bornagain

Yes, Felafel is Camberwell. My daughter bought me one for lunch last Sunday - delicious! She says the fresh lemonade is to die for!

Let's get some facts straight first. Charter as it currently stands operate a closest safe walking route not an as the crow flies admissions criteria. The issue about whether the children on the DKH estate could be admitted or not depended on whether a short cut through was included in the allowable walking routes or not. It seems that the new school may operate a crow flies criteria but I don't think this is decided (nor which provider would run the new school) Charter serves a diverse community, not just the middle classes. It is diverse ethnically. Stand by the school gates at the start/end of school day and look for yourself. If you live in Bellenden you may not get into Charter now but depending on which end of Bellenden I would imagine you would have a good chance of getting into the secondary school on the Hospital site. Don't forget you also have Harris Peckham which is very close by and has an ofsted good rating. As for following Kingsdale's model of the lottery system, with its popularity the chances of your child getting is equally small whereever you live! At least with a distance based system there is a certain amount of certainty which helps when planning ahead.

"I am not sure at what stage the consultation element takes place ... It does look as if the original names gathered for Harris ED have been used to support Harris Nunhead" Yes, but ED is not Nunhead. How can yet another primary school in ED help the children of Nunhead? Just because there is some spare land a mile away is not the reason to find a site for a school. It's nowhere near where the demand is - unbelievable. There will be more traffic, children will have a long journey to school in a car - the only outright winner is Harris. James - what is your take on this? Are you as surprised and appalled as we all are?

If this school is to serve nunhead and it is going to be in east Dulwich it will create more traffic at start and end of school day. How can the children get to school without a car? Will it exclude nunhead children without access to a car? East Dulwich grove is being converted to 20 mph zone as we speak. We need less traffic not more.

This defies belief! No planning, no strategic thinking, no consultation - who has an overall view of what is planned for the local community? This shows the free school system at its worst. A story worthy of Private Eye me thinks.

I saw girls with your description going through the green bins on Camberwell Grove last week. I noticed that they didn't bother even lifting the lid of the recycling bins (which is probably where the paperwork would be).

pommie, which area is that?

You could ask Dulwich Hamlet - they have a lot of after school clubs of the kind you mention.

Does it include the cost of the hosting?

What I mean is that some schools spend much of Yr 6 teaching to perform well for the SATs test (eg lots of test for practice). Once they get to secondary, these primary SATs results are not considered important (in fact misleading) as you can't compare like with like across all the feeder primary schools. As far as I know secondary schools all do their own CATs test early in year 7 to set their own benchmark for their students future assessment. edited for typos

'Habderdahsers' were interesting. They explained they'd seen dramatic improvement in primary school SAT scores but stable scores in non verbal reasoning scores used for banding.' Isn't that because you can coach for SATs but not for non verbal reasoning? I'm assuming that banding tests will be non-verbal reasoning. I understand that HA school if it happens in ED will have a different admissions model to Hatcham but still I'm not totally comfortable that the admissions outcome in their flagship school is not totally transparent. ETA notice there is another thread advertising an all-through school for Peckham and Nunhead. This will increasingly put pressure on parents to find the 'right' school at 4/5yrs, what a nightmare! For all sorts of reasons I'm totally against all-through schools.

What a nightmare . What a mistake that we've gone down this route of Academys ,Free Schools and not put the money poured into them to better use in improving LA ( and in my dream world inner london authority ) schools . Spot on as usual, intexas ;)

And yes it does look like a large nos transferring from the primary school are in the higher bands - 15 in band 1 and 10 in band 2 . That's interesting - so students who transfer from the linked primary is not included in the fair banding - that doesn't seem that fair to me. Given that this is the trend - to have primaries attached to secondaries (Harris Peckham is another like this) is it a loop hole that needs to be looked at?

intexasatthe moment Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > If you deduct the nos of pupils transferring from > the primary school the band sizes become more > equal . ? are you saying that those children already in the HA primary are in the higher bands? Can't quite get my head around this, could you explain?

Had a look at the booklet and it shows that there are many more students accepted for the top bands than the bottom for Hatcham College. Also the same for Prendagast Hilly Fields. All the other schools have equal numbers of pupils for every band. From this it seems that HA Hatcham is disproportionately admitting more able pupils ie is not comprehensive. For example, 33 was admitted for the top band but only 19 for the bottom. If the same number was admitted it should be 23 for each band. Is this the result of their music scholarship? Can someone explain what is going on here? This method of admission would not be acceptable if the school in ED was to be a true comprehensive. See attached for the table I'm talking about.

