'Zealot' Michael Gove is accused of 'lunacy' in £400m free school row...how is this affecting your children's education?

[MillyDLA]

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/classroom-controversy-zealot-michael-gove-accused-of-lunacy-in-free-schools-budget-row-9350075.html

I would like some reactions and thoughts to this. As a teacher in an oversubscribed school, surrounded by other over subscribed schools money would have been better spent creating more places where they are needed in the state sector.

mumtryingherbest......yes to both your questions.....if parents in one area get organised and support the opening of a free school, whether it be a faith school or not, then yes of course it should get Government support and be funded. If that results in the demise of another less popular school then so be it.
If there are insufficient school places in an area then parents can always apply for a free school.
Why are people so against faith schools....if they don't like faith being part of a school that does not give them the right to deny this to other parents who wish to have their children educated in this way.
And, btw, I am an athiest and I am not Sarah Vine...she is too left wing in my view!

"Why are people so against faith schools"

Cotwatcher, see the thread here for that debate, and I suggest you read through all of it.

There's a big difference between being against faith schools (which some people are) and being concerned about their admissions policies (which is what we've been referring to here). Many people within the church are concerned about faith school admissions policies too.

cotwatcher - "Government support and be funded" - where will the money be coming from? As previously highlighted, Gove has already started diverting funds from other school budgets to meet the cost of setting up new Free Schools.

Why are people so against faith schools.... Was this aimed at me or the thread in general?

I'm not against faith schools. I was prepared for my first holy communion, first confession and confirmation at school. This involved a fair number of lessons focused specifically on these, covering topics like why we choose a confirmation name etc. We performed some of our Christmas plays, which were always based around the birth of Jesus, on the alter of the Catholic church situated literally next door to the school. We attended the Catholic church, as a school, for various masses and celebrations such as Easter, Christmas etc.

It was boring and tedious for those children who were not catholic and to whom these had no relevance. That said there were non Catholics and non practising Catholics at the school and they certainly didn't leave because of the emphasis on the Catholic religion.

I should add that the majority of the local community was either CofE or Roman Catholic and there were faith schools which catered for both and there wasn't the shortage of school places that is now being experienced in many areas.

'I am not Sarah Vine...she is too left wing in my view'

See, I said it was Dominic Cummings!

Here is a relevant story about a free School being set up, it seems at huge cost, in an area where the places not needed:

www.islingtontribune.com/news/2014/may/bill-archway-‘free’-school-set-top-£10m

(Note the weasely way the proposers of the school Bellevue Ltd claim the school is "full" in one breath, admit they have only 40 acceptances with another, and then say they WILL be full by autumn, wheras what is actually happening is that they have activily recruited parents from Muswell Hill and even as afar away as Barnet, who did not get an offer for one of their preferences on offer day, but who are now falling away as the later offers go out...)

Not sure if the link went to the story - is this better?

That doesn't sound like a lot of applications if they went outside the coordinated admissions process. Most schools are two or three times oversubscribed if you count all six preferences. Those who have accepted places or are on the waiting list would also be holding on to an alternative offer.

Or is this better

Islington is projected to have a shortage of 900+ primary school places in 3 years time if we ignore this school so some people (including the LA) seem to be working to a strange definition of "places not needed".

@prh47bridge

Projected by whom? Can you give the source of this projection? It is certainly not the projection being used by the Council or by Islington's Schools' Forum...

Nor, it would seem, is it the one being used by the DfE.

It is indeed the one being used by the DfE - their school capacity projections released last month. Go to this page and open the first document. It shows that Islington currently has 14,076 primary school places (table 2). If you then look at table 3 the projection is that they will need 14,886 places in September 2017 which is over 800 more than they currently have (apologies for the typo in my last post). The projections come from ONS data.

Any projection may, of course, be wrong. It is possible Islington could cope with their existing primary schools. But if the projection is correct Islington need two additional primary schools each with a PAN of 60.

The new Free School in Islington will be full, as there is (according to info posted on another thread) the astonishingly high number of 144 reception year applicants still with no offer at all.

And that's with two of the three schools which had bulge classes last year having them again.

Even allowing for the normal list movements that reduce numbers a bit, it's clear Islington needs more primaries as capacity for existing schools to add a further 5 or so classes just to deal with this years shortfall is looking riskily ambitious, and projections are set for equal or bigger shortfalls for the next few years.

@meditrina

Islington admissions have stated that there are enough places in the Borough for all applicants. All applicants will be offered a place by the end of the process. As of last week 144 children had not (yet) been offered one of their PREFERENCES.

As time passes and more offers are made this number will continue to fall. At the end of the process any children who have not been offered a place at one of the schools they applied for will be "allocated" to the school closest to them with places.

Islington admissions say the figures are much the same last year as this.

Last year, at the end of the process a total of just 5 children were allocated to schools for which they had not applied.

But every applicant got an offer.

@prh47bridge

Now I understand. I thought you meant a projected demand for over 900 RECEPTION places extra in three years! You can understand why I was surprised.

The answer to your question is of course these projections are used, and Islington has enough physical capacity to be brought back in to use in the existing schools. This is because over a number of years school rolls fell in Islington and PANs were reduced. So the projected increase in demand can be met by an increase in supply, by upgrading, at low cost, existing premises.

The projected increase is in South Islington, where a lot of new residential building has taken place, and so the plan is, so far as possible, to provide the places there.

The other thing they are trying to do is create places in schools that have high levels of high preference applications - that is so that as many people as possible get as high a preference as possible.

