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.

No Orleans Park and Waldegrave's catchments have both increased by quite a lot compared to last year, possibly because of the Turing House/RUT school plus I think a lot of parents in st margarets area opting for Grey Court over Orleans Park.

COMPARISON:

school 2017 2016

Christs - open places 1.291km 1.438 REDUCED
Grey Court - 2.941km 3.271 REDUCED
Hampton High - n/a n/a
Orleans - 1.611km 1.466 INCREASED
Richmond Park - 1.945km 3.731 REDUCED
St Richard Reynolds - randomly allocated within criterion 2
Teddington - 3.429km 2.433 INCREASED
RTS - 5.445km
Turing House - 3.294km 2.526 INCREASED
Twickenham Academy - n/a
Waldegrave - area A:1.911km area B:5.304km A 1.616, B 5.172. INCREASED

Interesting only 2 of DS's class got their first choice school (unless they had sibling preference) many got offered Twickenham academy which wasn;t on their list at all. I think they assumed they would get CHrists and didn;t put other likely local schools down. I know the christs waiting list moves quite a bit but hat a worry!

Regardless of what you think of the school Twickenham academy is quite a schlep from here.

I should add that DS was one the ones who got their first choice so we are happy! Mind you I was quite realistic about where he's get in!

Sorry - you're right. They have increase a bit. Numbers swimming in front of my eyes!

They've increased more than a bit according those figures - Teddington's catchment is now 1km wider all round (which is three sides). As it's only 3.1km from the TH admissions point that means a large overlap in Teddington.

Meanwhile Waldegrave has always overlapped with the TH admissions point and Twickenham Academy, 1.5/1.7km away respectively, since its cut-off in Middlesex is 5.3km. Now there'll be some overlap with Hampton High, 4.5km away, and even more with Teddington School as its cut-off would extend 1km south of it. Those schools will be boy heavy the closer they are to Waldegrave.

But TH's admissions point now extend up to Hampton High's door, and surrounds Twickenham Academy too - its main admissions point overshoots the Percy Road by 300km and there's now 20 pupils from the new point at the top end of Whitton. The fact that there's no differentiation in the cut-off for TH must be because there's no gap between the points, the areas join up.

Bigger gaps than ever on the Surrey side, however.

If the distances increased on this side it's got to be a good thing as they were getting stupidly small. It explains the 1% increase in first preferences in that press release someone linked to. Now they just need to sort out the other side of the river where first preferences must have gone down with those shrinking cut-offs. Wasn't there going to be a new school at that brewery site in mortlake?

There have been leaflets distributed recently with info about how the new Free School in Mortlake is going to function - filling up form the lower forms as RR did.

The council’s Supplementary Planning Document Stag Brewery, Mortlake, SW14 - Planning Brief Adopted July 2011 says:

5.20 The Council will support the provision of a two- form entry Primary School designed to maximise the potential for community uses and developers should discuss this with the Council at the earliest opportunity to form part of master planning proposals . . The preferred location for any school facilities are adjacent the existing sports fields in the south west area of the site
………..
Sarah Olney’s website says (2016-10-25):

The 22 acre site was was put up for sale by AB InBev and bought by a Reselton, a Singaporean developer of luxury flats for £158m (who see it as) an 'exciting freehold development opportunity' for around 850 homes

Your LibDem councillors are watching the developments like a hawk and we will be on top of anything the Tory led council might want to push through a la 'Twickenham square', Teddington Studios et al. . .much has changed in the last five years . . so we expect further consultation. Dartmouth Capital Advisors Limited, who represent Reselton in the UK, said: “We hope to achieve planning consent in the first quarter of 2018 and to undertake the scheme in two phases
………..
A school on the Stag Brewery site - Paper for meeting 19 September 2016 says:

1. The Council would like a secondary school to be built on the brewery site. The

original planning brief for the site, agreed in 2011 following public consultation, included a primary school. This policy was changed to a secondary school at a meeting of the Council’s Cabinet in October 2015.

1. The site was sold in November 2015 after this policy was revised. While the

agendas and minutes of the Council Cabinet meetings are made public, there was no consultation at the time on this switch but the proposal will have to gain planning permission and, under the Academies Act 2010, public consultation will be required.

What is proposed?

1. A six form entry school, meaning c 180 pupils per year (=900 plus, years 11-

15) with up to 200 staff. Whether there is to be a 6th form is unclear.

Where are the proposals set out?

1. In the Richmond Council Revised School Place Planning Strategy 2015-2024.

See RBUT Council Cabinet papers for 15th October 2015. Also in the prepublication Local Plan – consultation period ended August 2016 . .