But also much hotter brezzo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Much much cheaper if you go over the border into > Spain

Yelloh campsites are great and there are loads dotted around France. http://www.yellohvillage.co.uk/‎

Got a load of the common old garden variety in my pond!

LondonMix, sorry I quoted you as the hook to discuss the relative inclusivity issues of the two schools, but the 'slagging off' reference is certainly not directed at you. You are always very clear and reasonable and full of informed discussion. I was referring to dadsarmy and others earlier in the thread. I will reword the post to make this clear. Offending post edited. I think it reads better too.

LondonMix said However, if the steering committee was specifically looking for a school with great inclusion policies (as reported in a previous post), clearly the events above regarding the Charter would have figured into their assessment of the ethos / governance at Charter vis-a-vis other potential operators as concerns inclusion. By contrast, Haberdashers has a specialised inclusion team at each of its schools. ----- I think we are all agreed that inclusion is a key factor in the selection of the new school. A part of the reason that Haberdashers is particularly hot on inclusion is because they were made to put their house in order about 5 or 6 years ago. It was criticised as being elitist with a pseudo-grammar intake. I think all potential students and their families were interviewed and the school population strangely did not reflect the surrounding area of the school. The school was far from inclusive and hence the fantastic exam results. Incidentally ED benefitted from this as many children got places although did not live that near the school. Lewisham stepped in and forced the school to change their admissions policy. They abolished interviews and started to take students strictly by geography (except for the music scholars). The exam results are now less good but the school is more inclusive. Part of this transformation was the annexing of a local failing primary school. I assume a large number of students come from there. I hope that in a similar way, the Wanley incident has made Charter apply its admission policy with more rigour. I think the moral of this tale is that schools change, they develop and hopefully each new incarnation is better than the previous.

Re: Charter's inclusivity, compare it's statistics to that of Dulwich Hamlet (one of its main feeder schools) Charter - percentage of pupils who were on free school meals any time in the last 6 years is 30.8%. http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=136298 Dulwich Hamlet - equivalent figure is 9.5% http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=136665 As I said earlier, a substantial chunk of Charter's catchment come from the council estates to the north of it, both this side and the other side of Wanley Way. Whereas Dulwich Hamlet has a very tight catchment centering on the Village.

dadsarmy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What a ridiculous claim by a charter governor > about admissions. > > You've had years of cherry picking highbrow > families that can afford to live in your catchment > area. > You've had plenty of time to make more places > available but you've failed the local community on > this. Hi dadsarmy, that is quite an allegation you make about a school. If you study the geography around Charter school, most of the northern quadrant is made up of several large council estates so the children from there attend the school in large numbers. I am not sure what you mean about 'making more places available' perhaps you could clarify? The fact of the matter is, The Charter School is not actually in East Dulwich so that is why most ED families are not in the catchment area. For more info click on the link. http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=136298 Attached is also a map showing the catchment area - Charter is in blue.

Hi James, All I am saying is that IF the Charter bid is serious then it is wise to feed into it so that SHOULD it win, the outcome is the one that the community wants - eg with respect to the admissions criteria. The final decision sits with DofE so you can't say at this stage which bid will win or not.

SplendidLikePeckham Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > What we need now is for the new school to get the > go ahead and be built as quickly as possible - 2 > years seems pretty tight. Given the steering group > have explained their reasons for choosing Askes > then anything that might slow down that process > should be avoided. I don't know whether Charter's > proposal might do that - but if it might, then > please Charter have a rethink. Were your counter > proposal to somehow delay the process and push the > school back by another year then I suspect there > will be an enormous amount of local ill feeling > towards you. > > If not then great - let the best proposal win, and > let's get this school up and running asap!! The Charter website says they hope to open in 2 years time. http://www.charter.southwark.sch.uk/news/?pid=3&nid=6&storyid=168 For those of you who are anxious about the situation for a new school, perhaps worth getting involved in this bid?

DaveR, I do not have to defend my views or experience to you. Yes the piece on Ken is interesting. Good to see him supporting that.