Richmond Borough Schools Chat 5

[BayJay2]

Welcome! This is the latest in a series of threads about Richmond schools, which was first triggered by the council's publication of its Education White Paper in February 2011.

Please do join in the chat. There’s a bunch of us who’ve been following the thread for a long time, and we sometimes get a bit forensic, but new contributions are always welcome, and if it’s something that’s been covered before we can always direct you to that part of the thread.

We generally talk about local education policy, the impact of national policy, the performance of the borough’s schools, and admissions-related issues. We began by talking about Secondaries, but tend to talk a lot about primaries too, so the title of the thread has evolved this time to take that into account.

If you have a few hours to spare and want to catch up on 2 years of local education history, then below are the links to the old threads. We have to keep starting new threads because each only hold 1000 posts. The first two threads run in parallel, as one was started on the national Mumsnet site, and another on the local one:

1a) New Secondaries for Richmond Borough?: Mumsnet Secondary Education (Feb 2011 – Nov 2011)
1b) New Secondary schools for Richmond!: Mumsnet Local (Feb 2011 – Nov 2011)

1. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 2: Mumsnet Local (Nov 2011 – May 2012)

1. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 3: Mumsnet Local (May 2012 – Nov 2012)

1. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 4: Mumsnet Local (Nov 2012 – Oct 2013)

1. This thread: Richmond Borough Schools Chat 5: Mumsnet Local (Oct 2013 - ????)

Finally, to find out how to add links, as well as smilies and emphasis, see these Mumsnet guidelines.

mum we don't know yet what category under the selection criteria the first preferences were. Parents in Hampton for instance may have been encouraged to put it high in their preferences after pupils at their schools were allocated there last year and they publicised the wide range of schools from which pupils came last year. HA applications are down. It will be interesting to see where the pupils offered a place have actually come from. This is the list from last year www.strichardreynolds.org.uk/images/SRR%20Year%206%20transfers.pdf

Extract from the Year 7 Report:

‘ . . 7. Turing House, the five-form entry free school pre-approved to open in September 2015, received 362 applications by its (separate) closing date of 30 November 2013. Due to uncertainty about where the school will be located, it was decided that, for its first year only, applications for the school should be made direct to the school, outside the normal coordinated admissions process.

Turing House recently updated their website to say that the Education Funding Agency has “begun formal talks with a local landowner who is interested in making a very exciting piece of land available” for a permanent site for the school, but it is as yet unclear when the site will be announced and whether a temporary site will be needed for some or all of the 2014/2015 school year.

1. There are 194 vacancies in the current Year 7 and there is additional provision due to open within neighbouring boroughs in September 2014, so, although the number of in-borough applications for 2014 entry is 219 higher than for 2013, it is highly likely that even if Turing House were not to open on time, there would be more than enough places within the borough to meet in-borough demand . . ‘

The RTT has: School angry after Department for Education mistake sees it cascade down league table:

A Catholic school has hit out at the Department for Education (DfE) after a statistics blunder made out the school’s results had plummeted. In figures released last month, St Catherine’s School’s results seemed to slide from fourth in the borough to third from bottom. Staff at the independent girls’ school in Twickenham said they notified the DfE of the error in November but the wrong results were still published in January . . The school was told it would take two weeks for the correct results to be published on the DfE website.

I am a bit confused about applications to Turing House. When they allocate places will the Council co-ordinate so that they aren't offering places to children who are also being offered a place at Turing House?

LP, from the website: "On March 1st 2014 parents will get a Local Authority school offer as well as an offer (or waiting list notice) from Turing House. Parents should hold both offers until notified by Turing House and the Local Authority to make a final choice."

The LA gives you two weeks to accept the offer. Will Turing House be the same - and what if applicants accept two offers?

Mum, there'll be a lot more info going on the website before offer day, and going out with the letters. However, as it says here (last para), the LA and school will be working closely together to encourage parents to relinquish one or other offer as soon as possible.

The RTT has (p. 25) Great school results but ‘we have a long way to go' from Cllr Malcolm Eady (formerly the Lib Dem spokesperson for schools).

The St Catherine’s story is on page 20.