Prepared on behalf of the Mortlake Brewery Community Group (MBCG) Convening group by Una O’Brien and David Deaton 11 September 2016
………..
This paper runs to 4 pages and is too detailed to summarise here. Their newsletter, just published, says:

March 2017: The developer will be holding an exhibition of proposed plans for the Mortlake Brewery at the Brewery Sports Club, Lower Richmond Road, SW14 7ET . . (details) This is our opportunity to see the plans for the site and, importantly, to give our views about them. The proposals for a secondary school and traffic management will be interesting . .
.............
So the answer is there may be a school and it may be a secondary school but not for several years.

So a lot of spare capacity and choice on the Middlesex side, but not convenient for the Surrey areas that have always had little choice and and now have the greatest need. Two half empty schools within 2km of each other are being supported by popular schools that each face £400,000 budget cuts. Waldegrave may have room to increase class sizes to 30 (240 per year) to plug the gap and reduce redundancies, but that would increase the surplus capacity and gender imbalance in neighbouring schools and hit the budget of the schools it is supporting, so would backfire.

TH is able to select pupils from the wealthier areas in Teddington while the catchments of undersubscribed schools are pushed further into areas of deprivation in Hounslow, increasing inequality.

At some point millions will be spent on buildings for TH, increasing the traffic pollution Chris had reported on.

These are extraordinary times. One thing I noticed about May's non-answer was a more lukewarm attitude to free schools. There will be parliamentary opposition to her alternative project of increased academic selection. The financial consequences of Brexit may force a rethink of priorities.

TA and HA can take kids from the same areas as any other schools in the borough but thankfully there's something called parental choice and parents are choosing other options instead. That's not spare capacity, it's unwanted places. If they make them wanted places then they'll fill up no bother. Roll on the promised improvements but they've been a long time coming and I didn't notice the council delaying the opening of RTS to force people into those schools in the meantime so they must think all the spaces are needed.

Quite right Jelly. The RTS school would have had a ripple effect taking students from the Middlesex side - the impact on the other schools is not all down to TH. And the primary bulge is still working it's way through the system, those distances will shrink a lot over the next few years.

I heard RTS was marketing over in Sheen area so they must have known there was an issue over there. The ones who have been allocated TA maybe didn't list RTS or else live further away than thei RTS cut off.

Interesting that the TH cut off has grown, it would appear that in Hampton Hill side it has shrunk, with Y6 children not getting an offer this year when their neighbours did last year. Perhaps the growth is slightly misleading due to the new 20% catchment point in Whitton, as on this side the catchment feels distinctly smaller.

The Grey Court catchment has shrunk, I see. Interesting for Darell parents in particular as one of the reasons we were told that priority admissions for Darell wouldn't be offered (in the academisation consultation) was that they expected their catchment to grow following the Kingston academy being set up. That clearly has not happened.

Just read a story online about TH possibly trying to buy Udney Pk Rd again... how likely is this?

Tiggywinkle25: please post a link to the story so that we may read it ourselves.

These rumours always seem to circulate around the time school place offers are being made.

The temporary site will fill up this year. An expensive land transaction is not feasible in this economic and political climate.

It's not a rumour I've heard and couldn't find anything on google. Did you read an old article tiggywinkle or was it recent? I don't think that group that bought it for retirement homes have even applied for planning permission yet have they? It would be nice if they ditched the idea and pulled out. The land won't be worth much as much as they must have paid for it if they can't build on it.

Those funding cut details are frightening. How can any primary school sustain the loss of two teachers? It's not as if any of them normally have teachers sitting around twiddling their fingers. What particularly bothers me is that it's things like provision for SEN that will suffer as those schools that have SENCOs without classroom responsibilities won't be able to continue that way.

It was on another mumsnet chat I think, with TH parents crossing their fingers because it's up for sale again..? Think that's what it said. Think they read about it in Richmond and Twick times

Tiggywinkle25: perhaps you simply glanced at this short-lived thread and didn’t spot its dates: Turing House for Udney Park Road after all? (13 Posts): July 2014 - April 2015

Udney Park has now been designated as "green space" which is similar to MOL so there isn't meant to be any building on it. The buyers Quantum are challenging this designation via the Local Plan and will presumably be appearing at the public enquiry later this year. The tame "community" sports consortium who are supporting Quantum sent round another mailing today. So unlikely to be any sale to Dept of Education this year. On the other hand maybe Quantum have given up and decided to cut their losses!

Story in RTT about Nelson Primary being transferred from Waldegrave Trust to Latchmere Trust today: Here

Sorry yes that's the one. Blame it on secondary school stress-itis, sorry!