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.

Are the plans for a campaign, meetings with Vince Cable, FB campaign etc realistically likely to achieve anything, or is it venting? Presumably there is no history of such decisions being overturned?

Notatall Not much history of these decisions either. I expect they feel they have all to play for. In particular if it is a blind implementation of policy then there is a lot that can be done to undermine it by either demonstrating the strength of the need or putting on pressure to bring a permanent site closer to fruition, there is apparently a temporary site that would enable the school to open in 2014, that isn't an issue.

The print RTT has ‘It’s scandalous’ - The TH story (pp 1 & 5) and ‘Non-religious schools not second best’ - a long letter from S Bennett criticising RISC (p 25).

And there is indeed a history of Lord Nash's decisions being overturned www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/11044988.Harperbury_Free_School_given__ray_of_hope__by_Michael_Gove/

very interesting read:

www.harperbury.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Stakeholders-message-March14-final.pdf

Lightplay's link:

Message to Stakeholders including parents, MPs, Councillors, media, staff:

Harperbury Free School Governors including Head teacher Martin Blain met with officials from the Department for Education (DfE) and Education Funding Agency (EFA) on 5th March 2014. We were joined by the EFA Regional Director and for part of the meeting by Schools Minister Lord Nash. We were therefore able to discuss directly with the Minister the issues surrounding the failure of his department to secure a site for the school to open in 2014 as planned and his decision to defer our opening until 2015. We recognised that we were not the only school struggling to secure a site or to be deferred in this way. . .

It also says this:

"In conclusion, at the end of our meeting, we reluctantly accepted the reality of not opening our school on a temporary site for September 2014, but that the prospects of doing so for September 2015 are much brighter. This may or may not be on the hospital site – we should know this for certain in June.

However, subsequently, and thanks to our two MPs, we have been invited to meet Michael Gove on 26 March. We will discuss the problems we have had and the adverse effect it has had on local families. We will for a final time ask about the option of opening this year, although even the most optimistic of us believe the chances of him overruling his junior minister are slim."

The Head of Admissions for LBRUT writes: (Mar 14):

The Turing House option was a bonus option so effectively parents would have been offered a secondary school place in addition to their Turing House offer. If parents accepted the Turing place and rejected their other offer they should contact the council immediately and they will have that other offer reinstated – but they must do it very quickly as the council can’t hold the door open indefinitely.

Interesting to compare the offers and applications this year and last. www.richmondinclusiveschools.org.uk/files/view/useful-data/2014SecondaryOffers.pdf Obviously based on past experience they can fairly safely assume the waiting lists will move to a greater extent than they have over offered (whether that is because parents chose or feel forced to we could probably carry on debating forever) but the increase in the extent to which they have over offered places this year is interesting. The question is did they do that because they didn't want the negative publicity of parents with no offers (which of course is a common feature of the primary admissions process so it is certainly something they can live with) Or did they do so because there was a probability Turing would take up to 150 pupils?

Unlike for many of the primary schools they cannot force secondaries to offer more than they agree to, because they are academies and can decide their own admissions.

I remember being told on a previous thread that the sponsored academies had a funding cushion for three years but after that would need to rely on pupil numbers. The increase at RPA (70 offered over PAN) is very high but last year they only had 105 in Y7. They desperately need to increase their numbers otherwise they won't be able to afford specialist teachers to widen the curriculum. And they will need them to improve Ebacc and just be a better school - many of the other elements for them to succeed are there.

Of course GEMS have a Free School application in, and may be competing for sites. I hope none of the politicians are going to back their bid over one that originates in the community, of course they may appear on the face of it to be a good prospect of setting up a local school that is a success in meeting the desperate need for primary places over and above the ones that Turing will provide, but given our debates about the dodgyness of their international parent companies strategic objectives and strategies and understandable parental concerns, it would not be the horse to back if you want to please local parents.

I assume that most of the children who can't now go to Turing House will have been offered to Twick Academy or Hampton Academy plus a few to Waldergrave. So huge over offer by RPA won't be affected by this but hard to see why they think 70 children will not take up the offer as opposed to a handful at other schools.

Some may have been offered Teddington, Orleans Park or even St Richard Reynolds or out of borough schools. We honestly don't know, and I doubt we'll see a map on the website. It seems wrong to speculate about all this when there are disappointed parents out there who are anxious.

I am just basing this on the catchment area for Turing House and where they seem likely to live as the nearest 150.

On another subject have now read the Teddington Ofsted report and the prediction someone made on here about schools needing to show excellent outcomes for those on pupil premium under new regime seems to be very correct as that was one of the 3 reasons cited for it being given good not excellent.

If Turing would have filled up on just catchment otherwise going to Twickenham and Hampton Academies, those schools would have been left half empty which would harm those school in terms of curriculum (and Kunskappskolan is nowhere near as big a chain as AET in terms of absorbing economies of scale). First preference for those schools (100/89 for HA/TA) are likely to be living out of Turing catchment closer to Hounslow, happy with that choice or siblings. Turing catchment is of course mapped directly onto Waldegrave so all girls not getting Teddington/Orleans Park would have an outstanding established alternative.

I think in reality the catchment would be wider so therefore overlapping with and competing with the good/outstanding schools. However much you debate it, in 2014 you would have had three undersubscribed schools in the same area.

I wouldn't personally not be happy with a comprehensive school of less than even 180 pupils per year because the chance of single sciences or more than one language option are much reduced. Teddington has the widest curriculum of all our schools.

Has a cut-off distance for Turing House been mentioned? That and the proportion offered to girls/boys would be as good as a map, and better than speculation.

mum/LP, its' really not helpful to speculate on what would/wouldn't have happened. The information currently published for TH's application data is at a comparable level of detail to that of other schools, except that it is not possible to tell where it stood in people's list of relative choices. That would not have become apparent until after March 17th, and any second guessing of what choices people would have made is pure speculation.

TH was working closely with the council's admissions team, and sharing information, but I don't know to what extent those details were being built into the forecasts for the number of offers that could safely be made for each of the other schools.

I accept that, BayJay, and I realise it's a big disappointment after people like you have worked so hard. I don't think we should assume any bad intention among the other local schools or the LA in their offer numbers either.

I agree.

I agree too, but I can't see that the large increase in offers at RPA can have much to do with Turing House as those applying there would live too far away to have had an offer from Turing House. So I wondered if this was a new tactic by RPA, possibly following their first year of experience of the ending of the linked schools system last year. It must be very difficult to plan and very annoying for RPA if it gets applications from large numbers of parents intending to go private and just using it as a back up of last resort, who turn the place down when they get a private offer, leaving RPA with empty places which it would otherwise have offered to children living slightly further away who really wanted to go there but have accepted another offer by the time the place is freed up?

Apparently there's now a petition on the council site for TH opening in Sep 2014, please sign and share, as it says they need 1000 signatures.

www.richmond.gov.uk/home/council_government_and_democracy/petitions/received_petitions.htm?mgl=%2FmgEPetitionDisplay.aspx&id=82

Petition link. The 1000 signatures will secure a brief debate at a meeting of the full council; 42 so far.

Given that the Council isn't due to meet again until after the local election will they call a special Council meeting to discuss this if they get 1000 signatures? I hope so.

I see from Twitter that Stephen Knight has written to Lord Nash demanding that he comes down to LB Richmond to justify his U-turn. @StephenKnight1 if you want to see a copy of the letter.

Cllr Knight's letter to Lord Nash.

Does anyone know which temporary site was secured by Turing House, and for how many years? I assume that should be made publicly available now that it was secured (I get why they wouldn't announce it while negotiations are still on). Perhaps that will help get more support from parents.