I've just read Councillor Eady's letter. He's good at raining on parades, isn't he? Though he's right to point out that intakes are different for different schools so it's harder to compare GCSE/Ebacc percentages directly, I don't think the value added score means a great deal to parents, but you can now look at progress rates, and percentage passes for three broad ability bands. Grey Court were sent a letter of congratulations by the DfE for being one of the top 100 schools for sustained improvements to exams, so I would suggest it is doing far better than just being 'in the top 30%', however Cllr Eady worked that out - unless David Laws wrote a whole sackful of letters.

What matters to me is whether the school offers a suitable curriculum for all ability levels. If Hampton Academy did particularly well on the value added score for less able children, it should also be credited for how well it has done, comparatively, for higher attainers, with an above average Ebacc pass rate. Not all schools are able to offer more than one language or individual sciences, but HA did manage this.

The RTT has: Government praise for ever-improving Grey Court School:

. . The school’s minister . . David Laws congratulated Grey Court School for its “excellent improvement in GCSE results over the last three years from 2011 to 2013” . . the school had “proven to be one of the top 100 schools in England showing the greatest sustained improvement in the percentage of pupils achieving five or more A*-C grade GCSEs, including English and maths”.

Waldegrave was another of the secondaries to receive one of David Laws's letters of congrats.

Hi all, this thread is a wealth of useful info! Can anyone tell me how one can compare the average spend per child at the local state secondaries- and secondly, I wonder how that compares to the local independent secondaries?

Hi QBean, the performance tables show that data but only for maintained schools. For secondaries (if this link works) it means just Christ's and not the academies. But there are other data downloads this page.

Sorry, data downloads here.

Thank you muminlondon2!

The Guardian has: Ed Miliband: Labour will give parents power to oust headteachers: Proposed public service overhaul includes education hit squads to boost performance of failing schools or teachers:

‘ . . Miliband's plans to offer parents a mechanism to force improvements in their child's school is aimed at giving a degree of control over improvements in public services to the people receiving them. He did not specify how many parents would be needed to trigger an improvement team visit but he said the number would be "substantial". The hurdle will be lowered where Ofsted has already classified the school as inadequate.

He will say: "Having promised to share power, this government has actually centralised power in Whitehall and is attempting to run thousands of schools from there. That does not work, and as a result some schools have been left to fail without intervention. . . Parents should not have to wait for somebody in Whitehall to intervene if they have serious concerns about how their school is doing whether it is a free school, academy or local authority school. In all schools there should be a parent call-in."

Remedial action could include drawing up a school standards plan focused on areas of concern; brokering collaboration with another school; bringing in outside teaching and leadership expertise; and changing staff or the school's leadership. The proposal forms part of a wider review into the accountability structure of schools in the aftermath of the reforms introduced by the education secretary, Michael Gove. The review is being overseen by the former education secretary David Blunkett and is reporting to the shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt. Blunkett told the Guardian the current education system was chaotic, but he stressed he did not think the improvement role should be led by local authorities, but by some new sub-regional body, modelled on the success of the London Schools Challenge . . ‘

More interesting times ahead for them at the chalk-face!

'changing staff or the school's leadership'

Crucial difference when it's a sponsored academy. David Wolfe, education barrister, has pointed out that a sponsored academy in a chain has no legal status and can only be replaced by a new academy in a different chain.

Half the schools that were below GCSE floor target and/or are judged 'inadequate' are already sponsored academies. How many have changed chains so far?

Thanks for the explanation about Turing House admissions Bay Jay. I hope it all works out for the school as I know a lot of parents are relying on it opening in September.

Mum In London - I agree that the point about progress made by high, medium and low achievers should get more publicity - I was explaining it to a friend with a year 5 daughter (in East London) who is looking at local secondaries slightly fearfully and she had no idea this data was available (and I only know about it thanks to explanations on this thread!). Is it hushed up because too much publicity would lead to parents trying to shop around to send children to schools with more high achievers (even if their children aren't high achievers)?! Does the Government specify how many GCSEs, in which type of subject and at what grade a high, medium and low achiever is expected to get in order to have made an acceptable Value Added amount of progress? I'm sure this info is available to schools and teachers but it certainly isn't spelt out to parents in my experience - nor is how the numbers (5,6,7,8 etc. and a,b,cs) relate to likely future success in GCSEs.

