New Secondary School in South Croydon?

[Feefi25]

Anyone heard any more about the new mixed comprehensive school Wallington County Grammar School are looking to set up in the South Croydon Area? I had a look on their website (www.wcgsfederation.co.uk) and registered my interest but I guess these things take time. Am desperate to know that there will be enough local secondary school places by the time my son and daughter reach Year 6 so that they won’t have to get the bus to North Croydon or Bromley.

I got the impression that it was more likely to be built in Woodmansterne / Chipstead / Coulsdon, rather than South Croydon. But haven't heard any updates.

No - I think that was the initial idea, but they have changed their thinking recently.

I imagine they'll release more information on the website as and when it is available. From memory it was meant to be open when the current Y3 children move on from primary.

There's no building work going on at the moment.

I understood that they were planning to build on the sports pitches at Walcountians Sports club in Woodmansterne - rather ironic that they are going to destroy sports pitches to put concrete up and claim to have a sports specialism. Woodcote is already a sports college and has a fantastic new running track; it is heavily over subscribed but Oasis Coulsdon much less so - so not really sure that there will be a serious place shortage in the Woodmansterne/Chipstead/Coulsdon area that they are planning on locating in. Not sure how good the public transport links are to Woodmansterne so if they do build there it may limit the attractiveness.

We had a great response to this on our Facebook Page and I have cut and pasted one follower's response (the upshot is that if you want the school to be in South Croydon, you need to 'register interest'.

"As far as I know there was a meeting held end of May/June for parents in South Croydon when the following was discussed (Disclaimer: I wasn't at the meeting as my daughter is too old to be included in the first cohort, so cannot vouch that this is an accurate record):

There is a shortage of secondary school places in the Croydon Borough. In order to meet the demand of the children in primary school at present, Croydon need to open 1 new secondary school every year for the next 10 years

2. 2 new schools are opening – Harris in North Croydon and a new Oasis Academy

3. The proposed new school discussed last night will open in 2017 (currently year 3’s)

4. It will have 150 students per school year.

5. The first year, there will only be year 7 students

6. The school will be run by Wallington County Grammar Schools. The headteacher is a parent of a child at Ridgeway.

7. The curriculum was discussed and details can be found on the internet. There will be a strong focus on Sport and English/Maths.

The LEA have given the go ahead for Wallington Country Grammar Schools (WCGS) to open a free school comprehensive but what has not yet been decided is where this will be.

The decision will be made based primarily upon the interest of parents within the different areas. If we would like to have the school in South Croydon, WCGS require every parent who currently has a child in year 2 or 3 to register their interest online.

It does not mean that you are choosing this school above others in the area such as Riddlesdown or Warlingham however it does tell the Croydon Borough that we would like the option of another school.

You can go online www.wcgsfederation.co.uk and register your interest. If the school receive 300 registrations of interested parents, there is a very good chance that Croydon Borough will find a suitable location within South Croydon".

Just to say I have deleted my FB post so as not to out myself. sanderstead please feel free to re-post the info on the FB page as Mumsnet Croydon

Did not realise that was you ;-) I'll repost it because it was really useful information.

Ah - so you know who I am but I don't know who you are - that's not fair!!

Sorry, that came out wrong. I recognise the name Seeline from other threads about local schools in the Croydon area but I'm mostly a loiterer. I don't know you in RL and have already managed to forget the name you posted with on FB!

Always have something to say me!!

Wow, this is such good info. Thank you Seeline and Sanderstead Mum.

Here's some more information about the school HERE

I registered my interest on the school website and received an email update today from Jonathan Wilden, Head Teacher at Wallington County Grammar. I've edited it a bit because some of the formatting won't work here:

"I would like to thank you for registering your interest in our proposal to build a new 11 – 18 mixed secondary school in South Croydon. I thought I would take this opportunity to keep you updated with how our application to the Department for Education is progressing and ask if you would be willing to help us gather more evidence of demand in the local area. The current picture looks like this …

We have had many people register an interest but for the purpose of our application to the Department for Education we need to focus on students who are currently in Year 2 and Year 3. It is these two year groups who will access the new school during its first two years of opening from September 2017. It is great to see that others are registering an interest but these will not be accepted by the DfE as evidence of demand.

