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.

I think the EFA will be made the scapegoat for not securing the permanent site.

The Turing House website is not user-friendly. It´s wordy, lengthy and full of jargon that isn´t accessible to the average parent. The same as the consultation documents and the same as the consultation report.

One of the comments on the newspaper article says that Turing can´t possibly know the number of primary parents that responded as many will also be ´secondary parents´ or ´parents applying in 2017´. What happened there? Surely parents applying in 2017 are most affected by the admissions policy especially if they are considering changing it for 2018. Probably there was a majority for

Frustrated - Thanks very much for summing up a lot of the back-story. There is so much re-writing of history, and poor reporting in the press, going on that it's difficult keep track of what happened when and why!

WhittonMum - I think muminlondon identified the salient point in the TH consultation response a while ago: the site negotiations are still ongoing. Maybe you should contact the school with your concerns about the categories they used in the consultation. They have the opportunity to change them for next year.

Bluestars With respect, you´ve missed the point. It isn´t which categories were used but how they were used to analyse the data in the report. The decision made by Turing House of not changing the policy from 80/20 is based on the figures from the ´primary parents´. Unless you also agree that the consultation responses/numbers were actually ignored.

He says:

^It is not valid to compare the results based on one single category (primary parents).

The categories were not mutually exclusive.

They were:
-Parent applying for September 2017
-Parent at a secondary school
-Parent at a primary school
-Another individual
-An organisation

A clear example is the parent at a secondary school who also has primary age child(ren). Or another parent applying for September 2017 who is also the parent of other primary age children. They are both also parents of primary age children but by selecting one of the categories further up the list their views have not been considered in the consultation analysis^

Well I put myself as a secondary parent because I have one at TH and a younger one at primary. So I won't be included as one of the people most affected. That's reasonable though as my younger one now has a sibling link. Looking at the numbers of secondary parents who responded many of them are probably in the same position as current TH parents. Parents at other secondaries with their own sibling link probably would be less interested unless it's waldegrave and they have a younger boy.

No, I get it. You are missing my point that the numbers are meaningless for a different reason. The governors would have taken the wider picture into account.

Exactly those secondary parents who have an older daughter(s) at Waldegrave. Or secondary parents who have a child at a private school. Maybe the eldest gained a scholarship. Maybe the money ran out. Maybe they are boarding for whatever reason. Or a secondary parent with an older child at Twickenham academy or Hampton Academy or a Hounslow borough school that wasn't performing well would definitely be interested and would be equally affected.

Or indeed those who have recently moved into the area but want their eldest to continue commuting to their existing school but the younger child to go to a local school. Or those whose eldest child goes to a special needs secondary school or one with a unit. Or they attend a behavioural unit perhaps. Or those who selected a studio school because of a particular aptitude/preference for one child. Who knows? There are many possibilities.

The numbers are meaningless, because they would have̶i̶g̶n̶o̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶u̶l̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶o̶n̶s̶e̶ taken their 'wider picture' into account no matter what the consultation numbers showed.

So I'm not going to contact the school with my concerns. Pointless.

But it doesn't matter how many categories you think they should have had because the decision to wait a year was based on the site uncertainty not the number of responses.

FrustratedOfTW1 it's interesting to hear that history. I wasn't taking much notice of the RISC debate at the time but wish I had now I can see the knock on effects of that site being given away in central Twick.

Jellytoto I agree, it is sensible to make decisions on admissions policies once a site has been confirmed for certain.

If the negotiations have already fallen through on the Whitton site I doubt they would want to let anyone know that just yet either until they had another possible site lined up.

It does make sense to reconsult next year when there is less site uncertainty.

It makes sense to me to keep the admissions 80/20 because people in Whitton do have more options than those around the admission point in Fulwell and the permanent site may yet change and not be in Whitton/Heathfield as has been pointed out. I do also worry about TA being totally destabilised by TH and RUT school and am afraid I am not entirely confident that the two local Heads will be able to turn it around quickly enough for it to be full of enthusiastic families in a year or two. What is puzzling me is that there were very clear figures a few years ago showing that two new schools with an intake of 150 each (TH and the RuT school) would both be needed by about 2018 and that all the other secondaries would be full by then too - are there actually less children applying for year 7 than was predicted? I think it was predicted to be about 2300 from LB Richmond entering year 7 by 2018 but some of those could be going private. Numbers from Hounslow going to TA and HA were also expected to increase a lot around this year?