Chris/Mum in London on the subject of academy chains, presumably if one school in the chain is deemed to be failing changes can be negotiated with the chain via the funding agreement that applies to that school with the ultimate sanction being withdrawing the funding altogether? But if the school was then left with no funding there would need to be alternative arrangements in place to educate the students either at other schools, if there were surplus places locally, or at a new free school or academy created on another site, or on the same site (but that could be difficult if the site belonged to the academy chain or it had a long lease on it that it didn't want to surrender as it might prefer to sell it for housing or open a private school instead)? Presumably as there are now all these chains looking for opportunities there will be chains willing to swoop in and pick up failing schools? But all a mess as you say and not one Labour will be able to unravel easily!

"it might prefer to sell it for housing or open a private school instead"

They can't do that. See clause 77c of the Funding Agreement.

The RTT has Two applications for every sixth form place in Richmond:

Demand for sixth form places outstripped supply by two to one, latest figures have revealed . . Liberal Democrat spokesman for education Cllr Gareth Roberts hit out at cabinet member for schools Cllr Hodgins, claiming [he] was deflecting attention away from an imminent schools places crisis:

“This is typical, self-congratulatory misdirection from the Tories - they hope everyone will focus on their narrative about sixth forms and not notice that the borough is facing an impending secondary school places crisis. For many families across the borough the idea of having any sort of choice of secondary school is a complete non-starter and this problem will only get worse when the primary bulge and expansion classes of recent years enter the secondary system. It is therefore nothing short of a disgrace that in four years the Conservatives have focused their entire energies on sixth forms, only pausing to consider a new community secondary school in the last gasps of their administration.”

It seems to be the case that, like with complicated IT contracts, it's hard for the DfE to break a funding agreement with a chain unless a specified school goes into special measures. Although chains may want to close or pull out of a school voluntarily, for other reasons, which could be against the needs/wishes of both parents and the LA.

But I'm wondering if Labour's proposed policy has been misrepresented. It seems unfair to be encouraging parents to gang up against a headteacher who was only following a sponsor's prescribed educational model or curriculum. In that case it may be the sponsor that is failing not the staff. Yet parents may not see the difference - and while in an area like Richmond, parents may be very quick to assert their rights to wield the axe, it might be a different story elsewhere. Parent power alone is too biased and inconsistent a driver for setting up new schools or school improvement, although consultation is still essential (and has been absent under the policy of forced academisation). There still needs to be additional input and accountability from the authorities responsible for local school place planning and admissions, as well as a system for inspecting academy chains themselves.

Interesting link Muminlondon. Ironic to see what looks like the exact opposite of scenarios that have raised complaints in other areas .... a school that seems to be closing due to a surplus of places.

LProsser I seem to remember the head of Waldegrave writing a letter to the RTT last year to say 'value added' scores, in relating to an average which changes each year, were not a reliable benchmark to assess an individual school's progress. But the criteria are changing again anyway. Here is an explanation of how it is calculated currently, from the DfE website.

'We base each pupil's value added score on a comparison between their best eight results at GCSE and equivalent - sometimes referred to as their capped point score - and the median or middle performance of other pupils with the same or similar results ....'

But from 2014 some BTECs and other equivalents will be stripped out:

'No more than two of these ‘non-GCSE’ qualifications will count in any measures reporting in the 2014 performance tables – including ‘Best 8’ and ‘Value-added’. Each qualification will only count as one.'

You can look up 'average point score (best 8)' without equivalents in the performance tables. But still, is it fair to compare point scores of a school that has done its best to teach the Ebacc curriculum to pupils who find that combination challenging, but rewarding, with one that offers a range of subjects or courses that aren't Ebacc subjects, and may not count next year, so might be considered easier to pass?

BayJay the latest is that the school is being taken over by another trust. But it's like a school with a gun pointed at its head and it was saved only after lobbying by the local Tory MP. I somehow doubt the parents or LA had much say in the new sponsor - I also dislike the implication that the school needed a philanthropic benefactor to offer it the charitable service of keeping it open.