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.

Sounds like a criticism of the EFA to me. My impression is he's distancing the council from the building project, which they may be feeling frustrated at having little control over. He's possibly anticipating parental disquiet, but unfortunately he's fuelling it in the process.

BayJay has it right - he has spoken out before since taking over in May, Councillors still get the blame on the doorstep for problems that they are now powerless to do anything about.

Trouble is, I don't think the powerlessness comes across in his statement - just the anger, which isn't necessarily constructive.

How is the Egerton Road rebuild being funded? I thought the point of including Haymarket's offices is that they would meet a chunk of the costs for infrastructure etc. and for the rebuild of 6th form college which is not essential so not funded from outside. I know D of Ed. will pay for new free school and there will be money from selling Clare ndon site but is this enough? I haven't followed it in detail.

I agree the comments were not constructive - the North Kingston school has had a lot of cross-party support from the council for years now, and will continue to be managed by representatives of local schools and colleges as well as the council. If he distances himself from it he's rejecting the efforts of key members of the community. On the other hand if he criticises the EFA he's effectively criticising the government despite being a Conservative. Anyway, it's a bit premature.

I also noticed in the Admissions Forum report on school place planning that Tiffin Girls next door is considering prioritising up to 30 places for an 'inner area' that will include the catchment for this new school, from 2016. It might not happen, or it may be that only girls on pupil premium are prioritised - but local politicians should be a lot more sensitive about how all these changes might affect local schools.

L Prosser: we don't know - nothing has been made public yet, even in outline. The College is naturally putting a brave face on at this news but it must in fact be a blow to the already tricky financing of the scheme.

I thought so Chris. I heard before Haymarket pulled out that they were still millions short. Possibly they can now sell more of the site for housing but not sure if that makes it viable? Seems that both new secondary schools are still in doubt.

BayJay I notice that Turing House is going to invite applications outside the pan-London admissions round again (and also saw more gossip on its site). I would like to see TH open in 2015 because I do think it's needed, and will be well run, but it is a shame it can't just get sorted out with a site before September so it can be one of the six preferences. Then we won't have the waiting, the speculation, the nervousness about the catchment areas for other schools and whether they'll over-offer again. Is that just wishful thinking?

muminlondon, even free schools that do have their site secured tend to keep their first admissions round outside of coordination because their funding agreements aren't signed until later in the pre-opening year.

So long as there is close liaison with the LA, its the best way to manage the uncertainty as it is then spread across the admissions system as a whole rather than being concentrated on individuals.

Is that also true of the Kingston Academy? It's just had a consultation so perhaps it's closer to signing a funding agreement. I can see it would be impossible to be part of the pan-London scheme without it.

I don't know what their plans are on that in Kingston Muminlondon. Maybe it's somewhere in their FAQs.

Hopefully there will be a general trend towards getting funding agreements signed sooner for 2015 openers, given the timing of the General Election, the purdah period leading up to it, and the inevitable uncertainties afterwards. Labour has said they won't arbitrarily cancel schools in the pipeline, but policies around appoving funding agreements might still evolve in uncertain directions.

BTW, it's not impossible to be in the pan London scheme before the funding agreement is signed. Richmond's two 2013 primary free schools did it last year, using dummy school id numbers. But it's a risk, and it would be individual families that would be taking the risk, without necessarily understanding it.

That's interesting - the primary schools did have sites, though.

Parkfield School (a Montessori free school) in Bournemouth was referred to earlier in this thread regarding the purchase of an office block by the DfE in Kingston for one of its other newly approved free schools. I saw this Guardian piece which mentions that school and raises a couple of interesting points (under 'Border crossing row').

Firstly, while it initially opened in an office block in Bournemouth in temporary premises, its permanent location near the airport is actually in a different LA. Secondly, there is a suggestion that the capital expenditure for this free school may affect the basic targeted need budgets for other schools in its new LA :

'Tory-controlled Dorset county council said on Friday it was having its capital funding for "basic need" school building work cut by £4.1m this year because Parkfield, in its desperation for a permanent site, is to transfer over the local authority border from Bournemouth into Dorset.'

