Richmond Borough Schools Chat 7

[muminlondon2]

Lots and lots of discussions on local schools and education issues preceded this thread, including Richmond Borough Schools Chat 6.

Anyone who wants to carry on that discussion, and offer information and opinions (without being moderated by any particular individual or interest group, bearing in mind all the usual mumsnet guidelines about respect and not getting personal, etc.) - feel free.

I am sure that people not yet living in the borough will never be told the truth in advance about "the shed" and then the permanent location near an accident black spot, lots of pollution and no playground. I believe that these free schools get extra money or can charge if children come from "out of borough"...do you know if that is true? If that is the case, then they will fill it not with locals (even though Cllr Hodgins says there is great local need!) but will get children from anywhere they can and make extra money. I am convinced that the Council has been told "from above" that they must give planning permission even if no locals actually want their children to attend a school on such a bad site. Also I cannot ever see the Council ever being upfront about the location.

I believe that these free schools get extra money or can charge if children come from "out of borough"

Deer Park and GEMS are both run by sponsors with ties to international markets in Switzerland and Dubai. There may really be some agenda for educational exports. But they also need to get bums on seats to tick boxes for funding. There is a story here about a free school in Bournemouth that actively 'imported' a load of pupils from Germany just around school census time. It sounds like they don't even need to be there the whole year to qualify for funding. That school has similar site disadvantages - instead of being conveniently in the twin centre it's going to be right at the airport at a disused air traffic control centre. All that aircraft noise and pollution - nice. Wonder if they get the dead bodies falling from the undercarriage on take off?

Locals are up in arms and have shunned it but they still allowed it to open and seem to think it a viable site. It's sinister - children literally as cargo...

muminlondon2. I believe that there might be a problem now with the Free School site at Bournemouth as they found a colony of bats at the site!!
Wonder what can be found at London House...they did have Japanese Knotweed on that site at one time.

Hilarious! The bats may have done those children a favour. I googled that just now and questions have even been asked in parliament - the bats were only discovered in June because no surveys were carried out prior to purchase since planning permission and the usual safety checks can be disregarded. They're only schools, for children, after all.

Wonder if bats, giant hogweed, asbestos or contaminated soil that might be holding up the building funding agreement for Heathgate House in Twickenham? GEMS Facebook page announced - six weeks ago - that it would take 'a few days' but haven't yet posted an update.

The bats in Bournemouth were discovered after asbestos and unexplored Second World War mines. The DfE said: 'The application process is very comprehensive and all proposals are rigorously assessed before they are approved.'

Except the parliamentary statement said they forgot to check for bats.

Jinxed or what?

Richmond Magistrate's Court may close according to the BBC - depending on a consultation. This is one of ten courts in London suggested for closure.

This was proposed in 2013 but I'm assuming the government backtracked after pressure from its coalition partners.

So is this the news Deer Park School was waiting for? According to the Achieving for Children notes of a meeting with residents on 31 March about Deer Park School, it was one of the sites originally under consideration, but 'the Ministry of Justice ... have no plans for it to cease use as a court'. Well that seems to have changed...

What a shame this news hadn't been announced before the council meeting - but perhaps Paul Hodgins can give an update?

The RTT reports that Cost-cutting could see Richmond Magistrates' Court close but doesn't mention that it has been suggested previously as as site for a school, but at the time was still expected to be in use.

There's a report that [[http://pages.cdn.pagesuite.com/b/c/bc556565-6fa8-4949-9dfc-1f0ba142809e/page.pdf Poorer pupils face
being 'left behind']] as Richmond is the worst performing (London?) borough in terms of standards of five year olds on free school meals.

And a very good letter on Deer Park School, Little time to debate school plan, pointing out that there was no debate, no vote, the councillors made inaccurate claims and attempts to get Bellevue Place Educational Trust to involve the community have been 'quietly and politely rebuffed'.

Meanwhile, the head of Richmond Park Academy's MAT, Ian Comfort, has confirmed that schools have less freedom once they belong to a multi-academy trust:

'In my view there is less autonomy for schools in multi-academy trusts and for academy trusts themselves than there is for schools in LAs, and for LAs.'

And another Schoolsweek article points to the FOI success for Laura McInerney on getting the government to publish applications for free schools. Among them are:

Turing House School - the community it is meant to serve is defined as 'South-West Twickenham, Fulwell and North Teddington'. Some rather intriguing 'alternative options' for sites, too.
Deer Park School which applied for a job lot of three schools on the same form.
Richmond upon Thames College Free School
Twickenham Primary School which also applied for Surbiton primary on the same form.

And many others can be found from the Schoolsweek article.

Two letters in today’s print RTT:

Pollution make site unsuitable (Cllr Penny Frost, opposition spokeswoman for education p 20) and Little time to debate school plan (Louise Dunn p 22).

Yet another accident today on the A316 by the bus stop for London House
at Manor Circus. This is not a safe site to house a large primary school

RTT Online has Richmond Magistrates' Court facing closure in MoJ shake-up plans:

Richmond Magistrates' Court could be closed as the Ministry of Justice plans to shake up family courts in order to reduce costs . . The consultation process began on July 16 and will conclude on October 8.

‘Please send your response by 8/10/15 to:
HMCTS Consultation
Ministry of Justice Post point 1.13
102 Petty France
SW1H 9AJ

Fax: 0870 761 7768
Email: [email protected] ‘

The petition against Turing House being located in Whitton is now on the council site.

cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?ID=90&RPID=18811815&HPID=18811815

There's now a "No to Turing House in Whitton" petition on the Council website as the Council refused to acknowledge the previous one on change.org apparently:
cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?ID=90&RPID=18800058&HPID=18800058

There is no mystery about how council petitions work but a good deal of ignorance; it’s set out plainly enough of their website at : Petitions Scheme:

Residents, those in employment or education in the borough, and councillors are able to petition
the council on a variety of matters. Petitions are accepted via the council’s website, in paper form, or by a combination of these.

