CVMS

[deadbeatdad]

What is going on at CVMS - will the school survive in its present form?

what is going on at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School - will it be the same sort of school in two or three years time?

I'm sure it will change in some ways, schools often do, but what aspect of the school are you worried about?

I'm nearly at the end of formal schooling with my 6 DC. Schools do change over time, usually after change of HT or other senior staff. Where is CVMS I've never heard of it.

This is the case the OP is talking about.

The diocese are trying by whatever means available to them to stop the school using religious selection creteria to cream off able catholic boys from ambitious and motivated families from all over London.

The school point to their free school meals quota, and their high proportion of non-English speakers, but they are being disingenuous - they have used every loophole available to them to try and keep their intake as it is, and every time they've been rapped over the knuckles about it, they've come up with another way to try and cherry-pick. They may argue that it's about catholicity, but you don't get the results that they get with a true cross-section of London boys.

The diocese are able to use their muscle with the Vaughan in a way that they can't with eg. the London Oratory because the Vaughan is a diocesan school, while the Oratory is not, ie. the trustees are the Oratory Fathers. I suspect the school's intake will gradually change - the new admissions criteria place much greater emphasis on distance from the school, but the way they market and promote the school will still put lots of people off.

Personally I'm not keen on state schools that see themselves as free private schools, which is pretty much the vibe at both the Oratory and CVMS.

My sense would be that the easier it is to qualify as a Catholic - such as not being required to attend mass weekly - the more opportunity there will be for middle class game playing around admissions and therefore more damaging to community cohesion, not less and ultimately more damaging to the principle of faith schools.

Gregorsamsa - I am not sure what you mean by the term "free private school" but if you mean a school that is strong academically, musically, sporting, etc then I would have thought many parents would want that: isn't that what the whole Labour and Tory push for academies has been about over the past decade(and free schools more recently). As a matter of interest what sort of school does your children go to?

Not many schools have a true cross-section of pupils, they will vary by area, by type of parent who are attracted or not to the school etc.
If CVMS can point to a not insignificant number of free school meals, and high proportion of non english, then presumably they are taking in pupils from some sort of cross section.
I thought the reason they had high results was because they were so strict and had zero tolerance on behaviour, attendance, homework etc etc.

I understand "free private school" to mean one that is selective on intake e.g. grammar schools.
Does it matter where gregor sends his dc? He's entitled to an opinion regardless of this.

Well, since you ask, my older DC both go to Catholic comprehensives which have a wider intake than either the Oratory or the Vaughan, but are successful both in academics and extra-curricular. They're just not going to be league-table toppers because they have a higher proportion of kids whose parents have not spent their entire primary-school years finessing their secondary-school admissions masterplan. And it's not sour grapes, nor do I have an axe to grind: my ds could theoretically have gone to either CVMS or LOS had we chosen to apply, inasmuch as we would have ticked all the boxes for pretty much maximum points.

But (purely personally) we didn't like either of those schools, specifically because of this aura of exclusivity and specialness. I'm also not overly keen on the bootcamp-style discipline (and yes, I know plenty of parents with dc at both, who think the discipline is excessive). I'm not knocking it for those who made that choice, it just wasn't what we wanted. The very cramped inner-city sites are a bit of a downside as well.

FWIW I do think the changes in admissions rules are already having a knock-on effect on other less elite schools. Admissions to LOS and CV are now seen as much more of a lottery, and boys who in previous years would almost certainly have gone to those schools are now putting them down as an outside chance, but accepting that they will probably end up at the more local options. Which in turn raises the number of more motivated and ambitious families at those schools, which I suspect is what the diocese are after.

Thanks for these comments - this is helpful

Gregorsamsa - as you say the school is not everyone's cup of tea just as the school that is right for your DC may not be right for other children. But why aim to make all schools the same?

I am not sure if your objection to 'free private schools' refers to your opposition to the quality of education provided or that it is available without charge. Personally I think more state schools should provide high quality education - why should the rich kids only benefit.

The intake to CVMS will clearly change - that is likely to have a significant effect on the school but I think it is wishful thinking on your part to suggest other Catholic schools will benefit. A dramtic change at CVMS will change that school but with such a dispersed, london-wide intake the positive impact on other Catholic schools will be negligible.

