I (Tomlinscote parent) also attended the one of the King’s meetings and can underwrite the comments made by Clare.
The whole thrust of the case for the merger can be summarised as
Kings is a failing school as proved by Ofsted and results.
Because it is failing not many parents want to send their children there.
There are fewer children in total coming through from Primary/ Junior schools with forecast numbers further reduced by a drop off in house building due to economic climate. So the numbers applying to Kings, Tomlinscote and Collingwood are further reduced.
There are forecast to be 120+ (from memory no handouts – which there should be) vacant spaces between the three schools in the coming years. So there are places for parents who do not choose Kings. Not many will be ‘forced’ to use Kings as in the past.
As a result Kings will not have sufficient intake to remain viable, hence the take-over of Kings by Tomlinscote.
The case rests on the assumption that low numbers at Kings make the merger inevitable as Kings will be too small to be viable and must be merged or closed.
The presenter uses the phrase failing school, or similar, repeatedly, but it’s not true. It was a failing school, or even a failed school, but now it’s an improving school. Staffing issues have been addressed, results are expected to improve and it is expected it will come out of special measures this academic year. Mr Ryles described the staff as excellent. Repeated use of negative terms embeds the notion of failure in peoples minds.
Given that it’s an improving school its OFSTED will improve as will the results, if that happens then more parents will choose Kings. Especially as it offers a different - smaller nurturing environment -education experience
One parent attempted to make this point and was repeatedly’ misunderstood’ by the speaker, who didn’t seem very keen to engage with this idea.
The numbers used to demonstrate the decline in demand for secondary places was unsubstantiated. The LEA must publish the details of how these numbers were derived. All sources of raw data must be made available.
With regards to the forecasted decline in numbers, we need to ask Surrey CC what evidence they have. I have looked at their own report for surrey heath in the following web page:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/Education+Organisation+Plan+2010-2019?opendocument
This is a long term Education Plan and according to this report there was a drop in birth rate in years 2000 and 2001, which does impact the numbers for secondary school applications in 2011 and 2012. However, the birth rate recovers to in 2002 and by 2007 it is 14% above the level in 1999.
So it is misleading to use this temporary drop as evidence of falling numbers. In fact this year, popular primary schools such as St Augustines are heavily over subscribed. So this argument that there aren't enough pupils in the area should be challenged.
The primary reason for the drop in applications to Kings International is due to the Ofsted reports. The best and most cost effective way forward is to plan for the issues affecting the school to be dealt with. There is no reason why Kings International (maybe after some re-organization/re-branding) cannot become a popular school. In some ways many parents would like an option to send their children to a good smaller secondary school.
So a massive re-structure that affects the education of 1000's of children and then its just about settled down and they will want to expand / restructure again ... not joined up thinking.
ReplyDeleteI found the Surrey heath report referenced above. I think a difficulty is that it's possibly not the latest report, despite the fact that it's an 09 report ( 2yrs old) it's still got draft all over it.
ReplyDeleteThe gist of the info presented was that the numbers presented include an estimate for new housing and that reduces demand for secondary places due to lower housing completions caused by the economic situation.
We really need to see the detailed analysis they have, presumably, performed to get these numbers. Derived numbers are insufficient, we need to see the raw detailed information.
RR
I think that if Wavell School, which is also a small secondary school (albeit in Hampshire) and which I would think has a similar type of catchment (includes North Camp, parts of Farnborough and Aldershot)can achieve an outstanding OFSTED report which means that it is now an oversubscribed school, then there is no reason given the right backing and management that Kings should not be able to achieve similar results. It just doesn't make sense to close it when it is just turning itself around. It hasn't been given a chance.
ReplyDeleteJust how big a school will a combined school be allowed to get, if SCC have based their figurews on flawed data. When the new Deepcut dewvelopment is built and ? Johnson Wax site then surely there will be more children. There will already be about 14 classes in a year group... how many more can a school sustain. It will be one of the biggest schools in the country... just on two sites!!
Does anyone know why parents of current Key stage 2 key stage 1 students were not invited to the information evening
ReplyDeleteYear 6 parents forming next years intake have had separate meetings - but no provision has been made for primary school entrants in future years that I know of.
ReplyDeleteI've been to both meetings so far, the Kings meeting was informative, tonights meeting was a shambles. In what is, as they keep saying, a very emotive situation the fact they couldn't make the microphones work, continued to ignore the fact they couldn't be heard and we had to suffer the additional patronising middle man who could not have been less effective in chairing/facilitating the meeting therefore inflating everyone's frustrations further......
ReplyDeleteOutrageous waste of the time allocated to ask questions, I just hope the second meeting didn't just tolerate it like we did. This does not bode well for a serious discussion. We are voting with our feet.
I would like to hear how the presenters at the year 6 meetings described Kings.... this is the audience that could make Kings viable by applying for it.
ReplyDeleteI attended the meeting yesterday and one of the key arguments for the threat to Kings International was their 'projected' numbers of pupils against for PAN in their presentation. The figures they presented are not in line with the published in their own Education Organisation Plan 2010 for Surrey Heath.
ReplyDeleteTheir plan says the following:
"There are a safe number of spare places
for Year 7 (around 7%)."
"Year 7 numbers have generally been falling in recent years and are projected to continue
to fall until 2014 when they will begin to increase back to current levels and beyond."
So the education needs to be planned for the longer term. Even if there is a drop in numbers in 2012 and 2013 due to the lower births in 2001 and 2002, the general trend is of increasing number of pupils, so the plan should take that into account.
We need to question the figures presented in yesterday's meeting as they are 'conviniently' projecting much lower pupil numbers than their current published numbers.
In this report the spare spaces drop back to 2010 levels in 2014 and by 2018 there is a shortage of 42 spaces.
Currently Tomlinscote is taking 270 students against their PAN of 240 students. Wouldn't it be more economical to reduce Tomlinscote intake back to it's planned PAN during 2012/2013 to deal with this temporary drop in birth rate. That would be a much better way of dealing with this issue than threatening to close Kings International.
I'm sure the local community would accept small adjustment in Tomlinscote's PAN for a short period if it avoids Kings International closing and giving it some time to continue it's work to improve.
R