School threatened with closure

[piapiapiano]

My sons school(LA) has failed their ofsted inspection in every area, and is being threatened with closure.
Does anyone know of anything we can do as parents to support the school?
The school has had problems with recruiting staff. However those that are there, are good dedicated teachers.
For the record the report bears no resemblance to the school I know.
My son (yr 11) is happy, confident and is doing well.

Yes I know Cantkeep, I take your points and clearly something must be done. However there are no other schools which can accommodate the children. The only one with a few spaces was itself rated inadequate and is in special measures.
If the school closes, where will the children go?
Surely it is better to work with the school especially as there are new developments being planned?
Many thanks, I appreciate all input.

You have a phased closure. It is not all done in one fell swoop. No closure is satisfactory and this school has been harmed by poor Governance and SLT. If a new school was needed, the only way this could be built is as a free school. I am not sure why this is a foundation school. There will need to be clarity regarding who owns the land but if it is more than is needed, it could be sold and a new free school established on the site.

Lots of schools are situated in expensive areas and all your nearby schools and many others are in this position. A poor SLT tends to ensure poor recruitment and young teachers electing to move on. Only the settled people stay. Land sale money cannot be used to address this because it is a different pot of money, and so it should be. Why should schools without land to sell be greatly disadvantaged?

I have no doubt the LA will be looking closely at housing development but it appears to be a fact that lots of children in this school are not from this LA. It is, therefore, not their catchment school one would have thought a LA does not have to make provision for another LA's children. No doubt there will be discussions with the other LA about this situation because it is costing your LA a lot of money to keep a school open for other children for whom they are not responsible.

If the Governors had been better, they would have investigated academy status years ago and got on with it, like everyone else. Nothing excuses the lack of progress for very many children and they didn't do anything about this either. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Closure usually takes a few years.

If a decision is taken in June to close, then there will be no admission into Y7 for September 2018. It is possible that the remaining 2 KS3 year groups will also close / transfer to other schools OR e.g. that Y10 do so that they can start GCSEs elsewhere and not be disrupted, and Y9 so that they can choose GCSEs for September 2019 while already in their new schools.

At the end of the following year, it would be likely that the school would finally close. Maintaining a full curriculum with any staff at all can become very, very difficult, so it is likely that most pupils will leave before their year group is due to, or to share some lessons / teachers in another school even while registered at the closing school.

So final closure would probably be Summer 2020, if the decision is taken to close the school this June. It CAN be done faster if there is lots of capacity elsewhere - for example, they may not admit Y7 for this September, if all local schools can be persuaded to take on an extra form group (it is likely that the LA would fund them to do this, as closing the school quickly is more economic), though this is highly unlikely under this timescale where there may be appeals etc. The school is likely to be down to a handful by closure day

For the school I know of, final appeal decision was in May one year and closure was the following July. However the closure proposal was actually mooted more than a year earlier - so just over 2 years from consultation to closure.

Sorry, calculation wrong - in the scenario I outlined:

• July 2018 - Y11 + maybe some other year groups leave
• September 2018 - No Year 7, and year groups who left in the July not replaced
• July 2019 - Remaining year groups, in particular those who entered Y11 in September 2018, leave.

The problem is that there is only one other "local" school in this LA who have already made a statement about protecting their pupils but clearly understand they will be part of ongoing discussions. There are more schools in a neighbouring LA but that makes dispersal rather more difficult but not impossible. It seems this school would be tiny if it relied on catchment children alone, or indeed first preference children.

The application to sell part of the playing fields by the Governors said specifically the capital receipt would be spent on new sports facilities. This would be a formal agreement and cannot be changed. Capital receipts go into capital projects. This site appears to provide only 37 houses though and the area is in the AONB so large scale housing looks to be unlikely.

Bojo, again in the case I know of, a specific local partner school was identified but in the event a tiny minority of pupils from the closed school went there - the vast majority left to go to a wide variety of other schools in ones and twos well before the formal closure of their year groups.

Again, it may be cheaper both for the 'home' LA and for the neighbouring one to fund an extra class here and there across a range of schools. It tends to form part of the closure consultation, and IME looks over quite a wide geographical area. As a 'school of last resort / low down on preferences' it is quite possible that the pupils already come from a wide geographical area, so alternative schools could be quite far away.