"All applicants will be offered a place by the end of the process"

Only because a lot of people who are unhappy with their offers will drop out of the process to go private or move house.

That is what is driving the boom in the private sector in London as I pointed out in this other thread.

MumTryingHerBest
I do not have to move or go private as suggested by you. I'm fortunate enough that we have been able to buy a house in the right place but I believe that those we can not afford to buy in the right street should be able to get access to the same schools. If you wish to live in an area which does not have enough school places because you have been living there for a long time than that is your choice. We did move and that was our choice, because it was the right thing for our DC. If you disagree with what I'm saying fair enough but I don 't see why you have to be so nasty about it.

@vanillahoney

There really are not that high a proportion of people in Islington who have the money to be able to decide they dont like the offer of a state school and go private instead... but anyway the question is whether there are places for peoples children. For someone to decide they did not like the offer they got, is not the same as not getting an offer...

And as I said last year only 5 children were "allocated" -they all lived in south Islington - all the remaining children were offered a place for ahich they had applied so parents had indicated a preference which was taken into account. That is, they were offered places at schools parents had applied for...

Now of course the five sets of parents who got "allocated' places might well have had poor satisfaction levels and been really disappointed not to get one of their preferences.

And indeed the fewer of those the better.

Sorry vanillahoney I did not mean you, I meant icecreamsoup.

(Sounds like a dessert menu)

"all the remaining children were offered a place for ahich they had applied"

People who get first preferences will be satisfied, second pref less so, third pref even less, etc .... those that get 4th, 5th, 6th preference, or no preference, are often the ones to drop out of the system. You said "As of last week 144 children had not (yet) been offered one of their PREFERENCES", which implies that 139 families will need to drop out of the process between now and September in order to match last year's figure of 5 allocations.

And do those figures only include on-time applications? The late-applications tend not to be reported in the official stats, but they're just as important.

NO:

It implies that 139 families will have to receive an offer for one of their preferences, before the end of the process to match last years applications.

These offers will occur because places previously offered will become available because:

1. People had an offer but declined it due to a change in circumstances, so it is re offered.

2.people had an offer which they accepted but they now relinquish it in favour of an offer they have just has for a higher preference.

1. And then as the season moves on people relinquish offers they have accepted because of a chance of circumstances...

Late applicants are now included in these figures. They were not included in the figures at offer day.

By the way by no means everyone uses six preferences. Also if you have applied for a school at any preference, that should imply you are willing to accept it if offered. But of course everyone would prefer their first preference.

People move a lot in London. The private rental market has just overtaken the social housing sector in terms of capacity. You can't can assume that those who give up places are going private - they may be moving areas.

Going back to the point about expanding existing schools - if the targeted basic need budget is being raided, schools are more likely to be doing that without being able to upgrade other parts of the school, e.g. canteens and staff rooms. That's where free schools may be damaging existing provision.

nlondondad: "People had an offer but declined it due to a change in circumstances, so it is re offered."

Exactly. A "change in circumstances" such as moving house, going private or deciding to home educate. Some of that will be natural turnover, but I strongly suspect some of it will be forced by the reduction in surplus school places.

I don't know Islington, but in my community the second effect is very tangible. Aspirational families (from a broad range of class backgrounds, but upwardly mobile) make significant life choices based on whether or not they can get a reasonable (i.e. Ofsted Good+, and logistically convenient) school place. The result is a very unstable community. (And yes, people move for other reasons too - house prices and employment, but the supply-and-demand of school places has a significant influence on their decision-making).

The raw numbers from Islington tell us little about whether there are similar effects at play, but that is what I meant here when I said that the social consequences of the national policy to decrease school place surpluses weren't being audited quite as closely as the raw numbers.

The numbers of families turning down state-school offers needs to be monitored, and if they are rising then the reasons for that need to be looked at, because it wouldn't be a welcome trend. (Perhaps welcome for bean counters, but not welcome for people who care about state education).

And even if the effect is only detectable in a small number of relatively affluent LAs at the moment, it is likely to spread as surpluses reduce futher in other areas.

Like the NHS, the more people you have going private, the less those with influence care about quality in the state sector. We don't want to encourage a "well you get what you pay for" attitude or a "those that can afford it should stop complaining and go private" attitude in education. That would severely let down those that can't afford to make contingency plans.

Good points, icecreamsoup.

I'm sure Islington will have something to say about it and that another poster will copy it word for word.

The views of the admissions and education experts, such as prh47bridge, are usually more illuminating the council speaking for publication.

Now, as the 144 figure is not applicants with no places, what is the real figure for that?

The suck and ripple effects as the application round settles down are of course very well known. But as ics points out, it is not that (which happens everywhere, all the time) which matters, it is the trend and the effect on education in the wider community that matters.

the more people you have going private, the less those with influence care about quality in the state sector

Yes, good point - but there's no evidence that take-up in the private sector has increased recently - quite the opposite, even in areas with a traditionally high take-up in the private sector.

But there is evidence that private schools' more direct influence over the state sector via free schools has been both divisive and bad for standards with many ex-private schools-turned-free schools, or academies sponsored by them, requiring improvement.

The policy of restricting new schools to free schools and academies, is exacerbating shortages not meeting them but overall demand for LA-maintained schools is greater than that for free schools.

"but there's no evidence that take-up in the private sector has increased recently"

How about this Straggle .... news.tes.co.uk/b/news/2014/04/23/embargo-to-april-24-00-01-private-schools-enjoy-london-boom-as-the-north-nose-dives.aspx