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.

Re. Udney Park I dont think they will get planning consent for their development as the Cabinet voted last month to give the field extra protection after hearing representations from supporters of Quantum. The local plan is going through without changing its designation. The planning committee is not likely to take a different view. The sports clubs who are cosying up to Quantum at the moment may be hoping to be given first refusal if Quantum do decide to sell for their chummy behaviour. They are by no means the only sports clubs with an interest in the site and others are pointing out that the reduced size of the playing fields would only allow them to be used for certain sports. I cant see a school going there at the moment.

Interesting piece about an election for the next leader of the Association of School and College Leaders. It seems the default candidate is Chris Kirk, previously of Gems Education Solutions, but he is being opposed by a head who has made a stand against academisation.

Kirk was Gems UK CEO when it was lobbying to run the Twickenham primary free school (now open next to Vince Cable's old office). I googled him quite a bit at the time - they wanted in on the educational testing laboratory that is Richmond borough. They had been out of favour after messing up under Labour (Milton Keynes/Surrey schools), then rejected by the DfE as a sponsor in Woking but then back in again after an export deal was brokered on training colleges in Saudi Arabia. If I remember rightly, that all failed, as did their charter schools in the US (they pulled out and laid off the teachers there around the same time as getting permission to open free schools here).

It's all gone a bit quiet since then in Twickenham. What happened to the planning permission (which the LibDems had opposed)?

I seem to remember that the planning consent for the Twickenham Green school was confirmed after a year of operation under the exceptions for opening new free schools. I do wonder how that building will cope when it fills up. There is virtually no outside space.

Just to clarify that Chris Kirk is no longer with GEMS - his latest job is with the academy chain Reach2 (or also Reach4). This has already taken over 65 primary schools but since the Ofsted inspection scheduled have been relaxed, i.e. newly converted academies don't get visited until their third year, it's impossible to know how good they will be. I don't know if that also applies to those schools that are already academies transferring between trusts. But that large scale edubusiness sponsor model was what the LA hoped to avoid with the Nelson and possibly Darell model.

Meanwhile Schoolsweek reports that 1,200 schools haven't been inspected for seven years. It's one thing to relieve the pressure on headteachers. But if those schools are themselves subject to pressures of funding cuts and other challenges, including the management of other schools, it's ridiculous that they should be left for so long while Ofsted is harassing LA schools (and demotivating teachers) to within an inch of their life.

Agreed, it is ridiculous that they should be left so long without an inspection.

There are many schools in Richmond Borough that haven't been inspected since 2011/2012. A lot can happen in that time especially if there has been a change of Headteacher or high staff turnover.

From Hansard:

• Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat, Richmond Park): To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential effect of the schools funding formula on the funding of schools in Richmond Park and North Kingston constituency in real terms in each of the next three years.

The Minister for Schools: The illustrative impact of the proposed schools national funding formula (NFF) for schools in the Richmond park constituency, in year 1 of the operation of the formula, and overall, is provided in (this) table.

So, looking at that table for my local schools, the following would have got more funding this year:

Vineyard
Marshgate
Queen's
Sheen Mount

These schools would have lost out to a greater or lesser extent:

Darell
Holy Trinity
Kew Riverside

If you look at SEN, FSM, EAL etc for those schools, it is abundantly clear that the schools that would lose out are those which have the most challenges to face in educating their pupils. How is this fair? It looks like take from the poor to give to the rich to me.

Today’s print RTT has ‘School rated ’inadequate’ again’ (p 4), ‘Work on £70m campus begins’ (p 7) and a letter from Cllr Hodgins, ‘The wrong sixth form’, re the 6th form that is closing (Twickenham Academy, NOT Teddington!) (p 17).

AbsintheAndChips: Government’s rationale for this allocation is that the extra being paid to the needy schools had grown too large and needed to be trimmed. The underlying political rationale is that these schools are mostly in poorer areas which don’t vote Tory so there will be no extra political pain caused by cutting their grants and some gain in Tory areas from being seen to be ‘fair’ (= generous) to their schools.

Two views of the latest league tables just published:

Grammar schools lose top spots after league table shakeup - DfE’s latest tables, ranked using new Progress 8 measure, show schools that made greatest advances in pupils’ grades (Guardian)

Secondary school league tables 2016: Grammar school children excel while comprehensives fall behind, figures show (Telegraph)

The Telegraph story has been rewritten overnight: the original version published yesterday was evidently insufficiently pro-grammar school! Faint traces of it remain in the text. The Guardian has a photo Pupils at work at Tauheedul Islamic Boys’ high school. The free school came top of the national Progress 8 league table - something not mentioned by the Telegraph.

