school is expected to open in September 2014. Some scepticism about the date in the comments.

The Guardian has Full list of free schools approved for 2014 opening.

Education Guardian has Summerhill school: these days surprisingly strict: an interview with Zoe Readhead, AS Neill?s daughte rand now school principal . . Today, Summerhill . . is almost forgotten. It briefly attracted attention at the turn of the century when David Blunkett, then education secretary, tried to close it ? complaining, among other things, that it had no separate toilets for boys, girls or staff ? only to beat an ignominious retreat when challenged before a tribunal.

. . "Free schools" mushroomed in the UK in the 1970s, but few survive. State school heads who tried to implement Neill's ideas ? notably at Risinghill in London ?were smartly removed. Half Summerhill's 68 pupils are from overseas, many from east Asian countries where some parents find the schooling too rigid. With boarding fees of £3,000-£5,000 a term, depending on age, and no bursaries, it is beyond the means of most parents.

So shouldn't it apply to the education secretary, Michael Gove, to become one of the new government-funded free schools? "I wouldn't associate myself with any government that's already tried to close my school down," she replies with a shudder. But it's a different government, I point out. "I don't care what their politics are, I wouldn't trust them. As soon as I had government funds, they might want to make decisions about my toilets and things." Does she like Gove's idea of free schools? "It's unfortunate. They stole our name. In any case, we and schools like this tend to call ourselves 'democratic' now because 'free school' sounds as if it could be complete anarchy." . .

The RTT reports: Free school misses out on moving into National Physical Laboratory:

A new free school that was given the go ahead last week will not be based at its preferred site. Turing House School . . named Building 2 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), in Teddington, as their preferred site because it was publicly owned, good value for money and fitted in with the school?s ethos. This week NPL confirmed that the building was not available because it was earmarked to build a new laboratory as part of a £25m investment, announced by David Willetts minister for universities and science in January. An NPL spokesman said the laboratory was pleased the Turing House steering group?s bid was approved and wished them well in their search for an alternative site . .

The BHA has looked at the list of 102 new free schools and identified 25 which have either a religious character or ethos:

humanism.org.uk/2013/05/22/government-approves-25-new-religious-free-schools/

One is a Muslim girls' school in Slough. Another Muslim school opened by the same trust was the first 'selective' school to have been approved for many years according to this briefing so it will be interesting to see what status other schools have. (I thought that was against the Admissions Code so it's news to me.)

I hope Turing House School finds a site in the north Teddington/Fulwell/South Twickenham area soon, but am struggling to think where a secondary school could go. This does seem rather a fulfilment of the worries a lot of us had about giving Clifden away. How soon will the admissions figures and details for 2013 be available?

I also see Turing House as the Twickenham Academy parents might have asked for had they known that the link policy would affect their chances of getting into Orleans Park, and had there been a mechanism for parents to express a preference for a sponsor. TA is meant to have a maximum capacity of 1050 and until last year had only 693 on the roll (2013 figures should be available soon).

It will now have to work even harder to prove itself although the next Ofsted report may well be stunning.

I'd guess that the North Kingston school won't open till 2015 if there are delays with rehousing the adult classes and/or refurb. But as a lot of north Kingston and Richmond expansions/bulges come through that year it will make that a convenient time to open.

The Guardian reports: Swedish free school operator to close, leaving hundreds of pupils stranded:

Britain's adoption of Sweden's "free school" model has been called into question after one of Sweden's largest private sector school operators announced it would shut down, leaving hundreds of students stranded. JB Education, whose schools educate around 10,000 Swedish pupils, said on Thursday that it would sell 19 of its high schools and close down the remaining four.

The decision, which follows four school closures announced by the company in February, came as the Danish private equity group Axcel, which bought the chain in 2008, decided it could no longer continue to cover the company's losses . .

Two Swedish school companies, Kunskapsskolan and Internationella Engelska Skolan (IES), have already taken over the management of schools in the UK, albeit on a non-profit basis. Like JB Education, both are owned by private equity companies. Kunskapsskolan's non-profit UK arm, Learning Schools Trust, operates schools . . in Richmond, south-west London . .

Posted this elsewhere but there are interesting connections.

More about the Swedish free school chain that's gone bankrupt in this research paper:

'In 2005 and 2006 the John Bauer schools made a profit of about 120 million SEK [£1.2 million] and 40 million of this annual profit went to the owner of the company. In October 2008, 90% of the John Bauer concern was sold to the Danish investment company Axcel. The Axcel Company was a venture capital company and had no experience in education. Involved in the business of selling and buying businesses, they showed particular interest in home styling and dog food.'

The CEO Anders Hultin, 'architect' of Swedish school reform, has previously worked for Kunskapsskolan, GEMS and Pearson.

I notice from the Council's calendar of meetings that the next meeting of the Admissions Forum on Wednesday 5th June has been cancelled. There is no mention that it will be rescheduled. This body only seems to meet once a term and presumably this meeting would have been given the statistics on how things were going for admissions in September?

One thing I have noticed is that as all the secondaries are now independent of the local authority they are responsible for consulting on and advertising their own admissions policies. Grey Court, Teddington, Waldegrave and Orleans Park coordinated a consultation on admissions policy for 2014 through the council but I never saw anything for TA, HA or Christ's. All schools should now be clearly displaying the final policy and admission numbers on their website. I haven't checked all schools, but Hampton Academy, Twickenham Academy and Christ's still make no reference to 2014. In fact, Christ's seems to be unsure about whether it's even taking 150 in 2013 because that's dependent on building work.

Objections to admissions policies (or indeed admission numbers) have to be reported to the Schools Adjudicator by 30 June (interesting info here) but how can you do that when you don't know what they are? And why should it be up to parents to jog them along? Bit of a shambles.

LProsser: I trust you will pursue this matter via the contact offered: . . Contact: Jessica Vine, Senior Democratic Services Officer, 020 8891 7078, Email: [email protected] Do let this forum know what response you get. There is a meeting of the Education and Children?s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 7 pm at which this important matter could be raised.

Here are the relevant links for all schools.

Teddington
Waldegrave (2014 criteria given)
Grey Court
Orleans Park
St Richard Reynolds
Richmond Park Academy (2014 criteria and admissions number given)
Hampton Academy
Twickenham Academy
Christ's

School Admissions Code is here.

1.46: 'All admission authorities must determine admission arrangements by 15 April every year, even if they have not changed from previous years and a consultation has not been required.'
1.47 'Once admission authorities have determined their admission arrangements, they must notify the appropriate bodies and must publish a copy of the determined arrangements on their website displaying them for the whole offer year (the academic year in which offers for places are made).'

At the last School Admissions Forum in February admission numbers for 2014 were given for converter academies and RPA published a consultation on its website:

Grey Court 200 (Year 7); 140 (Year 12)
Orleans Park 200 (Year 7); 130 (Year 12)
Teddington 240 (Year 7); 140 (Year 12)
Waldegrave 200 (Year 7); 140 (Year 12)
RPA: 180 (year 7); 120 (year 12)

2013 admission numbers are given for the other schools as:

HA: 180 (year 7); 75 (year 12)
TA: 180 (year 7); 75 (year 12)
Christ's: 150 '(the additional places will only continue dependent on completion of additional accommodation)'. Sixth form criteria/numbers not stated.
StRR: 150

There is no requirement to consult on an increase (they must consult on a decrease) but reference to any change should still be made on the school?s website.