Sir RR and its supporters were always happy to characterise RISC as opposed to them on religious grounds but many of us were merely opposed to the only decent site for a secondary school being bought with our money and given away to a project that excluded 90% of local children when there was a massive shortage of places looming (primary and secondary). Unfortunately lots of parents of younger children didn't quite follow what was going on at the time Jellytoto and thus the consultation was in favour of Sir RR due to the number of old ladies who did what their priest told them to (allegedly)!

Not just that Lottie but handed paper copies of the consultation made available only to the Catholic Church so they didn't have to respond on new fangled computers. The results are back on the thread somewhere but as I recall it was pretty even for and against but if you narrowed it down to parents there were more against and if it was local parents it was pretty overwhelming. It was all a bit banana republic if not Father Ted......

LProsser the Local Need page on the TH website quotes from RTS's free school application that "Year 7 capacity within the 9 existing schools and Turing House will be exceeded by demand by 2017"

I think as those GLA figures showed and as we all know from living here everything does depend on the numbers going private but private schools are full too. If more are to be created they will need sites too, Muminlondon said those numbers don't take into account choices of faith schools etc, but I had another look and I think they do because it says the projections are based on "current patterns of mobility".

Lottie Actually those figures didn't project RPA being full until 2018 but it had to lay on an extra class last year, so the degree of undersubscription at some schools is very much tied up with not being popular with parents, this is a borough where parents do get deterred into other options. By all accounts the private school 11plus round was more desperate than ever this year. 1100 sat the KGS tests, I am not sure how many places but certainly no more than 200 for 10 plus and 11 plus. Numbers don't tell the whole story because they are also the result of parents applying to more schools but that is also a sign of desperation. The South West London 11+ secondary thread was as full as ever with first time buyer parents with children at state primaries seeking advice because they didn't feel they had a state option. I am certainly aware of parents who would have gone private last year if they had not been offered places at St RR or Turing.

Yes LProsser I keep thinking of a quote (from 'Dr Faustus'?), 'the Devil cites scripture for his purpose', which has a modern equivalent of 'there are lies, damned lies and statistics'. Turing House - and certainly BayJay1 on past threads - built its case on numbers. But WhittonMum1 underlined, there has been a lot of double counting to suit their purpose.

If two schools were needed in addition to StRR, one of them is on the Surrey side. The private school panic involves a lot of Barnes and Richmond parents who are 5-10 times likely to send their children private despite similar opportunities. There is no coordinated admissions so the number of applications is similar to preferences for state school - multiplied by 4-6 or so per pupil. 350 applications to TH or Radnor House does not mean they are first choice or guaranteed to be accepted.

At least for Barnes this year there are extra places at RPA and a surplus in nearby Wandsworth. The council's press statement says it is hoping to work with developers on the Mortlake site for a school there and I hope they are as successful as with the Lidl agreement. They should secure the site before inviting applications for school paces, however.

parents who are 5-10 times more likely to send their children private despite similar opportunities compared to Heathfield parents.

mum As has been discussed before forecasts of school place demand is an inexact science, until someone comes up with a complicated algorithm that ties up all the factors including the relationship between OFSTED status and demand. What is clear from RPA, St RR and Turing is that give parents what they want and demand increases. In the case of Turing and RPA that really is just a place in an inclusive coed community school like Teddington or Greycourt, albeit that the team at Turing do seem to be offering something parents regard as a little bit special in terms of inspiring leadership and communicating with parents, like Maggie Bailey at Greycourt.

Were HA and TA offering that they would have been full long ago and a Turing on their doorstep meeting the need for places around its admission point would be no threat, and it's neighbours would be most concerned with the same issues we all have finding a new school on our doorstep. I agree with Lottie that it is going to take some time for them to dismantle the LST offering and fix the problems and I always agreed with your sadly not feasible suggestion that perhaps it would be better to merge them and use one building to start again. But the fact that there is space in two schools with very significant problems does not mean the demand is not there.

Of course on average Barnes parents are more likely to have the financial resources to go private but that does not extrapolate to every parent who does actually wanting to, nor every parent having the resources to, as the manifested by issues that faced Lowther parents, a school that serves an area of relative deprivation who found themselves edged out of catchment as parents in the more affluent area closer to the school were taking up places in greater numbers than ever before. That was the bit the forecasts got wrong, the latent demand amongst those who previously were deterred from applying.

The Turing House consultation story is reported in the print edition of the Richmond and Twickenham Times as:

Turing's intake intact

Cllr Paul Hodgins is quoted as saying 'they seem to blame many of the responses on local councillors campaigning on behalf of their residents. These are councillors who are trying to find a positive outcome for all, and quite rightly have encouraged people to respond'.

