Halstead St Andrews & Greenfield Hoebridge

[FabulousFlamingos]

Just wondering whats going on with all these schools and if anyone thete had an update.

Looks like Halstead are selling their old site and the new merger school is cancelling its move to secondary?

Also, the Greenfield Hoebridge merger, are they keeping both sites, does the new group have to saddle the debt of the Greenfield?

Any parents offer any feedback on their experiences?

HSA we’re going to expand to year 11, but have decided not to do that. I guess after the announcement that Royal Grammar in Guildford were going co-ed that might’ve scuppered their plans somewhat.

hoebridge are taking on Greenfield debt, but they have positioned it as being cheaper than building a new secondary school.

years 9-11 at Hoebridge will now be on the current Greenfiled site.

interestingly they have stopped offering bursary’s which is disappointing and indicates a precarious financial position if they can’t even afford to subsidise a few kids from less fortunate backgrounds.

Lots of Greenfield families left at the end of last year after the merger with Hoebridge was announced… there are plenty of people who don’t like Hoebridge and had chosen Greenfield as they are completely different in their approach.

Halstead old site completely closed. No teachers going onto the site.

I heard HSA didn’t have the number of children to warrant the gcse. Plus the limited land. Plus loads of children moved to the likes of Tormead etc loads of children moved schools (including us)

Hoebridge didn’t have the space for the senior school. They didn’t get planning permission properly. They didn’t have the exist / entrance to take the vast number of children as you could wait 30 mins plus getting out of white rose lane / old Woking road etc. Local residents much of hated it.
Hence, the easy solution was to take on the extra space at Greenfields.

I personally believe something isn’t quite right as no way hoe would have taken on greenfields debts as that was over £13m? owed to the council.

Surely this should have been reported properly. However, all dusted under the carpet.

No way is hoebridge / st A going to compete with well established places with gcse results. Unfortunately it will be a significant amount of children that haven’t got into the “top / more established” schools or siblings waiting for the 13 plus or the sen children. Cash is king it’s a bonus but if you have a smart child you will move from both those schools at 11 plus.

i wonder what Hoebridge will do now with SEN kids… they were not interested in my year 3 son when I was looking, and told me he wouldn’t be a good fit for Hoebridge. However lots of sen at Greenfield. How on earth will that work now?
Hoebridge are selective, greenfield weren’t. How did that work with the merger and older years?

Hoebridge / webster will just terminate the contract of the sen kids if they can’t fit his mould / keep up with the NT kids. Too many adjustments he won’t be interested in. Lots of Sen kids at St Andrews

Do you know much about HSA / St Andrews? I’m thinking of here for my dyslexic DD in year 3, she has a fairly slow pace of learning too compared to her current class cohort in state.

It's going to be a testing time for these types of schools. None of them are big hitters, none of them have large financial reserves and seem to big struggling for numbers.

They're all pretty close together too. U turns on going to gcse also dont help - starts to smell like there's more going on. The Greenfield debt is madness, I wonder how they managed to offload that into a merger?

Also the halstead st andrews thing didnt go well, loads of girls left - girls only is still a big thing, look how well GHS and Tormead do, for example (SWPs surprised me though!) - and I actualy think halstead would still be doing OK on its own.

Interesting times for these smaller establishments in today's market.

Halstead wasn’t going to work financially with the numbers especially in reception / year 1 (less than 12 in an 2 form entry - 6 per class) and slight increase in year 2 onwards. The numbers never stacked up and didn’t have the location of Guildford etc.