The full tables are available from the DfE www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/ but I couldn’t understand them so I leave the task of extracting the LBRuT scores to someone keener.

RTT Online has GCSE Results 2016: How did Richmond and Kingston schools fare in the latest league tables?

'Tiffin Girls School was ranked as the third best performing school in the country in the latest round of figures released by the Department for Education (DfE). This year, the DfE has introduced a new performance indicator, Progress 8, that ranks all schools based on pupils' attainment levels from primary to secondary. The change has knocked grammar schools off the usual top spots, instead judging schools best schools in England are those which make the greatest advances in their grades.

Kingston’s average Progress 8 score of 0.34 is above the national average, as is Richmond’s with 0.1. In Richmond, 71% of pupils achieved a C grade or better in English and Maths while neighbouring Kingston trumped the figure with 79%.

The new measure shows that London has the lowest proportion of underperforming schools in the country at just 3% below the threshold. This year, nine of the top 10 schools for GCSE results were state schools.'

Interesting that Nelson has kicked AfC's services into touch at the same time as they are touting them around other boroughs. Given that they also have a terrible track record with SEN, I wonder whether those boroughs are now having second thoughts?

TheyWorkForYou has:

(Jan 25): Sarah Olney Lib De Richmond Park: In my first week as an MP, I received a letter from the head teacher of the school my two children attend—the local school in the constituency I represent. The school highlighted some of the very real issues that it and other schools in my constituency will face in the next few years. When I got to the end of the letter, I realised that I had received it not because I was the newly elected MP but because I was a parent, and every parent at my children’s school had received the same letter . .

. . I understand the motivation to ensure that the distribution of funding is evened out across the country, and I understand that that will be seen as fairer for some people, but I urge the Secretary of State to achieve that by looking for ways to increase funding to schools that are already disadvantaged, not by taking it from schools that have traditionally received more, because that will cause a great deal of hardship for schools not just in my constituency but elsewhere.

Thank you for sharing that.

This week’s print RTT has: Funding review call (p. 2) re funding for schools.

There is a petition on change.org.

Lidl’s proposed supermarket with a 420-place school on top in East Twickenham comes to Committee on Wednesday Feb 08:

RECOMMENDATION: Approval, subject to the completion of a Section 106 Legal Agreement and conditions and informatives contained within the report - as expected.

The officer’s 86 page report is here

The many objections from residents were mainly about parking and traffic management, unsurprisingly as Richmond Road is often near gridlock both morning and evening, as it has been throughout the 44 years I have lived here. Somehow however it never quite happens.

The many supporting comments came from far and wide but mainly from outside the borough. How kind of all these strangers to take such an interest in East Twickenham's affairs!

. . 14. Whilst all letters of representation raising material planning issues are taken into consideration, concern has been expressed over the significant number of supporters who live out of the borough and in other parts of the country: For clarity, this includes: Slough Walton on Thames Banstead Woking Hook Stonewell Reigate Taunton Welling Borough Milton KeynesTunbridge Wells OxfordSwannington CrowthorneWimbledon Solihull Basingstoke Islington Leyton Fetcham Huntingdon Sutton Chessington Ipswich Axminster Keighley Walthamstow Ashtead Theydon Bois Sidcup Leeds Cheltenham Oxford Bournemouth Tottan PooleEast Horsley Brighton Thames Ditton. (p. 19)

The meeting will be in the Salon from 7 pm; it will be webcast.

Ohh – this has got my blood boiling. The Chair of Governors at St RR has written an article in Schools Week asking people to stop bashing Catholic schools. He’s left a lot out!

Bluestars - thanks for the alert; I’ve just sent them this comment:

For most residents of Twickenham (like me), the campaign was not against Catholic schools per se but the council’s decision to offer a site which had unexpectedly fallen into their lap (originally a county girls school opened in 1926) to the Catholics (10 % of local residents) for their exclusive use instead of using it for a community school that all could attend. Naturally the post-Christian or CINO (Christian In Name Only) majority were aggrieved at being deprived of what they saw as theirs by right.

Future students of this affair can follow it day by day over 6 years in a set of Mumsnet discussions, each comprising 1000 posts, from ‘New Secondaries for Richmond Borough? (Feb 2011)’ www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/1157485-New-Secondaries-for-Richmond-Borough to ‘Richmond Borough Schools Chat 8’ local.mumsnet.com/Talk/local_richmond_upon_thames/2581284-Richmond-Borough-Schools-Chat-8 current), where they’ll discover a much more subtle and balanced account than that offered above.

