Richmond Borough Schools Chat 8

[muminlondon2]

This thread follows on from Richmond Borough Schools Chat 7.

News and opinions on all the changes to schools in Richmond borough.

Which bits are out of date, jellytoto? There is a new admissions consultation running until 12 January 2017. And the quote from Cllr Hodgins comes from a press release published yesterday.

I will not be at all surprised in a couple of years when the absurdity of school with a catchment so far from it geographically means that the rules change to normal distance criteria

Thanks for the press release link muminlondon. I was meaning the bit of Cllr Hodgin's quote that was used in the RTT. I'm sure the same phrasing was used last year so assumed it was an old quote. Also because they didn't mention that the school was already consulting and the consultation doc shows that Whitton kids are getting in ok at the moment even before they get the 20% priority, never mind after.

MrsSalvo St Richard Reynolds has been recruiting pupils from a distant catchment, in some cases outside the borough, for more than a couple of years but it would be extremely surprising if they did anything about the "absurdity", if anything it has tried to shirk the commitment to accept those pupils into the senior school who were given places in the Primary on distance criteria www.gov.uk/government/publications/st-richard-reynolds-catholic-college

Predictably it has completely turned its back on the community, no consideration is given, not just in it's selection criteria but transport arrangements, particularly the clogging up of local roads by parents picking up by car, pupil behaviour, planning, the arrangements for construction traffic etc. etc. Complaints get residents nowhere. They have even dodged the bullet of being required to open up their sports facilities for local community use on the basis of some VAT requirement that does not seem to stop other schools. It all gets nodded through by the Council who clearly have orders from above to make their life as easy as possible, and Councillors just ignore residents legitimate concerns. .

I am sure that the local residents in Central Twickenham would much prefer a school that has stated quite clearly its intention to be part of the local community it finds itself in.

Damning Nelson Ofsted Report
Interesting points about The Waldegrave Trust and LA ...
"The support from the Waldegrave Academy Trust, which includes that of a national leader of education, is not successful enough. It is useful in supporting ‘back office’ functions, such as finance and personnel, especially in the aftermath of becoming an academy. That support is designed to allow the headteacher the time to improve teaching and learning. But that objective has not been successfully achieved, and the academy trust has not adequately supported or checked on this."

"The academy trust purchases school improvement support from the local authority. This has been in place throughout the time of the academy. Trust members and governors set great store by this advice and the reports about the school’s development which have been produced over time through the local authority. These reports consistently overrate the school’s success. They refer to the weaknesses, but the importance of these is much understated. In minutes of meetings and reports, the trust, governors and local authority congratulate each other and the headteacher, emphasising improvement and change from the time of the predecessor school. This approach leads to a deeply shared, but undue, sense of security about the quality of the school’s current work among leaders, trustees and governors. It does not give the headteacher the challenge and support that she needs. "

That is very sad. It is particularly worrying given that Darrell is also being led into a trust with secondary schools, and indeed that the Council were putting pressure on Barnes Primaries to do the same with RPA. It is notable that the first actions outlined in the letter to parents is to bring in Consultants with the specialised experience of Primary Schools and employ a former Primary Head to support the Headteacher.......

i'd be surprised if that was true re St RR recruiting children from outside the borough.

At least 8 children from St James's didn't get offered St RR last year (this year's yr7) despite putting it as first choice (above Waldegrave in many instances - which they were given).

It is probably true for the current year 10 which was the first year when the school wasn't even confirmed before the secondary applications deadline and was never a full year group.

Yes, very worrying. Especially as Darell has also recently had a lot of input from the school improvement team. Our consultation re the academy business is due to end on Monday and we still have reams of unanswered questions submitted as part of the consultation. I find AfC's 'support' for schools that could improve really very lacking. There seems to be no ability to accept that schools have different characters and challenges and that what works for one may not be entirely helpful for another.

I think the support used to be a lot better until the academisation agenda showed up. Now there's a political will to push schools into this model. AfC is keen to keep schools within local MATs rather than have them snapped up by any of the big chains (see the shenanigans trying to get RPA back into local 'control').

TW123 In the first two years there were certainly pupils who got in from out of borough, in the second year they were late applications on the waiting list. However I am also going on the pupils getting on and off the fast to and from Feltham and Ashford service who certainly do
not all look Year 9. Of course that could well be down to shenanigans of parents who move into catchment /Parish and then away once they have a place.

It is of course a lottery within each of the eligible Parishes, so a St James's pupil, who might actually live close to the school and therefore likely to be able to walk /cycle and they and their parents to have a little more respect for the community they attend church in, has no more chance of gaining entry than one from Barnes or Whitton. Turing was set up to meet the needs of a local community, centred on Fulwell, with a great deal of community support and involvement. It is still allocating places to that community, whilst the pupils in the community they are going to be sited in who want to go there are getting in within the proportion of places allotted to that community, and they have said they will adapt their selection criteria in future. If it is absurd because it is in part focused on a geographically distant catchment, then the selection criteria permanently focused on distant catchments across the borough and potentially beyond is more absurd.

Totally agree re the academisation agenda, schooladdict. It was also better before the hiving off of all LA services to AfC, IMO.

Really sad to see that Ofsted report - the long publication delay did raise alarm bells. It just makes me so angry that successful LA structures have been tinkered with by ideologically driven politicians for no public benefit at all to the point where the whole system gets weakened. I really hope this focuses minds at Darrell so they are not bullied into a situation that will isolate them from other primaries. Maybe Lord True will also stop complacently congratulating himself now, though he has gone quiet since Zac Goldsmith was ousted.