We have a deadline of the end of September 2014 before we need to present our final application to the Department for Education. Should they accept our application we will be interviewed before the end of the calendar year. We will keep you updated as things progress.

To help us gather more evidence of demand I attach a flyer that we have used. (which is what I linked to in the previous post)

Can you help? Please forward this email to as many parents and carers that you know who might also be interested in registering that they are keen to see this school be built in the local area. They can register online at our consultation website.

If we can hit the target number we will be allowed to submit our application.

To find out more about this school, and to register, please visit – www.wcgsfederation.co.uk

Thank you in advance for your help,

Regards

Jonathan

Mr J J Wilden

Headmaster

Wallington County Grammar School

The original email had included some figures which I couldn't format here but basically the school needs about another 60 parents of Year 2 children and about 60 parents of Year 3 children for the application to get to the next stage - so if this affects you, spread the word!

This brilliant, thanks. Think I might mention this to the mums at my children's primary school.

I had another update from the Head at Wallington Grammar:

"Wallington County Grammar School invited to Department for Education (DfE) interview for new Free School.

Following their application to open a new 11 – 18 mixed comprehensive Free School, Wallington County Grammar School (WCGS) have been invited to a final interview at the Department for Education in February to determine whether they will be given the green light to open in September 2017.
The Free School application, proposed by WCGS, was submitted in October 2014 for a new school which will hopefully accommodate approximately 160 girls and boys in each year giving a total school of over 1000 students.

This invitation to interview represents many months of hard work, including a 100-page application form, which contains detailed education plans as well as budgets. The group had to provide evidence as to why the school is needed by the community and demonstrate that it has local support. More than 800 parents with children in a range of primary schools signed-up to say that this school would be their first choice. This evidence will be presented to the DfE along with evidence that in areas such as South Croydon and in Sutton there is a huge deficit on the number of available places in secondary schools with growing pressure coming to a head in September 2017.

Mr Jonathan Wilden, Headmaster of WCGS said:

“This is a great opportunity for the WCGS community to share outstanding practice which makes us one of the leading state secondary schools in the country. We know that through a shared culture and ethos we can replicate an amazing school which will give girls and boys increased life chances and the opportunity to go on to meet their aspirations. We are passionate about developing an outstanding local school for local people and are looking forward to talking this through with officials from the Department for Education. The support from local people across South Croydon and Sutton so far has been amazing and we would like to thank everyone for registering their interest so far.”

Wallington County Grammar School was supported through the application process by national charity the New Schools Network.

Natalie Evans, Director of New Schools Network said:

“Wallington County Grammar School has worked hard to get to this point where they have been invited to an interview at the Department for Education and we hope they will have the chance to put their plans into action. There are now more than 360 Free Schools open or approved to open and they are proving increasingly popular with parents. Once all of these schools are full they will provide 200,000 much needed new school places and they are already proving they can deliver – Free Schools are more likely to be judged Outstanding than other state schools.”

Anyone who is interested in supporting the application further can do so by registering at www.wcgsfederation.co.uk. By proving your details you will be the first to hear should the Department for Education approve the application.

Until application approval the group cannot be sure where exactly the new Free School will be located but during 2015 they will be talking to both Croydon and Sutton Council about suitable locations.
Recent data collected by Wallington County Grammar School as evidence of demand:

These figures show that the school should it open its doors in September 2017 will have a demand of over 150%"

There followed a breakdown of the interest they had with about 60% of people expressing an interest currently having children in Years 3 and 4. I can't cut and paste that for some reason.

There were also 2 maps - the first is the location of parents who registered an interest with children currently in Year 4 and the second is those with children in Year 3.