. . A signature is deemed to be ‘valid’ where the given address is verified as being within the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames’ administrative area. The given address can be for a person’s home, workplace, or place of study

The council holds the right to carry out any checks that it deems are necessary to verify the number of signatures on a petition. These checks can include verifying addresses, checking the names of signatories, ensuring there are no duplicate signatories, etc, with the view to amending the final signature count as necessary.

In order for a paper petition to be considered in accordance with this scheme, the following information must be present and legible:

• A clear statement of the petition’s aim on the top of each sheet made available for signing
• A name, address, and signature for each signatory

The council will only consider online petitions where they are submitted using the petitions facility on the council’s website.

Yesterday in Parliament:

• Tania Mathias Conservative, Twickenham: What assurances can the Minister give me regarding securing buildings for free schools? In my constituency, east Twickenham is in desperate need of free schools but there are very few suitable sites.

• Nick Gibb The Minister for Schools: My hon. Friend raises an important point. We need local authorities to be co-operative and to work with us to identify sites for free schools. This is an important way of improving the quality of schools and the number of school places, and we expect local authorities to work with us to identify suitable sites.

In the case of the proposed very unsuitable site for Deer Park School at London House at Manor Circus, local residents have put forward several possible much more suitable sites to the "powers that be". There has been absolute silence from them..i.e no public response. WHY?

How ridiculous it all is.

The council petition asks 'the council to draw to the attention of the Education Funding Agency the local concerns' regarding the Turing House site.

The council notes ' the Education Funding Agency is responsible for securing sites for free schools'. Not my problem, guv.

The local MP then asks a question of the education ministry directly. But the DfE schools minister says: 'we expect local authorities to work with us to identify suitable sites'. Not my problem, guv.

The council blames the DfE. The DfE blames the council. Meanwhile, land owned by a unversity is apparently sold to a mystery bidder. Office buildings on land owned by a supermarket remain empty, while the free school trust that can't fill up its first school bids for a second one, in the same location as it bid for its first school.

It's not joined-up thinking and it's all done in the wrong order, while children are in temporary classrooms. And parents and residents have no say in any of this, or any clue what is going on, apart from the small group that shaped the Turing House proposal from the beginning.

On Tuesday the chancellor will set the sale of billions of pounds worth of public sector land as a key target, along with the selling off of other state assets. Does this include court buildings?

Will any of it be turned into 'non-dom accom', perhaps? Are we starting to get a lot of that in Richmond - at the Star and Garter, for example?

In Kingston, the EFA has bought a commercial building due to the apparent lack of vacant publicly owned buildings, but may have to demolish and rebuild the office block it bought for £8 million.

None of it makes sense.

A few months ago I saw a document that went before the Cabinet that listed all the properties the Council were divesting, mostly for housing development, there were a few that had been considered as school sites but deemed unsuitable (must have been very unsuitable indeed given what is now deemed suitable ) or not needed. Sorry I can't find it with a quick search and I don't have time to do more. What was surprising was the scale of the divesting, a Fire Sale now is risking future flexibility.

I don't think you can imply the Turing parents had much of a say about being landed with a contentious site in Whitton. I am sure they are as peed off as anyone that all the sites they had hopes for have ended up not being realised, especially the UP site that was so nearly theirs but for a Council Official's big mouth

Heathcliff: I have searched through the cabinet agendas back to 9.7.14 via cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CommitteeId=163 for ‘property’ or ‘divestment’‘ without success.

The DfE has issued [[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/446633/SFR24_2015_Projections_Text.pdf National Pupil Projections - Future Trends in Pupil
Numbers: July 2015:]]

From pages 6 - 7:

‘ . . 5. Regional trends (Figures 3a-3b) The long-term projections of pupil numbers produced by the department are made at a national level only. ONS’s population projections provide information on the school-aged population in each region. No new regional projections have been made available since the mid-2012 sub-national projections used in the 2014 national pupil projections. Therefore Figures 3a and 3b are unchanged and are provided for context only:

London:
aged 5 to 10: change 2015 - 2017: + 5 %
aged 11 to 15: change 2015 - 2017: + 4 % . . ‘

Hat-tip: schoolsweek.co.uk/the-key-points-from-the-department-for-educations-pupil-projection-figures/

Richmond borough's increase will be close to that for London as a whole.

Chris Found it! cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/documents/s56886/PublicAppendixA.pdf The sites considered for school use were the Strathmore site and in Mereway. It was the 14 May Cabinet Meeting cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=163&MId=3528 which also discussed the increased costs of Strathmore moving in with St Richard Reynolds and Hampton Academy Sixth Form Building with an interesting account of the cock ups that happened with the latter and a dearth of documents on just how the costs are shared with the former

Heathclif that's true, the Whitton site near Heathlands/Heathfield was not the one Turing House steering committee parents had in mind on their application form - the NPL one would have been closer to their catchment and it is a shame it couldn't be accommodated. The application form proposal is impressively detailed on the school vision - not an identikit cut and paste job, unlike other proposals.

This week’s print RTT has Take the time to consider the most appropriate site for new school from Jane Harrison and Question Questioned from Sandra Fayle mocking Tania Mathias’ recent parliamentary question. Plus a story, The future of playing fields uncertain, re the Udney Park site, on p 5.

RTT Online has Udney Park's future uncertain as sports club's (sic) bids are rejected:

The future of a Teddington playing field hangs in the balance as its university owner has revealed it is not of “core charitable interest” to the college to provide sporting facilities it will not use. . .