It can only be a 4 form entry, maximum, with its current number of pupils: OP, are all year groups the same size of 100ish or have numbers declined recently?

There are still roughly 100 in each year group. My DS (year 11) is the smallest year, with only 80 on role.
Soon after my son started, the neighbouring borough (which has a huge very popular over subscribed academy school) changed it's catchment area, which meant a certain estate was no longer able to go to the academy.
This meant the children from the estate were free bussed(paid by their borough) to a school which they had always resented and didn't want to go to. There were a lot of angry children and parents, I believe this may be one of the reasons that things have slipped so badly. I'm from the neighbouring borough and I could see the trouble coming.
From the information I have if the school closes, it will close 2018.

That is quick - even if they do not admit the Y7s due to start this year, that is probably 4 year groups who all need spaces at the same time, as a phased closure with some year groups finishing this July, moving to new schools September 2017, only has a month after the announcement to be arranged - appeals may take nearly a year from then IME.

More likely, on that time scale, that the plan is to close the school and re-open a new free school on the same site.

So, if that's the case is there any chance it could remain open and then change to a free school 2018?

Hard to say - however it is hard to see how a full closure, with all 400+ pupils sent elsewhere, can possibly be effected in an orderly manner within a year, especially if other local schools are a) unwilling b) academies and c) full.

Ok many thanks.
One other thing but please don't feel you have to respond. We'll be attending a meeting next week with reps from both boroughs and local MP's, are there any particular questions you think we should ask? We're thinking it might be an idea to go in with a few ready thought out questions.

I think, and please remember this doesn't affect my DS. That they will ship in a couple of porta cabins to the academy in our borough. The academy have already said they would be willing to expand.

You need to look at the FAQs the home Shire LA have put on their web site. They have also posted the Y7 offers for September 2017. 179 offered and 116 first preference and 117 in catchment. The LA say they are working with neighbouring LA but that the 2 alternative schools in the Shire LA are full. They say the earliest CE could close is July 2018. It would need a massive effort to do this.

Are there any large scale housing developments that are imminent? You would need to know density and likely pupils for the school. There are formulas for this. As my DH spends his days working with housing developers and planning authorities, I can confirm new sites can take years to get permission so if new schemes do not have PP, there could be a massive delay (years) in new children actually going to school. Find out what the position is and be realistic.

Are the neighbouring towns scheduled to take more development? If so, what are the plans for secondary school places for more children? Find out if the projected school population in both LAs is growing, or not.

Ask about what schools can realistically take the children currently in the school and those requiring places in the future. Obviously appeals have not been heard so expect the number starting in Y7 to be lower. Try and find historic info on offers and actual starts. The offer number looks like both LAs need a school but histocally far fewer than 179 have turned up. Look at historic data.

Ask if it could be a free school if numbers stack up. This is the only way to get new buildings and a new school if one is actually needed. Home Shire LA says it is virtually impssible to find a sponsor so this avenue may be closed.

Try and get info on whether any "local" school could accommodate the displaced children. The LA should have this info for the meeting as they are working on it.

The school is running a deficit revenue budget. It has no money to improve the education at the school. Schools are not allowed to set deficit budgets so there are big problems here. This means the school is uneconomic and Shire LA does not have the money to bail it out. The funding the school gets is not enough to provide all that is required. Are there any solutions to this? (It cannot be receipts from land sale).

In my opinion, the fact that your former Shire LA (B-shire) was split into quite a few boroughs when some LAs reorganised has not helped and their lack of school planning has forced people to look elsewhere - it has too many fragmented parts.

Thanks bojo that's really useful I shall put it to the group.

piapiapiano. Another thing has come to mind. South Oxfordshire DC is consulting on its Local Plan. It has a section on infrastructure and briefly mentions schools. However, the mention is ultra brief! It talks about roads, rail, broadband etc. but health and education are not really discussed. The number of proposed dwellings in SC is less than 200. This will not produce many children but you need to look more widely and, if schools are full elsewhere, can the catchment of your school be increased to mop up children from expansion at other towns? How is Oxfordshire going to educate these extra pupils? Ditto Reading. What is their Local Plan and what school provision is planned?