All that will happen is that CVMS will struggle to cope with a rapid change in intake, a distinctive school (albeit not everyone's cup of team) will no longer be there in five years time and all Catholic schools will suffer to the extent that 'faith membership' is open to anyone (pretty much)

I don't think it's wishful thinking, zanzibar. The two schools/parishes I know well used to send a couple of boys a year to each of LOS and the VAughan, and for most of the middle-class boys with ambitious parents that was the expected destination. For the past couple of years, the only boys who have got into either have been siblings or have named the school on their statement of SN. Other boys, even those who you'd think would score highly on all the religious criteria, have not been offered places, even on appeal or by waiting to the end of the summer holidays.

Of those boys, one or two have gone private instead, but the rest have gone to my ds's school. Sure, that's only two or three boys a year who would previously have gone elsewhere, but multiply that across the parishes of north and east London, and it's not a negligible number of boys. The main difference is not that Ds's school will become more m/c (and ironically they could hugely up their m/c quota massively if they introduced a distance criterion, but they are committed to not doing that) but that the school is increasingly being seen as a good first-preference choice, rather than the place to go to if you can't get into cvms or los.

I am in no doubt that that is a positive thing for our school. I have nothing against schools that have a very distinctive ethos and way of doing things (and indeed ds's school has a very strong tradition and ethos of its own) but any system in which some schools are perceived as hugely better than others is, on balance, an undesirable state of affairs other than for the very few who can manage to jump through the right hoops to secure a place. If the Vaughan is as good a school as they make out, then they should be able to do well even with a slightly changed intake.

I'm a member of the Vaughan Parents Action Committee. One of the aspects of the proposed criteria which worries us is that it is so much easier to cheat: the only criteria are a baptismal certificate, any date you like, and an address as close to the school as possible. As regards the first, for Catholics it is very dispiriting that the ARchbishop himself isn't interested in his own sacraments - first communion and first confessiion - or that steady Mass attendance is just chucked out of the window. As regards the second, the school, let's not forget, is in Holland Park.
Secondly, and I speak as a parent of three kids who have been there or are there, this accusation of being "too middle-class" is just weird and offensive. The VPAG is made up of, and gets support from, the Vaughan parents who do not have a hope in hell of paying for private education. The school's high expectations for its pupils could be replicated all over the diocese - all over the country - without having to mess about with the Vaughan to get there. GregorSamsa, what you seem to be saying (and it is the way the church education bureaucracy thinks) is that many children should have to put up with a mediocre education just to stop a few from getting a good one.

Oh I forgot to say, Check our website sites.google.com/site/vaughanparentsactiongroup/ for our position.

CVMS is a briliant truly comprehensive school for boys from Brixton to Hounslow and everywhere in between. I love the fact that the school is manifestly living out its Catholic mission and helping me to educate my children in the ways of our faith and develop them spiritually.It does not cream off unless you count ordinary families who practice their faith as "the cream" I certainly dont think of myslef this way nor do I know any Catholic family in my parish who does.

There are many reasons why the school is so outstandingly successful:
it has dedicated and fantastic teachers
The pupils work very hard
Parents are totally supportive
the leadership team are inspirational
they are not ashamed to practice their Catholic fith with daily praying of the Angelus, weekly Mass and the boys make the Sign of the Cross before each lesson.
The school is not afraid to stand up and be counted for the practice of the Catholic Faith.

All Catholic Schools who struggle could do well to study the secrets of its success and seek to replicate it.

The school roll today has 49 different ethnic groups speaking 44 different languages,Im sorry no way is this an elitist school. It is a school of faith for people of faith.

Long may it be so.

GregorSamsa - You say your Ds's school could become more middle class by introducing a distance criterion "but they are committed to not doing that". CVMS was also "committed to not doing that", because the introduction of distance criteria would exclude boys from Brixton, Hackney, Richmond (where there is no Catholic secondary school) and beyond; the Diocese found that "commitment" to the School's founding purpose of serving the whole of London unacceptable.

You looked at CVMS and LOS and decided they weren't right for your Ds; in doing so, you exercised your right (enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, as well as the teaching of the Church) to express a preference for the type of school you wanted for your Ds. The Diocese's intransigence (which only seems to be visited on CVMS) prevents many other parents from exercising that same right.

I do not understand why it seems to be desirable for all schools to be forced to conform to a single model. You say you would not be happy with the way CVMS operates; that is your prerogative. Why should not the hundreds of parents each year who seek that type of school for their children be denied? If the Diocese were serious about honouring the position of parents as "primary educators" of their children, it would be looking to provide more places in schools run along CVMS lines.

