Turing House in the headlines today - and not in a good way.

[MrsSalvoMontalbano]

boy with learning difficulties turned away

Ragasmin I am very familiar with all the many forms of discrimination that children with SEN experience in and out of school, and the way in which the Disability Act is often flouted, and even more familiar with the challenges and emotions faced in finding the right school and supporting a child with learning difficulties. However I see no evidence here that anything but the normal process for finding the right school for a pupil has been followed. It is true that with a statement a parent can select the school they think best suits their child but there then follows a process designed to make sure that is the case. The line between those who can be catered for in mainstream schools and those that are best served by specialist school like Clarendon is not straightforward and easily defined, and parents may not always be the best placed to define it, which is why, when there is a statement in place, there is a quite rightly a process involving parent, schools and the Local Authority to do that on a case by case basis.

I can well believe a new school is not the place for a child with complex needs like this, I am not sure disruptive comes into it, the child clearly does need a lot of support and Clarendon will have extensive experience of supporting pupils with similar complex needs. In this case it is almost certain other mainstream schools with some specialist provision long in place such as Orleans have also felt that they could not provide adequate support. The Orleans unit has a record of providing exactly the sort of support a child with moderate statemented SEN needs to achieve their potential in a mainstream school so if they could not support this child with all their experience it does seem as though the correct solution has been arrived at. There is no suggestion that this parent feels her child's needs are not going to be met , given the tone of the article I am sure if there was it would have been highlighted.

MrsSalvo You never did respond to my post asking why you labelled the Turing pupils as "Teddington kids" when they are not, most of Teddington is still served by Teddington School, and now I would like you to back up why you believe that the "Whitton kids" are going to be any less "naice" for living on the other side of the A316? I did post a map that showed that the areas of relative depravation in the borough lie on both sides of the A316, if there is a pattern it is the areas to the west on both sides, not that serving an area of affluence or depravation is automatically linked to success or the lack of it. Greycourt, one of the outstanding local comprehensives on which Turing is modelled serves the area of greatest depravation in the borough. I really object to this stigmatising of the children who live in particular areas, they are all just children. To be honest when my children have done activities, or played in the parks, on the other side of the A316 they have if anything encountered "naicer" children.

So the SEND Code of Practice allows for disability discrimination does it?

Which Code of Practice allows for ´ring-fencing´ and discrimination against those who live close to the school - The School´s Admission Code of Practice perhaps?

Or is it the Free School Admissions Guidance that allows it?

And we established some time ago that Alan Turing though he displayed some traits that are found in Autistic pupils, and indeed in those with Specific Learning Difficulties such as Dyslexia and Dyspraxia, is not thought by his family to have had the potential to be actually diagnosed. He did well at school.

And Turing clearly have a vision to be inclusive of pupils who display similar traits, but are diagnosed. This issue arose because a pupil had very exceptional needs that put the wisdom of trying to accommodate him in mainstream schools into question.

Felipe clearly all of them since there are already a lot of schools in the borough operating admissions criteria that discriminate against local children, and that in areas of need so that primary age children are being offered schools miles away, or not at all. Indeed some of them have criteria that prioritise the pupils who meet their selection criteria over looked after children. There is one in Whitton www.st-edmunds.richmond.sch.uk/Admissions%20Policy%202015-16.pdf . At least in this case the criteria are focused on providing places to pupils who live in an area of need. And there is doubtless room for negotiation to balance all the interests of residents, parents, other schools etc. wherever the school ends up sited.

Regarding relative poverty: you can compare the IDACI score of Turing House's new admissions point in Somerset Gardens and the suggested site in Whitton, e.g. Sempervirens nursery postcode.

IDACI score (Income Domain Affecting Children Index) - defined as the percentage of children aged 0-15 living in income-deprived households.

Postcode of Somerset Gardens, Teddington (Turing House admissions point) e.g. TW11 8TA. Score is 8.4%

Postcode of Sempervirens nursery location, Whitton, e.g. TW2 6LH. Score is 23.8%

See also maps that illustrate areas of relative deprivation in the borough, pages 6, 12, 13: Heathfield in particular is highlighted.

www.richmond.gov.uk/cpna_march_2012b.pdf

This NUT document highlights many of the issues.

