Richmond Borough Schools Chat 6

[BayJay2]

Hello! This is the latest thread in a series originally triggered by Richmond Council's Education White Paper in Feb 2011. We chat about local education policy, the local impact of national policy, local school performance, and admissions-related issues.

Please do join in. 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.

If you have a few hours to spare and want to catch up on 4 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 run in parallel, as one was started on the national Mumsnet site, and the other locally:

1a) New Secondaries for Richmond Borough? (Feb 11 - Nov 11)
1b) New Secondary schools for Richmond! (Feb 11-Nov 11)

1. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 2 (Nov 11-May 12)
2. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 3 (May 12-Nov 12)
3. New Secondary Schools for Richmond 4 (Nov 12-Oct 13)

1. Richmond Borough Schools Chat 5 (Oct 13-Nov 14)
2. Richmond Borough Schools Chat 6 (Nov 14 - ????) : This thread!

Interesting reports from the Office of the School Adjudicator on admissions to Queens School and St Elizabeth's School.

Queens had apparently been asking for long birth certificates (and by virtue parental occupations) as part of the application process. St Elizabeth's had been prioritising children who had attended their (fee-paying) nursery class.

Queens School OSA report

St Elizabeth's School OSA report

Couldn't find a report for St Richard's in Ham, who still mention nursery attendance in their admissions criteria.

There's also a recent determination covering Richmond LA's primary admissions criteria, dealing with the exclusion of applications from temporary addresses, although the complaint wasn't upheld.

I suspect St Richards is far less oversubscribed so no one has complained yet. I find these complex religious criteria giving preference to Catholic children over children in care and preference to Eastern Orthodox over other Christians over anyone else absolutely vile in a state funded system dealing with 4 year olds.

We have discussed the “temporary address” case to which this determination relates on many occasions: in New Secondary Schools for Richmond 4 from 18/09/13; and in Richmond Borough Schools Chat 5 between 20/12/13 and 21/05/14.

It has also been covered in the local press, starting with this dated 18/09/13:

The Local Guardian reports: Cabinet member takes Richmond Council to High Court over schools admissions:

A cabinet member has stood down after taking Richmond Council to the High Court over failures to find her daughter a school place. Councillor Virginia Morris said she has battled with the council for the past eight months to try to apply for a school for her four-year-old, Bluebelle Hills, but has made no progress. She said: “We are not satisfied that they have dealt with our application in the correct manner so we are now challenging them on this issue. As a result the leader of the council has asked me to stand down as a cabinet member. . .

I’ve found a link that illuminates the GEMS bid to open primary schools in Richmond and Kingston.

Its involvement in academy projects in 2008 and 2010 had ended in criticism/failure. At the end of June 2013, the DfE failed to approve a decision taken in April by Wokingham council for it to run a new primary academy. Yet by September GEMS was listed as an approved sponsor by the DfE, and by December was being considered for free school bids and to run at least one new primary in Oxfordshire.

What changed? From August, GEMS had a new chief executive with experience of profit-making FE colleges and academy sponsorship – although not for long. Also from August 2013, GEMS was among partners engaging with UKTI Education to ‘export’ education at FE level to Saudi Arabia for profit. The FE colleges benefiting were in Oxfordshire. GEMS was acting as consultant in a consortium.

The decision was announced in April 2014 by Matthew Hancock, the Skills minister.
The same month, Oxfordshire Council approved GEMS as sponsor of one of the primaries in Didcot (although there had been negative publicity surrounding the chief executive). By June 2014, its free school bids in Twickenham and Kingston were approved.

Matthew Hancock supported the first UK school run for profit in his constituency, IES Breckland (now in special measures - set up by GEMS UK manager in a former role). ‘UKTI Education’ is a joint initiative between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable's department) and UK Trade and Investment.

