Pressure on Romsey Town Primary Schools- Let's do something!

[philosikos]

Hello. This year my child was amongst several who did not get a place at St Phillip's tho' it is our catchment school. If any parent is in a similar situation with St Philip's or Ridgefield or Abbey please get in touch. If this happened to you last year or you are worried about next year, please get in touch too -on this thread. If enough parents get together we could exert some pressure on the county council to do something, and the local city councillors will have more credibility if they speak on our behalf.
My child has been allocated to Abbey Meadows. She is very excited and I am very impressed with its teachers and facilities I have no doubt she will be well educated there. But it is a difficult to get to from Romsey Town and it is located in another distinctive community- Abbey. I would like to have the choice to send my child to her local catchment school and it seems in years to come this will be less and less likely for Romsey Town parents, especially if you live on the outer 1/2 of catchment areas for St P's & Ridgefield & St Matthew's!
If there is sufficient interest I will get a group together. Have a good day!

Is an appeal to the fair access panel a separate stage over and above the normal appeals over admission to reception classes which happen in June? Or is it part of the same process?

I don't have that view of governors. I merely note that church places increased once and could increase again. The purpose of church places is to give preference to churchgoers ahead of non-churchgoers.

Fair Access panel is separate - there's info on it on the CCC admissions pages - if you go through the admissions to primary school link and click through the pages, Hulu get to a separate link to the Fair Acess Panel.

I apologise - it's just that you sounded as if you thought that Foundation Governors saw their role as serving only churchgoers, and that is not my experience.

There is in any case a national shortage of Foundation governors ( as there is of all kinds of school governors) because the role is so onerous and the responsibility governors carry is almost limitless. Most are simply trying to do the best for the school and keep Ofsted off everyone's backs.

If your older child gets in to a non-catchment school because of catchment oversubscription, the younger siblings get treated as in-catchment children. I saw this written down a few months ago in black and white in a Cambridge council document. I can't lay my hands on it right now but it was unequivocal (though interestingly little publicised).

Unfortunately, we didn't get in to St Ms because of undersubscription of St P (there were plenty of places that year), we just chose to go there! At the time there really didn't seem to be any issue about future oversubscription. My kids are extremely happy at St Ms, so I don't think I'd change anything in retrospect, but it does seem to be an unfairness that only-just-out-of-catchment kids, who have not played the system and moved miles away, don't get priority for their sibling's school.

But to be fair, we knew the system when we applied, so it's arguable that them's the breaks! I'd have been even happier though not to have to choose between our local school, which I favour on principle, and the school that wouldn't indoctrinate our children!

niminypiminy, that is not what I was implying. I think I was saying that a LEA school can be forced to expand by the LEA but a church school can't.

Yes, but that's not true. Only academies cannot be forced to expand by the LEA because they are not LEA schools. Voluntary aided and voluntary controlled church schools are still LEA schools (unless they have become academies as well). St Lukes for example was made to expand during the big expansion of places a few years ago.

niminypiminy, your last sentence is not true.

St Luke's was not forced to expand. They moved from a 6 form school to a 7 form school (ie from mixed year groups to one form per year). This was not 'made to' happen by the LEA.

Hi philosikos

I think for your campaign group you need to get as many parents as possible signed up as members. It shouldn't be hard to get people to join if the group is fairly neutral in its aims and parents will get something in return, i.e information.

This will give you some legitimacy and put you in a position to ask for meetings, for example with Rob Lewis at the County Council (who is responsible for planning school expansions) and certainly local politicans such as Romsey's county councillor Zoe Moghadas. You will then start finding things out, or at least getting a better idea of the questions you should be asking.

I'd suggest making the group as non-confrontational as possible so that you build relationships rather than annoy people. Council officers want to be helpful in my experience, but you can see why they would close ranks if they felt they were being attacked or criticised. The situation isn't really their fault.

