Two recent published Letters to RTT
Not making it ‘inclusive’ -8th May 2015
Sir – Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign (Risc) thinks that church schools should admit “all children in their communities” (Losing faith in school admissions, Letters, May 1).
How can they do this if they are oversubscribed?
Risc’s answer, presumably, is by using residence-based admissions that other schools use.
This would be good news for wealthy Londoners wanting to move out and secure a place at one of Richmond’s excellent church schools.
They could parachute into a property just before admissions time and deprive someone else of a place.
Risc thinks this would make those schools more “inclusive”.
It would not. It would increase the number of school places that could be secured by a house purchase or short- term rental.
Result: higher house prices and less school choice for poorer families who have lived here for longer.
Richmond has 44 primary schools of which 17 are church schools.
The church schools Helen Clark mentions are situated very close to non-church schools. If they too are full that is a population problem.
The church schools are open to all and only discriminate in favour of churchgoers when they are over-subscribed. Similarly, the non-church schools do not have catchment areas, but when they are over-suscribed they discriminate on distance.
Every over-subscribed school, church or not, has a discriminatory admissions policy.
Tinkering around with admissions policies will not alter the pressure on primary school places, which is the real problem.
It will result in a little bit of movement of who goes where, and more address-based appeals.
The devout family not near a church school, and the dyed-in-the-wool atheist next door to St Wotsit’s, might have schools forced on them which they do not want. For both of them, the extra distance for a school they prefer is worth it. If inclusivity is truly Risc’s aim, when is it going to complain about single sex and academically selective state schools (Waldegrave and Tiffin)?
Risc purports to be about inclusivity but it is a single-issue campaign group focused on church schools’ admissions policies. It should change its name for honesty’s sake.
Criticism of free school plans - 15th May 2015
Sir – I am writing with reference to the Turing House School. Recently I looked at the website and saw that it is a five form entry, 11 to 18 secondary school. All places have been allocated for September 2015.
I had not read in the local paper that Richmond was going to be short of 150 places for September 2015 and so this may mean that other schools have spare places and a loss of income.
Many primary school children go on to private schools and so looking at numbers in year 6 in the borough does not give an accurate number of pupils seeking places in Richmond state schools.
Also a new state secondary school is due to open in 2017 on the Richmond College site.
Free schools are set up by religious groups or by parents who do not like the schools that are on offer.
The school is being set up by Twickenham parents who presumably do not want their children to go to Twickenham Academy which, according to Ofsted, “requires improvement”.
I have great difficulty in getting my head around a system that allows parents to set up a school according to their beliefs and then get the taxpayer to pay for it.
The location of schools should be planned by a governmental body (not necessarily by a local education authority).
They should only be set up in areas where there is a shortage of places. Teddington already has a large, successful comprehensive.
If this school is going to be permanently located on the Imperial College site it will be near a very large primary school. Of course, there will be an impact on traffic in the area. The catchment area of Turing House school is the Fulwell area.
It is one thing for a group of parents to house a school in a redundant building that needs an occupier and little money spent on it.
It is another thing for tax-payers to pay for a new school on very expensive land. The school is opening temporarily in an office building in Teddington.
Money is presently being spent on this building to turn it into a school. I note in RTT on May 8 that the headteacher used the phrase “would be an unreasonable use of public expenditure” in relation to not accepting a pupil with special needs to the proposed school. I would like to say that spending money on a building for temporary use is an unacceptable use of tax-payers’ money. I urge readers to look at the Turing House website and also Wikipedia on the Bristol Free school that is run by the same organisation, RET.