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.

but they need to find a temporary site too. all sounds like a very unfortunate mess for a very good school.

Story in the RTT about the Turing site fiasco. Lots of comments rehashing the same old points...

Looks like a bit of staff churn at RPA.

Twickenham Academy is rebranding itself "Twickenham School" with an new bird logo - aligning itself with Teddington School by the look of it.
twitter.com/TwickAcad/status/870323225259122688/photo/1

This week’s print RTT has (p 3) Celebrations as school steps up to top rank - Queen’s CofE school has achieved ‘outstanding’ in its latest inspection, a step up from ‘good’.

The Fair Admissions Campaign is reporting that the Catholic Education Service has abandoned its challenge of the objectivity of the Certificate of Catholic Practice, the form signed by a priest needed to gain entry to many catholic schools, including St RR. The CES has now clarified that a parent must have attended Mass on Sundays and holydays of obligations for at least five years in order to have their certificate approved by a priest.

Religious selection is still horribly unfair but at least parents now know what's required of them up front.

Holydays of Obligation - England and Wales:

From the 1st Sunday of Advent 2006 the Holydays of Obligations for England and Wales changed. They are:

Every Sunday
Birth of the Lord (25 December)
St Peter & St Paul (29 June)
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (15 August)
All Saints (1 November)

The following celebrations have been transferred to the Sunday:
Epiphany of the Lord
Ascension of the Lord
Body and Blood of the Lord

Latest parent letter from Turing House says EFA/Hounslow talks on the HBR site have now had a "significant change in pace" and land surveys have started. Seems someone cracked the whip and everything's back on track.

The latest population estimates from the ONS (mi-2016): London: 8.8 million; LBRuT: 196,000; London growth: 1.3% p.a.; London 0-15 years mid ‘11 - mid ’16 : + 10%; net UK international migration: 336,000

London is becoming younger and more crowded. We are going to need some more school site as soon.

Article in the Guardian yesterday about grammar schools applying to open annexes: "The Tiffin boys and girls grammar schools in Kingston-upon-Thames are among 17 selective schools that applied for permission to open annexes, according to freedom of information requests obtained by the Comprehensive Future campaign group."

I can see it in the list here. Well that trashes their reputation as far as I am concerned.

Vince Cable in the House of Commons - on school funding

www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-06-28b.702.0&s=speaker%3A10084#g703.2

Your new Richmond council leader and cabinet has been announced:

Paul Hodgins has been appointed as the new leader of Richmond Council following confirmation at a full council meeting earlier this week . . The new strategic cabinet member for children’s services and schools is Cllr Susan Chappell, who represents Twickenham Riverside, will support the borough’s schools and education whilst continuing to work Achieving for Children . .

You were right MrsSalvo - the RPA "staff churn" story is front page today

I happened to be looking at the Waldegrave Sixth form admissions page the other day, and noticed that the 40 boys places appear to be no longer guaranteed. Anyone know anything about that?

Schools Update - Statement in the House of Lords on 17th July 2017

. . Baroness Kramer (Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Treasury and Economy)): My Lords, I agree that this is a sleight of hand. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that there is not one single new penny coming into education for our young people in the Statement. I agree that it is robbing Peter to pay Paul and I hope he will tell us a lot more about Peter and the losses to programmes that schools have been relying on. More importantly, will he confirm that in the Statement there is actually a cut in funding for education—£315 million—which will be cut from the healthy pupils capital funding, “to reflect reductions in forecast revenues from the soft drinks industry levy”?

So in fact this is an announcement of a £315 million cut in the budget for education and schools.

. . I actually think it is beneath the Government to come up with this announcement when after a moment’s reading it becomes apparent that there is sleight of hand and a difference between the announcement and its implications and the reality that is contained within the Statement. I suggest that if we are to encourage the British people to recognise the importance of politics and to respect any party in this House, it is time for that to stop.

. . Lord Paddick (Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Home Affairs)): My Lords, will the Minister kindly answer the question asked by my noble friend Lady Kramer regarding the efficiencies and savings mentioned in the Statement? Some £315 million is going to be saved from the healthy pupils capital fund. Will the Minister confirm that that is actually a £315 million cut . . ?

Lord Nash (The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education): Well, that has only recently been announced and I have to say that our plans on it were not very far advanced, so I think describing it as a cut is rather unfair. As I have said, we are making sure that resources are focused more on core school funding and in the hands of head teachers.

www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2017-07-17a.1429.0&s=speaker%3A11783#g1435.0

Arsenicistheanswer do you mean for Sep 2018? I can't even see the policy on their website. My neighbour's son wants to apply so I'll flag it to them. Do sixth forms not need to consult on changes to their policies? I don't remember ever seeing any Waldegrave consultations through so I guess if there was one for this It was kept low key.

Bluestars that RPA article you linked to has been commented on by the Head himself now. It must be frustrating that they weren't even asked for a quote. The rtt is rubbish these days.

What do you expect the Head to say?
He can hardly say, 'they were rubbish so we're getting rid of them as they could not step up to the mark when given capability support and they left because they had been allowed to coast under the old Head?'
Or - 'they were so rubbish we had to get external people in to deliver holiday classes to the GCSE students in a desperate attempt to get them up to standard a the last minute?'
He has to let it be thought that 'experienced staff' left to be 'promoted or for relocation' to try to keep the parents on board.
The key moment to watch will be on GCSE and A level results day, when Grey Court, Waldegrave immediately report the results, even though there will be appeals pending. In previous results RPA have put a spin on their results, whilst withholding the key measures (5 inc Eng & Maths) and Eng & Maths) in the pretext that there were appeals pending, and conveniently not reporting until they had to , long after secondary choices were made - cynical.
Let's hope this Head is not such a spinner as the previous one and follows the honest example of other schools..