Failing that there is always Freedom of Information (FOI). If all these reviews have been taking place (school places, catchment areas, etc) then it ought to be possible to obtain a copy of internal reports. There must also have been detailed plans made when Ridgefield expansion was mooted in 2009 - you should be able to discover how much was this going to cost, where would the new block have been built, what would the catchment areas have been, and so on.

In that sense no school can be forced to expand - when Abbey Meadows expanded the governors had to agree before it could go ahead. But the LEA's need to have extra places meant that it would have been very difficult for us not to agree. It is the same for any LEA school, but not for academies which are in a fundamentally different position as they are accountable directly to the Secretary of State for schools. Church schools that are not academies are not in that postponed, they are LEA schools.

In that position!

I've learnt a lot from this thread. Our campaign group has met and as you've suggested, we've decided one of our aims is to get the LA to more open with what they are doing. We are going to stay reasonable and neutral. We're going to try to get pre-school parents signed up to a petition. I've nicked/plagiarised quite a lot of lines from CambridgeDavid- hope this is OK?
I've found all sorts of documents online there is a "Cambridgeshire 0-19 Education Organisation Plan 2014-2015" It makes no mention of future housing developments in Romsey Town area. It outlines a consultation process -with a public stage-when pressure on school places has been identified and states :
Whilst accepting the rights of parents to express a preference for a school place, this is considered to be secondary to the council’s duty to secure sufficient school places... However, where pressures are identified, due consideration is given to parental preference in determining solutions to providing additional capacity.
-I can't really see any evidence of that so far.
I've spent some time reading a Local Government Association document, "The council role in school place planning" and see how difficult it can be for councils to plan and build given statutory and economic restraints.
I suppose I woud like to know more about:
-projected need for 1y school places and where
-how council will be plan for housebuilds and ? sec106 funding
-when/if public consultn. will take place
We'll see how much support we can garner from parents and take it from there.

My eldest son failed to get a place at Ridgefield (our catchment school) two years ago and we ended up with Queen Emma (also catchment) which was 1.8m away. Too far to walk and difficult to manage by bike with 3 kids. We hadn't even put Queen Emma down as one of our 3 options . We have moved out of Cambridge now (schools being the major reason) but we were devastated that when living off Mill Road with everything on our doorstep, we couldn't get a place at a school which was part of the community we lived in and which we couldn't walk to.

Hi philosikos, good luck with your campaign. It's good to know that all the time and effort I put into finding out information isn't going to be wasted.

You probably already know that the County Council has a page where they publish details of planned school changes:
www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/info/20059/schools_and_learning/347/school_changes_and_consultations

There is also an annual consultation which took place in January and February this year (2015) for the September 2016 admission arrangements. With the benefit of hindsight this would have been the time to challenge why they were keeping a PAN of 30 for Ridgefield when there will be a spare classroom.

However, it's unfortunately true that public bodies tend to consult on things they already decided they want to do, so it does seem that it would be better to have some influence earlier in the planning stages.

Olivertheoctopus we had the same experience for our catchment school & my reaction was the same - I don't feel part of our community - I don't think people realise the impact of not getting into your local school.

Another factor in the award of school places is families getting away with providing inaccurate information on their applications.

In 2013-14 only 5 places were withdrawn by the Council as a result of fraudulent applications, according to this article in the Cambridge News:
www.cambridge-news.co.uk/story-23132647-detail/story.html

The wording of the article implies that people were only caught because somebody reported them to the Council, not because checks were carried out proactively.

Recently a senior teacher at an oversubscribed school in Cambridge told me that they are aware of several pupils at their school who have been given a place because they used their grandparents address.

I hesitate to mention any of this because focusing on 'cheating parents' detracts from the failure of the authorities to provide enough places. On the other hand, where a handful of children have missed out on their local school this could be 100% due to fraud committed by others.