There is also a letter about the agreement to move Deer Park School back from London House to Ryde House in East Twickenham, entitled

Thanks to supporters

Today’s print RTT has Turing’s intake intact (p 3), Number of children offered a place at a preferred school reaches 86 % (p 4), Have a say on your new school designs (p 7), and letters from Sue Howes (chair of ETNA), School will boost area, and Jane Harrison, Thanks to supporters (p 19).

a little bit special in terms of inspiring leadership

The heads of HA or TA are relatively new - they seem experienced and neither has led a school into special measures. There is little difference between the track record of RET and that of the trust poised to take over HA/TA in terms of Ofsted judgements.

The school place forecasts all seem to tally as far as I can see. We know the numbers of kids in our primaries. Two schools were needed on this side of the borough- Turing and RTS. If there are surplus places in the very short term that will be the fault of RTS not Turing as it came along second and the council made a case for it being needed in addition to Turing. A third new school is needed in Mortlake. As shown by the GLA forecasts a fourth may be needed on this side from about 2020, but that need could be satisfied by a new private school instead.
I hope it's not. Unlike muminlondon who seems to think everyone who can scrape together the funds should prop up the private sector, I'd prefer to see state schools improving to the point that private schools lose market share - even if taxes have to go up to pay for more state schools because of it. Schools like Turing (and Waldegrave, Orleans Pk, SRR etc) that provide what parents actually want will help to close the gap between state and private.

And with Richmond having at 30% by far the largest proportion of privately educated pupils of any outer London borough, Kingston has 20%, then the latent demand for good state school places amongst parents who have gone private simply to access a good school place is likely to be very significant. www.theguardian.com/uk/datablog/2012/apr/12/london-school-pupils-poverty-race?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

jellytoto funding follows pupils. The issue here is that Nick Whitfield's strategy for managing the budget was always to have no spare capacity in schools. Hence at primary level you had a situation where there were not enough school places for all that applied, with parents offered places in distant schools or only on waiting lists. I have heard him say that it is "unfortunate" that parents are left waiting for school places but that in budgetary terms it has enabled him to balance the budgets better. What it gave him was a parental release valve on the pressure cooker since with hundreds left on waiting lists/ only with a place at a distant school some could be relied on to disappear from the waiting lists, to move or go private. The deterrent element of the schools situation has always been more benefit to the LEA than a issue. Parents of 4 and 10 year olds are up in arms for a couple of months each year, then get sorted out one way or another and move on.

If there are surplus places in the very short term that will be the fault of RTS not Turing

It will be able serve some of the demand from the extra Richmond classes before a school is established in Mortlake - it's in a fairly central and logistically accessible location for the whole borough. Orleans Park won't be able to meet all of the extra demand in East Twickenham or Whitton on its own in the short, medium or long term (Orleans Primary pupils start to come through this year) and clearly Turing doesn't want to serve Whitton anyway. The most important thing is that it will be integrated with a new purpose built special needs school: such integration is very much part of the vision of Achieving for Children under Nick Whitfield, and I respect and support those aims wholeheartedly.

But Turing does serve Whitton muminlondon. There are lots of Whitton kids at the school this year. I don't know if there'll be lots in Sept 2016 too, but there defo will be in 2017 because there'll be the 20%. Then maybe more from 2018 onwards. You can serve Whitton without being centred on it. If you're centred on it you end up serving Hounslow borough rather than Richmond borough.

clearly Turing doesn't want to serve Whitton anyway It is not clear at all! They have said they will review the admissions criteria for 2018 when presumably there will be certainty on a site, and they have always said if sited in Whitton they will be community minded. In the meantime pupils from Whitton are clearly crossing the A316, I have seen them and they look perfectly happy too, not as if they are on some terrible trek. Turing had a coherent admissions strategy in lieu of having a permanent site that was designed to meet the need for places whilst minimising the impact on other schools and staying loyal to the parents of Fullwell and Twickenham, whose worries about school places which were being ignored by LBRUT were behind the conception of the school. Perfectly reasonable to stick to that until all the political machinations over the site play out.

RTS Is barely better situated than Twickenham Academy for those parents in Sheen, Kew and Mortlake who rejected places there because of the lack of accessibility, a journey of at least two buses. The extra places at RPA should help them in the shorter term but I do hope the Mortlake school is realised. The fact is that Nick Whitfield was caught on the hop by the change in demand for places at RPA as it improved, but nethertheless tried to herd those pupils across on what he eventually admitted was an unacceptable journey to unpopular schools, perhaps hoping to deter them into other options. Otherwise I really don't understand the initial reluctance to have an extra class at RPA.