GEMS has also been awarded £2 million of UK government funding for an e-learning project in Ghana. This is a comparatively small project (e.g. CfBT Education Trust in Kenya: £13.5 million) and uses technology supplied by an Indian subsidiary. Few staff would be involved as the project covers 4,000 girls with a student-teacher ratio of 1:1,000 (e.g. around 4 teachers). GEMS has ‘not previously engaged with DFID’. The project was publicised in July 2014 in an article written by Chris Kirk, the then GEMS CEO.

He has now left GEMS Education Solutions – and also his job as chair of governors’ of the trust running the Twickenham free schools – in October, to launch a company aimed at ‘exporting’ UK education to the Middle East and North Africa, Sub Saharan and South Africa, and East Asia.

The Didcot GEMS primary wasn't a free school but an academy decision taken by Oxfordshire Council in December 2013 although central government made the final decision and had input into the process. It appears from the minutes that concerns were expressed over the options.

One more insight: through its educational foundation GEMS published research in September 2014 on how ‘efficient’ education systems were around the world, concentrating on two narrow parameters. The UK is, it claimed, paying its teachers too much and its class sizes could be increased (one US education blogger described it as ‘the most absurd report yet’). Finland was top because quality teaching was balanced by a large classes. However, previous GEMS research had concluded that Finnish teachers were low down in the league for being treated with respect. So perhaps such research can be contradictory.

What on earth is the DfE doing throwing money at a Gems? Does it learn nothing from past experience? I wouldn't touch a school run by them with a bargepole.

It does like the Saudi colleges deal may bring in revenue for someone in the UK(?), but that the DfE held off from approving GEMS as a sponsor before it happened. Perhaps such deal-breaking goes on behind the scenes in government, but it's very far removed from what parents want and need. Vince Cable may know something - his department was involved.

GEMS has sold off most of its less profitable UK schools, but its most successful global markets may also soon be affected by the fall in oil prices as this Telegraph article suggests. And it appears to have been hit by law suits in New York.

Thanks for sharing all this interesting research muminlondon2. I do hope that some parents of 3-4 year olds who may be thinking of applying to the Twickenham Primary School and feel their other options in the state system are a bit limited are reading this thread. Are you a parent of a child of the relevant age in Twickenham Icimoi and do you think parents in the Twickenham Green area know much about GEMS? It is worrying that only a handful of "older" mums and other interested people may be reading this.

Lottie It came out in the recent debate on Twickerati twickerati.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/twickenham-academy-primary-at-heathgate-house-tw2/ After all you do not have to do much googling to come across worrying information about GEMS. I assume that will be percolating to the Nursery School gates......

Unfortunately parental demand is very far down the priorities in terms of the strategy for meeting the school place need. There was little demand for the St RR community places, the Council admitted that, and they are consequently undersubscribed on parental preference but it is actually rather convenient for the Council if new places, like the consistent failure to lay on enough places to meet demand, are consistent with deterring parental demand If the Council had gone into a similar partnership to the one proposing the Egerton Road school and built another Trafalgar or Stanley that actually provided what parents want then demand would keep rising inexorably, look at the demand for the Turing places ........ Someone posted on the Twickerati thread the webcam of Paul Hodgins unrepentantly defending the fact that Twickenham was the only LA in the country not to have offered places to all in time applicants as of 1 September. at 00.59.21 www.richmond.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/153502/start_time/1903000

Heathclif I agree, but for a new primary free school they would have to partner with others, and I think there are fewer obvious partners than for secondary. Kingston Academy and REEC can do that in conjunction with secondary academy converters as well as colleges. But if they'd announced an existing site, or delayed StRR, free schools like GEMS would have been in like a shot. For a new build, new academy outside the free school process, they would have had to held a competition and GEMS might still have applied.

Still, there would have had to have been a consultation and debate. And while I'd trust and prefer an LA-maintained primary any day, chains such as ARK, Harris or indeed RET have a better track record. (Although like GEMS, I think ARK is registered in the Cayman Islands...)

And in other news...

Waldegrave has topped the 'best school without sixth form' Times Parent Power list for fifth year running. And made it into the Tatler.

