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!

I do think last year was exceptionally bad. Patacake had 2.5 preschool rooms, and this year there are only 1.5 I think. Also worth remembering that in 2011, the St P's effective catchment area was even smaller than last year. The difference then was that St Matthews had plenty of room, so people didn't shout as loudly. The following year, all st ps catchment children got in afaik. It does vary a lot from year to year even if the trend is upwards because of new builds and inward migration. The birth rate is stable at least!

Incidentally David I think you might be wrong re place withdrawal. If fraud is proven they can and will withdraw a place even after a child has started. And even if it is before, the child could well miss out on their catchment school, as all places will have been allocated.

Also, they are definitely crosschecking with childcare centre records in at least some cases, as two friends had a query raised re (legitimate!) discrepancies in addresses. Of course, that relies on you having given the centres your address in the first place! I'd be very interested to know if they check council tax records.

The County Council is running a consultation into the admission arrangements for school year 2017-18 (2016-17 has already been determined). The draft documents propose that no changes are made to catchment areas or admission numbers in the Mill Road area, or indeed anywhere in Cambridge apart from the new University primary school.

The consultation has been open since 26th November 2015 and closes on 15th January 2016, so anyone who wishes to comment on the proposals (or lack of proposals) has around 10 days left to do this.

More information can be found here:
www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/info/20059/schools_and_learning/363/apply_for_a_school_place/10

It is being reported in today's Cambridge News that the County Council is planning to create 'super-sized' schools in Cambridgeshire, a subject which we were discussing earlier in this thread. New rules will increase the permitted maximum numbers on roll to 840 for primary schools and 1,800 for secondary schools.

This would mean that if St Philips and Ridgefield continue to be oversubscribed, and Queen Emma also gets full (it only had one spare place after round 1 in 2015) then Abbey Meadows could be expanded to an intake of 120 pupils with 4 classes. As a result of this no further capacity would have to be provided within Romsey Town for children who live there.

This plan was not mentioned in the consultation which closed on Friday, but the news article states that the new rules are "due to be passed today". The main reason given is that it is too expensive to build new schools.

Here is a link to the story:
www.cambridge-news.co.uk/8216-Super-sized-8217-primary-secondary-schools/story-28555697-detail/story.html

Meanwhile, the City Council is consulting on a Planning and Development Brief Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for the Ridgeons site on Cromwell Road. On the subject of school places it has this to say:

There is one primary school in the catchment area of the site. As part of the preparation for the SPD, discussions have been held with Cambridgeshire County Council. The County Council is currently preparing a strategic plan to deliver improved primary and secondary school places, catering for the planned growth of the city as a whole. The strategic plan will identify suitable locations for new or expanded schools. Future developments, including this one, will then be likely to be required to make a financial contribution towards the delivery of these schools.

Source: www.cambridge.gov.uk/consultations/have-your-say-on-the-ridgeons-site-cromwell-road-spd

For September 2016 Reception entry, families without a special route into their local school in Romsey (i.e statement, sibling, religious affiliation) needed to live either within 0.293 miles of St Philips or 0.322 miles of Ridgefield. Those cut off distances are just 471 and 518 metres respectively.

In practice that means streets like Great Eastern Street, Cavendish Road and Cromwell Road weren't close enough to get into St Philips, and most roads west of Coleridge Road were too far from Ridgefield.

The situation is less desperate for some families this year because St Matthews had space to admit under criterion 5 (children denied a place at their catchment school), although only up to a distance of 0.680 miles. In addition Morley and Queen Ediths admitted as far as criterion 6 (all other children), which means that children denied a catchment place (criterion 5) were admitted from any distance.

The dilemma for parents was deciding on their three choices, or rather which schools to pick alongside their catchment school. Based on prior year allocations there didn't seem to be much point in "wasting" a choice on St Matthews or Morley, but Queen Emma looked like a good bet because it wasn't fully subscribed after Round 1 last year. However, for 2016 anyone living north of Mill Road would have been denied a place at Queen Emma, and they would have been better off picking St Matthews or Morley (with the benefit of hindsight).

Any parents who "guessed wrong" will now have to choose between the 10 schools with places still remaining - Abbey Meadows, two schools in Cherry Hinton or the seven options in North Cambridge. Alternatively further places may become available in round 2 and between now and September.

It is unclear how many families are in this situation.

That is a great summary Cambridgedavid and we unfortunately guessed wrong having calculated best odds but leaving Morley off. St P's and Queen Emma were our top two. We live on Cavendish Road. I know of two other families in the same situation, one on St Philip's Rd and one on Ross St. We have all been allocated Abbey Meadows. In practice difficult for us for work and I would have been happy with any of the seven schools en route to the hospital - which as you say are all full. We are also quite disappointed not to be going to our catchment school, or Queen Emma where most of his frienda are going. We are 12th on the waiting list for St P's.

Sorry to hear that @CarouselQueen. You may find places come up in Round 2 or possibly right up until September. As I understand it, your position on each waiting list is determined by the admission criteria for that school rather than how long you've been waiting. That means you would stand the greatest chance of getting into St Philips, even if you're higher up the list for one of the other schools (because other people moving into those catchment areas would jump the queue ahead of you). I know of one family on Sedgwick Street who did a term at Abbey Meadows and then got into St Philips Reception class from January, so your situation hopefully isn't terminal.

Thanks @cambridgedavid. We are not averse to moving later by any means. Happy enough with starting at AM and reassured by local parents and school staff experiences that things are much improved there - just logistics that are tricky. Will add almost 8 miles to my daily cycle so on the plus side I will be fit! Would be nice to end up closer to home though.

On Abbey Meadows - we are moving out of the area and are very sad to be leaving AM, having weathered its downs and ups over a number of years. We kept our children there when we moved into the catchment of a much more "desirable" school! I would say that now is a great time to start there. The reception staff are fantastic and the school is really on the op.

Well we got into our first choice st p's very lucky as we have no siblings in school already. Anyone else get in?
There seems like lots of people didn't get in again so would be nice to know who did.

Simple answer, those who live within ?0.2 miles of StPs or have a sibling there already. Or else live in Saffron Walden but choose to worship an imaginary fellow in the sky, and therefore get admissions priority over children living 4 streets away (not cross about that, or anything). So very few, and probably even fewer on this thread or they wouldn't be here!

Cambridgeshire County Council have a document on their website called "0-19 Education Organisation Plan 2016 - 2017" which contains the following paragraphs relevant to this thread:

"There is forecast to be pressure on primary school places in many of the catchment areas across the south of the City. Specific pressure areas arise from the fact that surplus places are primarily located in Cherry Hinton which are not well located to meet this demand from within more central areas of the City."

"The pressure and impact of continued infill housing developments in the City on primary school capacity has been identified through the ongoing review of the Cambridge City Local Plan. Discussions are ongoing with planning officers from the City Council to identify potential options for increasing primary education capacity in the Coleridge/Romsey/Petersfield wards in the south of the City."

The full report is available by googling "education organisation plan cambridgeshire" and downloading a PDF link which appears in the search results.

Another option will be available south of the city from next September: www.cpetrust.co.uk/our-schools/trumpington-primary-school/