The NUT (National Union of Teachers) has these main concerns, most of which can be applied to Turing House.

Key concerns about Free Schools

• Free schools are not a solution to England’s school place shortage.

• A need for new places is not a determining factor in deciding whether a free school should open, nor is its impact on existing schools.

• The role of democratically-accountable local authorities in school-place planning has been undermined by the free school programme with the Secretary of State taking decisions about free schools with little or no regard to local views.

• Free schools are eating up a disproportionate amount of the education budget and staff time at the expense of children in other schools.

• One in ten teachers working in free schools is not qualified to teach.

• Free schools are performing no better than maintained schools according to Ofsted judgements in 2012/133 and fewer are ‘outstanding’ compared with maintained schools.

• Free schools are being allowed to open in premises that local authorities have determined are unsuitable and have been given dispensation from the requirement to obtain planning permission during their first year of operation, enabling them to open in almost any building.

• A number of aspects of the admission arrangements for free schools enable them to exercise a form of back-door selection.

• The intake of many free schools is unrepresentative of their local communities with far fewer numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals.

• Some private schools are converting to free school status to combat falling school rolls and receiving capital funding ahead of established state schools.

• Valuable taxpayer-owned school land and buildings are being transferred to unaccountable free school proprietors.

Each of these is highlighted in the document illustrated with numerous examples and data.

The section on admissions and selection is particularly relevant for this thread.

'The Freedom of Information data for free schools opening in 2011 also showed that many of the schools had low proportions of children with special educational needs (SEN):

• Just 2.2 per cent of the pupils at the King’s Science Academy had SEN compared with 25.8 per cent across Bradford as a whole that year, and 30.6 per cent in the five neighbouring schools.

Not only is there an impact on individual pupils with SEN if particular free schools are less inclusive than other local schools, there is a system-wide impact. If free schools do not operate admissions’ policies in ways that are fair to SEN pupils then neighbouring schools will need to cater for more than the appropriate numbers of SEN pupils. This is known as the ‘magnet effect’ and is understood to jeopardise the ability of schools to make appropriate provision for all children in the school.'

Maybe someone should use the FOI to find out the proportion of pupils in year 7 with SEN.

'And there is doubtless room for negotiation to balance all the interests of residents, parents, other schools etc. wherever the school ends up sited.'

Oh really? Keep the Whittonites happy with a little sweetener of maybe 50% of the remaining admissions after all of the siblings, Founders and others have been admitted. That would equate to much less than 50%, probably more like 20% after 3-4 years with the current admissions point and there's absolutely nothing stopping TH changing the 'negotiated' admissions policy back to the original once the planning has been approved.

Like you say, clearly all of the admissions guidance and codes of practice allow for discrimination. And it's not like TH would be the first school in the borough to operate a discriminatory admissions policy,

Muminlondon out of interest what is the score for udney park rd? My impression has always been that the policy was designed for either site with the implication that it would probably need to change in time.
Looks like the vultures will be circulating until then. I expect Udney park residents have an interest in making the school look bad to Imperial and there's the anti academy brigade jumping on their bandwagon now too.
Roll on September.

GrahamH2 -

It's unfair to level all criticisms of free schools at TH. Most of these have been discussed at length on the other threads, I refer you to

local.mumsnet.com/Talk/local_richmond_upon_thames/2229111-Richmond-Borough-Schools-Chat-6

To take your points:

TH have identified an area of shortage, the council agree. This was the initial impetus for the idea, not some ideological motive.
TH have tried to place it's admissions point as far away from other schools as possible so as to limit the impact. There is lots of the website about that.
The council are supportive of TH and agree with it's assessment of need. They built a free school opening into their forecasts before TH was launched.
The other schools have spent time, money and energy expanding sixth forms, they have no real capacity to expand.
The RET schools have excellent Ofsted reports, I see no reason why TH would be any different.
The free school process is bonkers, sometime schools have no option but to open in temporary accommodation.
TH admissions is well explained on the website and debated on the thread above, best read that.

I'm not going to defend the free school policy but I will defend TH as I think they are genuinely trying to do something good for the community, but they are working within an insane system.

