Proposed Michaela Community School in Tooting

[gazzalw]

Does anyone have any further information on this? Was handed a flier about this with details of two parents' info evenings coming up very soon.....

It seems to offer a good option for a small secondary school - those in charge seem to have very good credentials but would be useful to know more.....

It seems as if it is proposing to be open for September 2012 so how come it wasn't flagged up an an option for current Year 6s?

somebloke Neither would I want my child appearing 'anonymised' or as a 'composite' in one of her blogs/novels/presentations/whatever. I'm not sure I know any parent who would want it, regardless of how noble the claimed intention of exposing life at the coal face.

It's very, very hard for parents to get past that, and perhaps that's why she's struggling to attract interest in her school.

But I agree, there does appear to be hostility from vested interests.

Do we know that she is struggling to attract interest for sure? I agree with whoever posted above that the level of interest will surely rise on 1st March when hundreds of parents don't get their "choice" of secondary school in Wandsworth.

madgirl I was going by your report of a tiny turnout at the public meeting

You're right - I'm sure interest will pick up after 1 March.

KandyBarr I guess in my case it would depend on just how anonymised they were. A pupil can be anonymised by a name change, so not identifiable by the wider public, and yet still be identifiable by parents and pupils at the same school. I certainly wouldn't want that.

I don't think I would have a particular issue with Ms B right now since she is no longer anonymous and she will have to be much more careful about sharing details of her pupils with the world at large - and she will certainly not want to put the future reputation of her new school at risk.

I still think it's valuable to get the contributions of people in the thick of the everyday stresses of these socially sensitive jobs. And if they never refer to individual cases and even individual conversations we may be missing something. We then have to rely for our information on personal anecdotes and gossip, abstract argument, Ofsted inspection reports, school presss releases etc.

An example - not from education - that springs to mind is the doctor/psychologist/essayist Theodore Dalrymple (aka Anthony Daniels) who served as a prison doctor and has given accounts of conversations with some of the prisoners he treated ("I had to kill her doctor, or I don't know what I'd have done").

I suppose there is always going to be a tension, and a balance to be drawn, between "telling it like it is" with specific examples, and maintaining confidentialty. A bit of a tightrope I think and probably no cut and dried answers.

somebloke Unconvinced by degrees of anonymity for children, but agree with you in that she's likely to be much less cavalier about it now she's running her own school.

And despite myself I found myself agreeing with her comments last week on holidays in term time.

She's certainly a divisive character.

There's a press release on the school's website today saying the school won't be opening this September. They haven't secured the site, they'll try to get it going for 2013 but they are no longer accepting admissions for this year.

They must be feeling a bit stupid, having circulated leaflets stating they will be at Trident from 2012 etc. I don't think they can have had much support from parents or even the council. I believe there was a council meeting about it on Wednesday and the paper circulated beforehand didn't seem particularly in favour or demonstrative of a need for the school.

Guess we wait and see what happens next.

Well that doesn't surprise me but having offered us that potential dangling carrot great for it to have been taken away when it could possibly have solved loads of potentially disappointed parents' secondary school woes...

Not really very happy about it...hmmmm!

It would have required a massive leap of faith though to commit to a school without a site that appears to be making it up as it goes along. I understand that it might have seemed like a good option in the face of other choices but I would have been very nervous about having my children take part in that particular experiment.

Anyway, I haven't had to consider it from a prospective parents' point of view but I have to confess to being absolutely delighted that my business isn't going to be turfed out of the Trident centre just yet.

Looking on the bright side, it's undoubtedly better to find out now that it's not happening as opposed to four months down the line when you had thought that was where your child would be going in September.

Sorry Irisjohnson didn't realise you stood to lose personally/professionally from their proposal. You must be breathing a huge sigh of relief....

Well in theory it shouldn't ever need to be an option for us but in the worst case scenario, even as untried/untested option, it would have probably been a preferable one to some of the others....

I think for some parents, whose children have listed grammar schools (for which they didn't pass) and for whom the sixth preference (and fall-back option) is looking increasingly likely to be their allocated school, it might have been an attractive proposition...

But alas the dangling carrot has been withdrawn and in a way that to me says quite a lot about the underlying ethics of the whole venture

Guardian is subtly putting the boot in about her presiding over chaos after accusing other head teachers of doing the same. Fair enough, I guess.

gazzalw Here's hoping you have good news on 1 March.

Thanks KandyBarr - but I do think that they shouldn't have started marketing before they knew it was logistically likely - it is all rather non-professional despite the suited and booted very professional image they portrayed at the meetings!

Hmmmmm!

Shambolic in my opinion. It would have been a massive leap of faith anyway, so this goes to show it was the wrong team in the first place.

Sorry not to get to this forum on Friday, but just to let you know that the full statement is up on the website www.proposedmcstooting.co.uk