Jellytoto the comment about not guaranteeing boys places is on the enrolment instructions for this year page.

"We have had over 600 applications this year compared to 531 last year. In accordance with our over-subscription criteria we will be admitting students in the following order:

Wave 1

Waldegrave students: we anticipate that we will have places for all Waldegrave Students who have applied but we cannot guarantee this.

Wave 2

Boys: we anticipate that we will have places for 40 boys but we cannot guarantee this.

Wave 3

External girls and remaining boys: we anticipate that we may have places for a small number of external girls but we cannot guarantee this. We may have space for more external girls and boys dependent on numbers admitted in waves 1& 2"

I know they took in way over their numbers into Y12 this year. I suspect this is to ensure they don't do that again.

So it seems not all secondary schools will be having an open evening this year. Orleans has sent a letter to Y5/6 parents at 4 primary schools inviting them to a meeting and to look around the school in the day. Not so easy for working parents! The open evenings are a really key part of selecting a school - a chance to meet and chat to older pupils and have a good look at the standard of work, it's not the same when viewing a working day at the school. My DS is at Stanley and we've had no such letter even though some do go to Orleans each year. Orleans doesn't operate a feeder school admission criteria so why exclude some local schools? Looking at the other websites Waldegrave is also ditching the open evening. Is it a budget issue or something else?

Couldn't agree more about the rtt - rubbish.

Maybe they think parents want to see the everyday life of the school and the students in situ rather than a selected few showing off some of the best work. Worth feeding back to them though if that is your preference.

WhittonMum - But all the schools have always done both, an open evening and day tours. Typically you would go and see the open evenings and then the day tour for the ones you were impressed by. A working parent is going to find it very difficult to see multiple schools if all they are offering are daytime slots. The other point was the selective nature of the Orleans letter.

Hello
Orleans always used to have an additional evening talk for their link primaries in addition to their open evening and open day for all. I wouldn't get stressed till the admissions brochure comes out for entry 2018 and see if that has the open evening and morning dates for all the schools.
Reality is their is no point looking at lots of schools because actually there is little choice unless you have a Catholic girl and live in central Twickenham.
So boys non catholic and live central Twickenham orleans or the new richmond college school.
Twickenham green Turing, Orleans at a push , Twickenham High
St Mags , Orleans and probably the new school

Here is the RPA Head’s response to the RTT ‘story’ reposted from www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/15409199.Parent_and_teacher_s_union_concern_as_teachers_leave_Richmond_school/#comments-anchor which has 10 other comments:

Dear all I hope it is ok for me to comment on this story considering that I am the Principal at Richmond Park Academy. I registered today as I see that there is interest in this story. I started as Principal in September 2016 and I must say that the students and staff have worked very hard this year to improve outcomes at RPA. As you are all aware the progress measure I inherited was -0.55 which put our school in the bottom 10% of schools nationally. Now surely that is not good enough for a school in Richmond which is a high performing borough. I am more than happy for the Richmond and Twickenham times to come in and do a proper interview with me as I was not consulted on this story as I would have been more than happy to give them an interview.

We are not the only school affected by the national issues of funding and teacher recruitment but I am pleased to announce that we are fully staffed for September 2017 and every newly appointed teacher has Qualified Teacher Status and we are lucky to have recruited some very highly skilled teachers from schools like St John the Baptist in Surrey, Glyn in Surrey and from the Harris and Ark federation of schools.

Since September I have hopefully given families and the local community the opportunity to come into RPA as I run a tour of the school every Thursday - see our website- where anyone can come and meet with me and tour the site. So far I have welcomed over 450 people on these tours and received excellent feedback on every tour. We also ran a very successful parent planning event at the school in March attended by about 150 people and following on from this session set up a you said- we did page on our website so that families are easily updated on changes at the school.

It is important to note that before I arrived we were over staffed at the school as school was staffed for 180 students in each year but we do not have 180 in any year group so a restructure which was completed with the complete support of all the teaching unions was carried out so that the school has now got the right teacher/student ratio.

My main drive this year has been to raise standards across the board and hopefully we have started to change the culture at RPA to one day create the school that will be the destination of choice for the local community. I hope parents will give me and the staff the chance to drive this school forward as we have provided a broad and balanced curriculum which will benefit all our stakeholders in the years to come.

If any parents would like to raise issues with me please email my PA Debra Barlow [email protected] and I would be happy to meet you as I am in school everyday till 9pm and will gladly give you a meeting so that you can review staffing for September.

Obviously some staff maybe moving on as they may not like some of the changes but with a progress measure of -0.55 changes had to be made to drive up standards. As a new principal given the difficult job of improving the school all I can ask for is support from families as the changes will soon start to reap positive outcomes. I have had fantastic support from AET in regards to finance and our curriculum offer is as broad as any school in London.

I hope that the RTT takes me up on my offer to come in and do a full report on some of the changes. I look forward to improving the quality of educational outcomes at RPA and wish everyone a restful summer holiday. As a footnote we are running a 4 week summer school for key stage 3 and year 10 students again to give them additional opportunities to fill learning gaps and better prepare them for next year. The senior team, governors and teachers at the academy are 100% committed to doing everything in our power to improve RPA.

Thank you all for your ongoing support it has been an amazing year.