I feel it's been a tad divisive to start this other thread. A lot of discussions are looping round and round. It would be best to move back to local.mumsnet.com/Talk/local_richmond_upon_thames/2374655-Richmond-Borough-Schools-Chat-7

I agree Jellytoto - roll on Sept.

Graham if you were levelling your post at Free Schools in general and indeed two local sponsors in particular, Belleview and GEMS, who are both companies entering the market with overseas investors then it might be appropriate and I would not disagree with all you say but as bluestars has highlighted there is the evidence going back over 6000 posts on the Richmond Schools thread that Turing was a pragmatic response by parents to a situation where the LEA having said two new schools were needed then changed it's policies and focused on creating an exclusive Catholic School for the borough, and donated the ideal site for it. Those parents never wanted anything but to create a school exactly like the other oversubscribed outstanding inclusive comprehensives whose catchments were shrinking back from their area.

Now sites are scarce and there is controversy over where the school might end up, nobody wants a secondary school on their doorstep.

However there are no ideal sites and a pragmatic response is needed wherever the school ends up, there are interests to be balanced here, parents living in an area of need, parents living near the site which is not in an area of need, local residents and nearby schools. At least in this case there will be negotiation, as there was not with the Catholic School, on either admissions criteria or planning considerations.

mum We have discussed postcode analysis before, they are great tools for sorting mail, for which they were designed but not so much for socio economic analysis and it is particularly unrepresentative to quote a full postcode which covers less than 40 houses. Move a bit further west in Fullwell eg Squires garden centre and the score is almost exactly the same as the Sempervirens nursery but still well within a catchment focused on the existing admissions point, even if the catchment ends up as small as Teddington etc. Of course Udney Park's score is much lower at just over 3% so if the school ends up there the admissions point becomes an instrument of inclusivity.

jellytoto Udney Park Road is 13% on that score, taking the postcode TW11 9BB. So marginally less deprived than Somerset Gardens, but still wealthier than Whitton - but only 20% is being taken from that area if it is sited there, anyway. Perhaps that reflects a number of families renting flats near the high street.

Perhaps a better description of local neighbourhoods can be found on the Office for National Statistics Neighbourhood Statistics website - the 'Neighbourhood Summary'.

I put in both the postcodes for Whitton/Somerset Gardens and there are startling differences in terms of proportion in management/professional occupations, and employment. Startling mainly because Whitton is closer to the national average, whereas Somerset Gardens seems a lot more advantaged in terms of number of professionals and how many are educated to degree level.

I'd recommend you try it out because there are also maps of the areas and further data. The Whitton area (local is very definitely the area around Hospital Bridge Road that will be most affected by the traffic and environmental problems that a school built there would bring.

We have discussed postcode analysis before, they are great tools for sorting mail, for which they were designed but not so much for socio economic analysis

I used postcodes on the DfE website to look up IDACI scores, rather than postcode areas - as it tells you, 'The IDACI score and rank are for the Super Output Area (SOA) in which the postcode lies.'

So the Somerset Gardens postcode is SOA number E01003811, and the Whitton postcode is E01003842. They are not specific at the level of whole postcode, but relate to Lower Level Super Output Areas (similar size to electoral wards).

The Neighbourhood Statistics summary from the ONS uses Super Output Area Middle Layers.

I believe RISC used a 'postcode average' of free school meal percentages when comparing faith schools to other schools in their local area. Are you saying that would not have been a reliable comparison?

Udney Park Road is 13% on that score, taking the postcode TW11 9BB. So marginally less deprived than Somerset Gardens, but still wealthier than Whitton

Sorry, should have said that Udney Park Road is marginally less advantaged than Somerset Gardens, according to the IDACI data.

Not sure how far the postcode for Udney Park Road that you quote extends but there is actually an area of social housing more or less opposite where the entrance to the Imperial College site would probably be in Cromwell Road - an RHP estate that contains Addison Road, Hawkins Road, Down Road etc. Of course all of these roads are firmly in the Teddington School catchment area so it's not clear who would apply to Turing House if it is situated there - the 20% could be made up of children living very near the site but they could be a scatter of children from across central and south Teddington.