Hi. I have a son in a Richmond secondary school. We moved from the US and I am trying to figure out if I should be concerned about something.
While we got our first choice of school, and our son appears to be doing well, the teacher turnover is extremely high.
For instance, he is on his third maths teacher now. And we just found out his science teacher is being replaced by a teacher who is new to teaching. In addition, his tutor is leaving.
The school keeps telling us these are unforeseen circumstances, but my husband and I are getting a bit unnerved by all this.

If you don't mind saying which school, I imagine some posters might have insights into whether you should be concerned or whether it is just a blip.

The Independent has Science teacher shortage spreads, forcing government to relax immigration restrictions; teachers cannot afford to live in LBRuT.

So it may be this is normal ‘churn’ as new teachers get sufficient experience here to get a better job somewhere they can afford to live. See also:

[[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/01/27/governments-secret-300000-overseas-teacher-recruitment-drive/ The Government is sponsoring a £300,000 drive to recruit teachers from the Czech Republic, Germany Poland and America in an attempt to plug a physics and maths shortage by September, it has emerged.

A bid specification document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, invites recruitment companies to apply for the contract which will begin next month. It is thought to be the first Government funded international recruitment strategy since the mid-1970s, when teachers were also in short supply. The initial focus will be on signing up maths and physics teachers, but “there may be flexibility to increase the scope to cover other subjects that are challenging to recruit to”, the bid specification document says.]]

And there’s lot’s more on the web on the same lines.

Newtoallthis12: part of the rationale for encouraging our schools to create sixth form was that this would make it easier to recruit maths and science teachers as they need experience in sixth form teaching to get promotion.

This may have worked well in the schools that created strong sixth forms but have made it impossible for those which have not to retain novice teachers: they come for a term or two to get the vital initial experience before moving on to a ‘proper’ (i.e. ‘A’ level included) job elsewhere when they discover that the promises made to them at interview were (to be kind) disingenuous - the school is a SFINO - ‘Sixth-Form In Name Only - or has scrapped its sixth altogether.

This is just my guesswork as I’m not part of the system. It is important to remember that you have joined an education system in a state of flux, which has not yet reached a new equilibrium after the introduction of sixth forms. The idea of sixth forms was and remains popular with conservative minded parents but known by others to be risky and quite possibly impractical for the weaker schools.

This issue was discussed in this forum at the time (Summer 2012): local.mumsnet.com/Talk/local_richmond_upon_thames/a1464047-New-Secondary-Schools-for-Richmond-3

I get the impression sixth form teachers stay with the sixth form and don't teach much lower down the school.

But there are many more experienced teachers needed now, for smaller groups, in the sixth forms and lots of new secondaries in this and other commutable boroughs (without a proportionate increase in supply), so it means lower down the school you're getting new teachers, supply teachers and trainees, who aren't there for very long. That kind of disruption in a non-exam year is lower risk. And whereas there used to be more setting and smaller groups from Y8, they're having to teach more mixed ability in larger classes for longer.

RTT Online has 'Unusual and innovative' joint plan for school and supermarket in east Twickenham given green light:

Parents’ cheers rang out at a packed planning meeting as permission was given for an “innovative and unusual” joint plan for a primary school above a new supermarket . . To protect local businesses, the planning application dictates the new Lidl will not be allowed to feature a fresh meat counter or a delicatessen counter, nor can it provide dry cleaning or pharmaceutical services, among others.

The planning committee heard how pressure for primary school places in the borough is such that some catchment areas are set at just 250 metres from schools’ front gates, and east Twickenham is one of the areas worst-served areas in Richmond-upon-Thames.

Headteacher Alison Colenso told the committee a good school is about “more than a fancy building”:

“I am passionate about our school. We opened despite having few pupils. We promised parents their children would get a gold standard education. Those families stayed and they are here tonight. We have the highest returning rates of pupils in the borough. We provide places locally in this area; 67 per cent of our families have a TW1 postcode.”

Ms Colenso also said the school was committed to encouraging families to travel on foot, by public transport or by bicycle, and a condition of hiring new teachers would that they travel “sustainably” to work . .

This week's print RTT runs the story on page 1.

SFINO interesting coinage - very appropriate for some in Richmond!
Looks like the flight to quality has happened with Waldegrave leading the pack, and some withering on the vine .