Boy in a Dress, the David Walliams story filmed at Grey Court is still on iPlayer.

mum I take your point, and my point was really about the pent up demand the Council is happy to keep stifling. I do think that if the Council were serious about meeting parental demand at primary level then there was more they could have done, and could do, to encourage and facilitate providers that would command the confidence of parents. if parents are feeling concerned about GEMS who will at least be aiming to provide a mainstream education how are they going to feel when they discover the only school place available to them isn't just a school run by another untried provider but the education provided will be 50% in Spanish.......

Waldegrave by the way has also achieved the distinction of being in Tatlers list of recommended state schools, which might just add a few more ££££s on to the few roads in the B catchment where the magazine might actually get read www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jan/01/tatler-guide-best-state-schools

If they're feeling the pinch after paying an extra £50k in stamp duty on a £2 million house they can always save on school fees!

Is there any sign of the Spanish school being approved or getting a site? I think Council is probably still able to say parents aren't concerned about GEMS as there is no public concern being expressed by parents of children of relevant age in catchment area - by which I mean letters to RTT questions to Council etc.

I don't think Wave 8 applications (October 2013 deadline) have been announced yet. In the run up to elections I would expect this list to be under greater scrutiny.

Parents don't write letters about Kunsskapskolan either - they just vote with their feet. The Labour candidate for Twickenham did mention something though.

The GEMS Learning Trust facebook page says they have more than 300 expressions of interest for the Twickenham primary, so there is certainly plenty of demand for what they're offering. It also has details of the consultation they're currently running so if parents have concerns that would be an opportunity to voice them - presumably everyone on their contact list has been notified about it

Of course the places are needed, so ultimately parents may not have much choice, and are reliant on the DfE's quality procedures for approving sponsors and allowing individual schools to open.

There were few supportive comments from parents in response to the last planning application. If they provided evidence that the 300 expressions of interest, which may relate to different year groups, were local (i.e. within 500m of that site), it would make their travel plan more credible.

GEMS had three law suits in 2014 relating to a property deal for a New York school that fell through, but there was a previous law suit in 2010. One of its original partners has since opened a new school (but without GEMS involvement?).

I can't work out their involvement in US charter schools. It looks like they were part of - or owned - a US school improvement consultancy called Global Partnership Schools but that attracted bad publicity after a couple of years (e.g. Colorado and Baltimore) for test scores and attendance rates. I don't know if these contracts are continuing.

Zac Goldsmith writes:

RPNK Conservative Policy Forum presents Toby Young, Thursday 15th January, 2015

I have arranged a Question and Answer session on Education Policy with guest speaker Toby Young, on Thursday 15th January at 7.30pm at The Old Town Hall, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond TW9 1TP.

Toby Young is a renowned journalist and author, and the founder of the West London Free School.

Attendance is strictly limited to 100 people and as it is likely to be a popular event, you are asked to reserve a place by emailing your name to [email protected] Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Sorry, just found another piece of the puzzle of whether GEMS had US charter schools. GEMS had two charter schools in Ohio which were closed in July 2014 with 63 redundancies due to low student enrolment. Also another law suit over commission payment for charter schools.

Hard to know if these US GEMS companies/projects still exist - the high profile individuals who set them up have moved on and the contracts seem to have ended - the charter schools were originally for 5 years but ended after 2. The CEO Manuel Rivera left in 2013 (and changed jobs again in 2014).

The Standard has London population boom: number living in the capital set to hit all-time high within weeks:

London's exploding population is on the brink of hitting an all-time high, more than three quarters of a century after it peaked on the eve of the Second World War. Some estimates have suggested the historic landmark of just over 8.615 million could be reached as soon as tomorrow — but at the very latest by early February. Statisticians believe the record-breaking Londoner is likely to be born in the first few weeks of 2015, in one of the capital’s outer boroughs where population growth rates are highest. The news represents an extraordinary turnaround for a metropolis that seemed destined for long-term decline in the Seventies and early Eighties when its population plummeted to 6.6 million.

. . Population growth is forecast to continue at an annual rate of around 100,000, the equivalent of a new borough every three years, and the population is likely to hit 10 million by 2030 . .