Mum I apologise if you used the larger postcode area but I would still think it more valid to compare FSM provision with the social make up of a postcode area that broadly correlates with a known school catchment than picking on an area when we have no idea what the catchment will be. As Lottie highlights Teddington school serves some of the most affluent areas already. We cannot even make any meaningful judgement of the make Twickenham Academy's catchment since it appears to spread potentially to Barnes. Certainly as I highlighted before with the exception of Heathfield, another school without a defined catchment, the Whitton primaries are not notably different to Stanley, Trafalgar etc.

And not only do I think it unnecessarily emotive and divisive to be bringing the social make up into the debate when the success of schools is demonstrably no longer tied up with the social make up of the area they serve I also think it is unnecessarily stigmatising of Whitton parents and children. It already has many successful thriving schools at Primary level and Twickenham Academy's comparative unpopularity and performance rests on many factors.

We cannot even make any meaningful judgement of the make Twickenham Academy's catchment since it appears to spread potentially to Barnes.

There are already many statistics and maps about the make-up of existing schools - see the London Schools Atlas. It is not inclusive or fair for a community school to give priority to pupils who are not local to the area to travel past two other local schools to get there, where they form the majority of the intake. That's the same as setting up a feeder link without a clear criterion or justification for how pupils might establish the link, and without a mechanism for any other schools to build up a link. Whether admission point or named school, it locks some pupils in yet others are locked out. I'm afraid the evidence backs up a form of social selection unless the school is undersubscribed and takes all applicants, or secures a local site, or changes its admissions policy to include random selection.

mum I'm afraid the evidence backs up a form of social selection I have seen no such evidence. You and I have been there every step of the way with the discussion of the development of the current admissions criteria on this thread, and indeed elsewhere where it was in the public domain, you know how it evolved and you know it evolved in consultation with LBRUT. And you know that before they set on the mechanism of using a midpoint between schools to focus on the area of need that they always had in mind some mechanism to make sure the catchment was inclusive of areas of relative deprivation. That was part of the early vision of it's founder parents.

At the moment there is precious little evidence about what the selection criteria will be if the school ends up in Whitton, we don't even know how likely it is it will end up there at all. Bayjay before she went to a better place hinted at negotiation and I am quite sure that there will be extensive further evolution to the admissions criteria to reach some sort of pragmatic accommodation of the interests of parents and nearby schools wherever it ends up. If the school ends up in Whitton that in itself will be a pragmatic solution and very far from ideal.

Personally I am not going to leap to any judgements on all this until we have the evidence of what will be in place when the school moves to a permanent site in three years time.

The intake of Twickenham Academy from the London Schools Atlas is:

20% Heathfield
17% Whitton
15% Hanworth
10% West Twickenham
9% Hounslow South
5% Hanworth Park
5% Isleworth

West Twickenham students go to:
42% Waldegrave
12% Orleans Park
12% Twickenham Academy
11% Teddington

The intake of Hampton Academy is:

27% Hanworth
25% Hampton North
16% Hampton
5% Hanworth Park

@Lprosser: not sure about those two streets being social housing anymore, houses are £500K+ and flats are over £300K+, lower than Tedd standards but hardly social at that cost? Ownership rate on them is also v high.

Distances travelled by students in each area from the London Schools Atlas:

Hampton Academy:

Fulwell and Hampton Hill 0.1km
West Twickenham 1.2km
Teddington 1.4km
Heathfield 2.3km
Whitton 2.7km

Twickenham Academy:

West Twickenham 1.4km
Whitton 1.6km
Fulwell and Hampton Hill - no data as no students
Teddington 2.6km
Heathfield 2.6km

you know how it evolved and you know it evolved in consultation with LBRUT

The original admissions point may have been suggested by LBRuT but that was then moved 1 mile further away with some arcane justification about Russian scientists... That was also before the leak fiasco of UPR and before Whitton site became known. As MOL it is 'last resort' but maybe other options were thought possible when the first point was suggested. And it was also meant to be temporary. That's my main point - the admissions point was consulted in before anyone understood its significance.

I hope you are right that other options are still under consideration.

PS. The IDACI score is the same for TW11 9EX which is the Addison rd area vs Udney park Rd... so not very granular data there.

and just for illustration purposes, Addison Rd again: www.checkmyarea.com/tw119ex.htm