down the PAN - Tina Carney

I was grateful that Ian and his wife Ursula were at the meeting to witness the passion of the Kings' s parents and staff. It is one big (used to be) happy family! It was also nice to know other Tomlinscote parents took the time to also attend – thank you. Hopefully it gave you an insight as to what to expect at your meetings on Wednesday. Forewarned is forearmed!

Kings is going down the pan because of PAN (Published Admissions Numbers – ie the maximum number of children a school can take in as a year group) - and b) less children around the Surrey Heath area. Michael Gove may be the person to tackle on altering the PAN numbers for each school and maybe reduce the catchment areas for each of the bigger two schools, but obviously I think it is even out of his reach to produce more kids to be put into the system!

I did raise the point at the K meeting as to why they only ever mention three schools in Surrey Heath? On paper we have four choices - although one isn't really a choice, but SCC pay into it. Gordons school is also a smaller secondary school in Surrey Heath and SCC can't get away from the fact that they pay money into it. Does anyone know how many day places are offered each year and how many students from the locality actually get a place, who hasn't had an older sibling in the residential part? Surrey are prepared to pay into an almost private smaller school - but not prepared to pay into a smaller establishment, which caters for students whose parents cannot afford the additional fees to attend the other small secondary school in the area .........although looking at some of the comments about the laptops – I’m not sure I could afford to send my child to Tomlinscote either! At the end of the day, if a fair comparison of numbers is to be made (statistics and all that) across Surrey Heath, we need to know the figures, for all the 'choices' available to parents of year 6 pupils. It may not come to anything but everything needs to be on the table to be analyzed! I note that a Kings-Gordons merger would not be an option!!

PJ (the man from SCC) insisted that many parents choose their school by only looking at the OFSTED report on line. To a certain extent that is true for the many parents who live in the catchment of a good all round school. However, that is also like saying that when you buy a house, (which is apparently one of the most important decisions of your life according to ‘To Buy or Not to Buy?’) you look at the estate agent’s blurb and say ‘I will have that one’. Brilliant on paper and in the pictures, but could be a great disappointment when you move if you hadn’t taken the time to take a closer look and make a visit or two. No-one does that, do they? Making the right choices of your child’s educational path, is just as important as buying a house. If you get the house wrong, ok you can move and maybe lose financially. If you get the child’s placement wrong, it’s not money, it is emotional and stressful for all. When I was choosing my daughter’s school I went to look at three schools – gave Gordons a miss – and immediately felt at home at Kings. I didn’t get the same feeling at Collingwood and we didn’t have the right postal code for Tomlinscote. To get more students into Kings, you have to get more people to come and look at it and see it in action. Don’t look at the measurements in the blurb, look for yourself and see if the windows are in the right places. Many negative comments are made about Kings from people who have not actually visited the school in any shape or form or refer back to when it was France Hill – even PJ brought that up last night!

Interestingly, no-one mentioned the traffic. I was half expecting the neighbours on Watchetts Road coming across to say they did not want an increase of traffic movement on their road.

My main concern was the lack of parents from Kings at the second meeting (Year 10 up). I can only think that many of them suppose that their own children will not be affected, as the major change will be in September 2012 and is therefore not a priority in the scheme of things. Kings 6th form is in its final year, totally closing this July, and so those parents would not feel a part of the process either. Having said that, one parent did say that her daughter was having more or less one to one lessons because of the fiasco last year. Thank you! Our ESL parents were also thin on the ground – maybe SCC should be having special meetings or producing translated paperwork to ensure that everyone understands exactly what is happening to our schools. I am hoping that SCC don’t think that, just because there weren’t a great numbers of parents at the meeting, the rest are in agreement with the merger. The parents who did attend made their points clearly and articulately, although PJ may have been articulate, his answers were wrapped in statistics – and we all know about statistic analysis!

All I can say is ‘Good Luck’ to the Tomlinscote parents. At Kings, we will continue to fight to keep our great small school - and at the end of the day – you want to keep your school smaller and great as well!