Statement by CAM to Surrey County Council Education Select Committee

CAM is reading the following statement at the next meeting of the Surrey County Council Education Learning and Development Select Committee at 10am on 20th May 2011, at County Hall in Kingston upon Thames.

CAM members and supporters are very welcome to join us to lend visual support at the start of meeting when the statement is read.

Please contact us if you would like to buy an orange CAM tee-shirt to make your presence known!

This is a statement prepared by CAM - Campaign Against Merger, an action group of parents from school communities and local residents.

Surrey Heath is currently served by four secondary schools.

Two large schools, Collingwood and Tomlinscote, and two smaller schools, Kings International and Gordons.

Kings’ recent history has proved challenging, resulting in it being placed in special measures by Ofsted. This has resulted in current student admissions falling below that required by SCC for a school to be considered viable. A proposal has been advanced by SCC to subsume Kings into Tomlinscote to create a “super school” split into two parts, a lower school based on the Kings site and an upper school on the Tomlinscote site almost two miles away with a motorway and major hospital on the route between them.

CAM have real concerns over the proposal:
The Hay Report published in 2006 does not indicate a favourable outcome in the majority of school merger scenarios, and there is a real risk that the new mega school will have lower attainment levels and face serious operational challenges.
School admission projections produced by SCC do not correlate with current primary school numbers. They also lack current recruitment from Hampshire and Berkshire, and inaccurately reflect increasing birth rates and demand from new housing developments.
There are significant safety risks for children and increased traffic on congested roads between the two sites.



SCC has invested significant time and effort into Kings and over the last 18 months and there has been an improvement in academic outcomes for students, so much so that the college is likely to be judged as “meeting national levels of attainment” this term.

This improvement CAN continue and the college WILL be more attractive to local parents, negating the need for a proposal that will cause massive disruption.


Our requests to the Select committee are:
Do not risk destroying a successful Tomlinscote school by combining it with another school which embodies a different ethos.

Do not walk away from the investments already made in Kings which are now starting to yield results. Instead, support the improvements and build upon them.

Do not close Kings – thus removing the chance for Surrey Heath to maintain four centres of excellence. One size does not fit all.



CAM also believe the proposal document itself has several major flaws.

1. It does not include proper in depth consideration of viable alternatives for example an Academy/ Free school solution for Kings.

2. It assumes that parents will not choose Kings when SCC itself has not been prepared to promote Kings as an improving school and real alternative.

3. It disregards the recent success of the soft federation with Tomlinscote, which if built on would enable Kings to become a popular and successful school.

4. The questions at the end of each subsection are asked in a fashion designed to lead the the respondent to ultimately agree with the proposal.

5. It contains insufficient information to allow a reader to respond in a properly informed way.

6. For it to be a document upon which valid decisions can be made, it should contain several viable options, each of which is supported with a feasibility study, risk analysis, business case and implementation road map.


The consultation document contains none of this information in any depth and as such its validity is questionable.

In the interests of democratic and educational responsibility we ask you to terminate the current consultation process.