Terrible report. Mixed feelings amongst Whitton parents right now. , [anger] , and .

There are some FAQs for parents on the Nelson website now.

That should be

I don't know Nelson at all. However, I do know that I'd feel very defensive of the school if my children were happy there. That report reads very much like they went in there with report decisions already taken, quite determined to be negative. I hope the families and staff are resilient enough to keep heading in the right direction. That said, I read it a few days ago and lack of differentiation did stand out. That would bother me as a parent.

This from the FAQs really jumps out:

'Following a special measures judgement there would normally be regular visits from Her Majesty’s inspectors (HMI). This did not happen once Nelson became an Academy in January 2014.'

It's hard to blame the trust for this but without primary phase experience they didn't add any value. It's worrying that LA/AfC hasn't provided good enough support either but had Nelson remained an LA maintained school under the old system, external inspectors could have picked up the problems earlier. The past six years have really damaged the school system.

I find the Nelson thing v interesting and massively worrying. I have a friend who had a child at Nelson when the initial bad Ofsted that led to the academisation came out. She and other parents were really shocked as they were happy with the school and their children were doing fine. They lost some much-valued members of staff in the shake up too.

It seems to me that secondaries supporting primaries does not actually work that well, unsurprisingly, since the challenges and operation of schools are so different in different phases. I don't know anything about The Howard Partnership Trust at all but it seems clear that a really excellent secondary was completely unprepared for the challenges involved in running a primary school. Obviously this concerns me greatly in the Darell/Grey Court thing. Here we have another really good secondary school which is clearly doing great things for its pupils. When I asked Maggie Bailey what was in it for Grey Court to take Darell on as part of the trust one v clear point was that she wanted to learn more about primary schools. I don't want our school to be another (possibly unsuccessful) testing ground. If secondaries are to take on the running of primaries, they need to do their learning before taking them on, not after!

The governing body of Nelson does not intend to continue getting schools advice from AfC either. This seems a very clear indication that their advice was not good enough. Darell has had a lot of input from the schools improvement team at AfC recently. I will certainly be asking questions about this before our consultation closes. We are currently trying to get the governing body to extend the consultation period and I am definitely going to be making use of those Nelson documents to push for this very strongly.

What a bloody mess. I feel very sorry for the Nelson parents, staff and children. It must be a horrible time for them.

Very sad. I wonder if Waldegrave would have even agreed to take over at Nelson if it had know that it was going to have Twickenham and Hampton Academies handed to it to deal with aswell. I don't really understand how the same few individuals are expected to juggle all these balls at once even if they are very good at their own jobs. It just seems mad to link primaries to secondaries not to one another. Good luck Absinthe.

Good point. I wonder if the MAT with TA and HA would have been set up if they had known before the Ofsted inspection that there had been little or no improvements at Nelson as part of the Waldegrave Trust.

I thought that the hierarchy of the Trust meant that the outcomes of all of the pupils in all of the schools were the responsibility of the Trust.

News re the Imperial College playing fields on Udney Park Road, Teddington:

Email from Bob Smith, Director of Teddington Community Sports Group (Contact*@TeddingtonSportsGround*.com): The site (has been) sold by Imperial to Quantum Group, a private company which specialises in creating healthcare facilities for later life. As part of its development plan, Quantum has publicly committed to hand over the Southern (Cromwell Road) part of the site - about 8 acres of the total 12.8 acres - to the community in perpetuity. This naturally assumes that planning permission is granted for the proposed development.

. . 4 local people . . have created a Community Interest Company - The Teddington Community Sports Ground CIC - which aims to own and manage the gifted part of the site on behalf of the community. The CIC is independent of Quantum, not-for-profit, and holds the land in an Asset Lock. The Asset Lock prevents the land under management from being developed for ever, even if the CIC were to cease to exist.

The CIC is supported by an Advisory Board, which includes leaders from sports clubs and other activities across the community. By working together, we will hold Quantum to its word and ensure that the land is gifted and a high quality, sustainable community facility is created as part of any development.
……….
So this field can no longer be regarded as a possible school site.

WhittonMum1 - it's up the Schools Commissioner to decide whether Nelson should move out of the Waldegrave Trust, but Hampton High and Twickenham Academy are part of Richmond Schools West. The headteachers are busy on the board of two trusts as well as doing their day jobs but they're not formally merged yet. Maybe they need to wait for their own individual Ofsted reports and monitoring inspections before they so so.

Regarding Udney park:

www.teddingtonrfc.co.uk/news/development-of-the-udney-park-road-playing-fields-1730673.html

Thanks for your good wishes, LProsser. I have a heavy feeling in my heart about this as I do not think that the governing body are really listening to parents but we will keep trying. We have so many parents who are really engaged with this and doing their best to try and put forward alternatives/ask searching questions but I am not sure it will be enough. The best we can hope for right now is to extend the consultation period so that more people can have input into the process and we can maybe investigate alternatives.

Do you think they'll get planning permission Chris given the land's new protected status? If they don't then the deal with the rugby club will be off as they'll then surely want to sell the land to whoever bids highest. It might be too late for Turing but it could be bought by the LA or EFA and eventually be used for another school.

Ofsted reveals that a school is six times as likely to remain inadequate if it becomes a sponsored academy

muminLondon2 yes maybe they should wait for their own individual Ofsted reports.