Hello all. I've just spent half an hour flicking through this thread, and I just had to post to say that the depth of knowledge and incisiveness of analysis expressed here is absolutely gobsmacking! I came on to try and glean some information as my daughter is about to go into year 6 at Queens, and we are and have been looking at secondary options . I thought I was relatively well informed but I now see I am merely an amateur. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and I will be watching this thread with renewed interest.

Welcome to the party DarkBlueEyes.

The Council is consulting on possible conversion of 4 sites to educational use - one in East Twickenham, one in Hampton Hill and two in Ham:
www.richmond.gov.uk/pre-publication_site_allocations_plan_-new_educational_sites-_aug-oct_2014.pdf

Perhaps the Hampton Hill one is for Turing House?

Both Hampton Hill and East Twickenham sites are intended as a location for primary places - Hampton also with 'high quality business space' and East Twickenham with retail.

The RTT Online has Richmond College announces its new principal:

Richmond College has appointed Robin Ghurbhurun as its new chief executive and principal. The former Kingston University graduate has worked at a number of colleges including East Surrey, Carshalton and Lewisham . .

For info, Hampton Academy has also recently announced its new Principal Designate, who'll be taking on the role from January.

Loads of change in heads in the borough. Do we know who the new LEH head is yet?

darkblueyes It is the current Head at Wimbledon High, has in the past attracted some attention for her weeks focused on "success" and "failure" and how to handle them www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22280941 generally perceived by LEH parents that with a greater focus on the pastoral side she will be "a good thing"

Oh yes now you mention it, I had heard this (old timer moment!). Interesting to see the Times list of schools ranked by A level results. No LEH or St Catherine's in there though which annoyed me unreasonably. How can i compare when the flipping schools don't send in their data!

I think LEH's data for this year may be unrepresentative, go on previous years, it has been a problem year all the way through. And St Catherine's will be more volatile because of the small class sizes and the nature of the niche it serves. Both schools enable bright girls to get good results, all those league tables really tell you is how selective the entry is. The issue is which environment is right for your child, some may thrive in a competitive environment , some may need an environment that provides more encouragement and support.

You're right that A-level league tables only tell you how selective the school was in the first place, heathclif. It's the same with state schools and we should be wary of that in a couple of years when the results come out for Richmond's school sixth forms - some will be more selective than others.

There's an interesting post on the new free school sixth form college in Newham (London Academy of Excellence) that has partnerships with eight independent schools – including Eton. It is much trumpeted because many of its students predictably did well, but the extraordinary thing is that despite high entry criteria (5 A/A*s minimum GCSESs) it only managed to get 68 out of 160+ students into Russell Group universities. Whereas Newham Sixth Form College got 60 out of its 75 students with similar entry qualifications to RG universities, so did twice as well.

Monday’s Guardian has: Over-full classrooms are Cameron's fault, (will say Monday) Tristram Hunt:

Shadow education secretary will promise to end Tories' free schools and stop ever larger class sizes if Labour win election . . Hunt will say:

By diverting resources away from areas in desperate need of more primary school places in favour of pursuing his pet project of expensive free schools in areas where there is no shortage of places, David Cameron has created classes of more than 40, 50, 60 and even 70 pupils

Labour will end the free schools programme and instead focus spending on areas in need of extra school places. The choice on education is clear: the threat of ever more children crammed into large class sizes under the Tories or a Labour future where we transform standards with a qualified teacher in every classroom and action on class sizes.

Hunt has said that he will end the Tories' "ideological experiment" with free schools. He would still allow parents to establish new schools, to be called parent-led academies. But these would be in areas where there is a shortage of spaces. Successful free schools established under the Tories would be allowed to continue.