As a minimum the County Council should be cross-checking that the application addresses match records held by the City Council for payment of Council Tax. This could be done automaticaly as it is just comparing two databases. In the First Steps guide it states that they will also check the address to which Child Benefit is paid and records held by the child's early years setting. I suspect that none of this is happening.

We're just moving to Romsey with a 1yo, pretty much given up on the prospect of getting into any local school given the stats shared here.

I couldn't DM you here, how can I get in touch?

Has your group been in touch with Romsey county cllr Zoe Moghadas? She's very nice and is a teacher so will know something about the problem and will probably be very sympathetic.

Mill Road area local and county councillors tend to be pretty responsive to local groups because it's a very activist-heavy area (not called Red Romsey for nothing) and they know that this kind of issue can affect election outcomes. The last Lib Dem local councillor in Cambridge East Area (Romsey/Abbey/Petersfield/Coleridge) is up for re-election in May and the Lib Dems are going to be desperate to hang onto the seat, which is held by the Cambridge Lib Dem's deputy leader. They are experts at making political capital out of siding with local pressure groups and would probably be keen to listen to and support your group if they thoguht it might be a votewinner. That might also encourage Romsey Labour to help, too.

If you are interested in this subject do look at the "Mill Roads Primary Schools Campaign" on Facebook. Please add your story there or ask questions

What became of the philosikos group discussed earlier in this thread, which had met and was going to lobby the Council? I'm sure the Facebook group is well-meaning, but if some work and campaigning has already taken place, wouldn't that be a more useful starting point?

St Philips has been rated Good in its latest inspection by.......... the Church of England. The inspection was focused particularly on the school ethos, collective worship and the teaching of RE.

Looks like I'm talking to myself now on this thread.... but I looked on the Facebook group and couldn't see any news on there either.

I guess many people will know by now that Siobhan Rouse, the Head of St Philips, is leaving the school next Easter after 12 years in charge. I wonder if that will bring any changes for families in Romsey?

I'm still here, and reading! I don't have anything much to add, except that the comment about the council not checking addresses carefully rings very true. I know of at least one St M's family who are open about having cheated the system. Nobody has yet reported them afaik, but it is beside the point! And somebody else i know was told by the council that a temporary move into catchment for the purposes of climbing the waiting list was perfectly acceptable as long as you were genuinely living there, but you could then move back as soon as the place had been allocated!!! Is there any will in this campaign group to challenge the council on their lack of checks? I also wonder hypothetically about an appeal potentially succeeding on the grounds that kids near the top of the waiting list have almost certainly been cheated of a place by maladministration ie lack of checks on addresses and lack of system preventing applications from temporary addresses when a family owns another house nearby. Most of London has this system, so it shouldn't be beyond their wit to sort it out.

Also, what kind of change at St P's were you imagining in admissions terms? An increase or a decrease in church places? Given the makeup of the governing body, I really can't imagine the latter:(

I've also heard lots of examples of families cheating the system, and that's just the ones shameless enough to be open about it, so I suspect it's widespread.

I think the basic problem is that there is no disincentive against fraudulent applications. If you don't like your catchment school but own a flat near St Matthews then you might as well give the flat address with St Matthews as your first choice. If you get caught then you lose the St Matthews place but still get your catchment school. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by cheating. And once your child starts school in September it's too late for the place to be taken away and you've got away with it permanently.

I'm absolutely not advocating fraud and I think it's extremely regrettable that this is happening. If the County Council can't change the rules then I wish they would at least police them in some way.

I don't see how you could win an appeal by making a general claim that the Admissions Team hadn't allocated places competently. You would need evidence, which is impossible to obtain without knowing who has been given the places above you. It would also depend where your were on the list as there could be several children above your own so you wouldn't be able to show that one person's fraudulent application had directly led to your own child missing out.

Hopefully this year will be better! We have filled in our forms online and now await our fate in April. We have a in catchment little one with no siblings in the school. Hopefully we will get in.