So the meeting was as expected very well attended and very emotional. Both LA's were there and they both basically tried to persuade everyone to move their children.
Home LA admitted they'd and underfunded the school and let things slip apparently (ofsted should have inspected 3 years ago). When challenged on this they said 'a poor education is better than no education' which I suppose is true, but as you can imagine didn't go down to well.
They rejected the argument that 400 homes were being proposed in their borough and 1200 houses were planned for a different neighbouring borough. They also rejected information which stated there would be a need for more school places.
Schools are full in the neighbouring borough, however I have heard that the head teacher of the main school has offered help. Parents don't want this school, although rated good it is 'robust' I know the school my older children went there. Ironically some of the children transferred to our school because of severe bullying at the host school.
Our school has a high number of children with sen. We were told they would be provided for, although I'm not sure how, some of the kids are there because other schools wouldn't take them.
So it doesn't look good, and as far as the LA's are concerned we're not able to appeal the decision.

Thanks again.

If the LAs propose closure - which it sounds as if they will - then an appeal can be made to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, who will then consider the evidence.

Although the main bulk of their work relates to school admissions arrangements, they do also consider proposals to close / amalgamate schools.

That said, appeals on decisions to close secondary schools is actually really rare in the OSA caseload - but it does fall within their jurisdiction.

Forgive grammar.

However, it should also be considered that if both the local LA AND the one from which most pupils come are recommending that pupils move away from this school, and the budget is already in deficit, the school will very rapidly, by the end of this term at the latest, become unsaveable. There will simply not be enough pupils to give the school enough money to continue to operate, and I doubt whether many teachers will choose to stay on if they have other options...

You will want to make certain that they are following the procedure for closure in the document linked here which is statutory.

An appeal can be made within 4 weeks of publication of the decision, which must follow the publication of a formal proposal and a period of representation of at least 4 weeks - ie you can't appeal until after this has gone from being a suggestion, to a formal proposal, through a statutory period of consultation and then the publication of the decision. The reality is that the school will almost certainly be unviable before the end of this timeline, making the appeal essentially redundant, but it may make those campaigning feel that they have 'done all they can' and held the LA to account.

I have had a look at the school that serves Caversham and Emmer Green in Reading. It has a PAN of 220 but had approximately 1200 on roll when Ofsted came in 2015 with about 220 in the 6th form. It was rated good and I would imagine it has some spaces for the Reading children but I have not looked at the numbers offered places in September 2017. Also, as yours is a Foundation School, the Governors can apply for closure. They must give 2 years notice so this is possible.

Regarding the housing, you would need to see what Reading is proposing to do with schools and new developments but there is not enough housing proposed, as far as I can see, in the CE catchment to make much of a difference to numbers. Even 400 houses does not produce that many secondary age children and large housing developments are not all built at the same time, it is quite often phased and can be way into the future after years of delays due to PP. Oxfordshire say pupil forecasting for this school is very difficult in their School Planning document for 2014-18 because of the unknown quantity of children from Reading. Catchment is more predictable but they did not predict much growth, so it would still be very small and probably unviable.

The school must go through the statutory process outlined above.

When the LA says they underfunded the school - this is a very odd statement. Schools are funded by an agreed formula so there are no differences except that SEN statemented children and PP do add more funding. All schools in the home LA are probably underfunded. They may have meant capital expenditure but with such low admission numbers, can you blame them when other schools are bursting at the seams? LA finance is so tight that they just do not have any extra money to put into small schools. No-one does!

When the LA says they let things slip - the running of this school is down to the Head and Governors, not the LA. The Head and Governors decide what services to buy from the LA. Schools with deficit budgets tend to go down the slippery slope of not buying in advice, training and expertise. It is not a free service any more. The LA were being generous to the management of the school.

I think that due to the failure of the school, closure is inevitable, but where the children will be placed will be an interesting debate. They must be offered school places.

bojorojo- Our LA provides some services for free to schools at risk of failing - eg school improvement partners, which once upon a time no schools had to pay extra for. So it is perfectly possible that the LA negligently failed to use its powers to provide extra funding and/or support to one of its maintained schools which it knew to be failing already. It would be a very odd LA which provided identical support for all its schools, regardless of identified need - LAs do still have obligations towards schools which are not academies, they are not little ships drifting in the night, controlled and maintained only by their SLT and governors!! That is, of course, unless the LA has got to the point where political and funding pressure have resulted in it helping the DfE to force schools to become academies against their will, which is more likely to be the case if the county council is run by the Tories...