Gregorsamsa - The CVMS intake will change under the proximity change - that wasn't the Diocese's
doing but a member of public referral to the OSA. The change in intake will be significant not because the school is in Holland Park but because it is on the doorstep of the White City ( I am amazed that doulasarah as a Vaughan parent doesn't get it) -- not small as you say. But the positive impact on other Catholic schools will be hardly noticeable. One or two hitherto CVMS parents in other schools do not make for a renewed ethos.
I hpe I am wrong and you are right. But I can't agree that schools should all be the same in educational offer, still less that they are perceived in the same way by propective parents.

I'm sorry, GregorSamsa, but you simply haven't a clue what you're talking about! The Vaughan is a wonderful community made up of boys from a huge arrray of backrounds from the very wealthy to the very poor. It's insulting on everyone to say that it is a middleclass bolthole.
furthermore, the situation at the moment is not as you say. It is related to the appointment of Governors and the way in which it has been done (see Vaughan Parents' Action group web page sites.google.com/site/vaughanparentsactiongroup/. There is also a consultation on admissions as a matter of course.

The points raised in this post (incorrectly in a lot of cases I'm afraid) will be the symptoms not the cause! Schools such as the Vaughan, whoever's jurisdiction they fall within, should be protected at all costs and there should be more of them. As you say, not everyone wants a Vaughan; its unashamed Catholicism (daily Angelus, weekly Mass,boys make the Sign of the Cross before each lesson)doesn't suit everyone; it's strict discipline - but not oppressively strict I can assure you (lines and detentions including on Friday evenings and Saturdays is hardly capital punishment is it? It is simply teaching children that there are rules and choices to be made and that each action has a consequence)doesn't suit everyone either. But just because some don't agree with it, isn't a good reason to destroy it in the hope that 'one-size-fits-all'.

The Diocese of Westminster often say that they have a 'family' of Catholic schools. Well, everyone knows (don't they?) that each family member is an individual with their own personality. The Vaughan wears it Catholic school badge with pride.and I am grateful for it. All Catholic parents should want a Vaughan for their children, where our faith is not an embarrassment.

Oh look, all the Vaughan apologists have turned up in force now, so I shall bow out.

I will just say to doula Sarah: you imply that all schools apart from the Vaughan are 'mediocre', which is frankly rude, as well as manifestly wrong.

Secondly, to Sarah and all the other posters: if the school is really as good as you say, then it should be able to achieve its aims with whatever intake it gets, surely? It makes no sense on the one hand to claim that you have an intake that is entirely representative of the Catholic population of London, and otoh to get quite so aerated about changes to the admissions procedure. If the school's formula is as magic as you claim, then changes to the intake shouldn't make any difference.

GregorSamsa-"Personally I'm not keen on state schools that see themselves as free private schools, which is pretty much the vibe at both the Oratory and CVMS."- What exactly did you mean by that ? You know you lost my support completely when you said that - what is so wrong with wanting a great education when you can't afford to pay? . I think EVERY state school should see itself as being as good as a private school.

The Vaughan school is an amazing school and it provides opportunities that other state schools do not provide . In that sense GregorSamsa is correct when he says it is like private school. It seems so sad to me that this school should be criticised for providing an education that, everyone agrees , is outstanding. GregorSamsa feels the ethos at the school would not suit his children and that is his right . However it cannot be a good idea to provide only one type of school and since the Vaughan is oversubscribed by 7 times to one place then it must be accepted that a great many parents want this type of education. All the statistics show that children from disadvantaged backgrounds do amazingly well at this school. Of course there are many who gripe about the Vaughan - that is the price of success.

Both my children attended CVMS. My daughter is now 25 and still close to the friends she made in the sixth form. All five went to good universities,three have grown up in social housing, one from the White City estate and two from from quite deprived ethnic minorities. As I understand them, they chose CVMS themselves, precisely because it would not allow
anyone to assume hat a poor background was a glass ceiling,beyond which there would not be progress; s view which prevails in some other schools, and may well prevail at CVMS if the Director of Education for Westminster has his way. He has assumed control of the Governing Body of the school, packed it with his own men and sacked parents and parent governor who might be of independent mind. If I am right Mumsnet's members will abhor the removal of power from parents. Please join us at sites.google.com/site/vaughanparentsactiongroup/ and send a note to the Archbishop showing your solidarity. A sample letter is available.

I see the parents group have lost their legal action. What does this mean for the school over the next two years?

Nothing. As the parents above said, the school is great and does very well with its wide social intake. It will continue to have a wide social intake, ergo nothing to worry about.

thenevernever - thank you. So what are all the arguments and legal cases about?

Neurotic parents