Primary school places 2010

[toast]

The ?1,000000 question that no one is answering!

I know councillors have to be sensitive as they are probably negotiating with schools but the frequent references to a 'bilp' last year just feel wrong, as i keep reading, we are not out of the woods yet! applicatios for September are unlikely to be much smaller and may be massive.

Three kids became very fashionable around here a few years back which may explain the sibling numbers. The limited numbers of nursery places are really spooking people! (As an indicator of demand next year) I'm hoping that the meeting on the 12th will work this one out.

Edited to add

Join

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120669739604&ref=ts

A nonpartisan site to unite parents concerned about the shortage of primary schools places.

[Smiler]

It seems odd to me that the targets or policies are whatever focus on the number / proportion of people getting places within a certain geographical distance, when quality of schools is also vitally important. For example, some of the most popular schools have a tiny catchment area and Goose Green is local for some, but is in special measures.

Some parents will want to work with the "failing" school they are allocated and send their child there; others will not. But for those who will not, the council / government will state that they were offered a local place.

The council could, however, decide to do better than the statutory requirements.

The numbers are so not a blip!

[Fuschia]

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090303/halltext/90303h0008.htm

[Jessie]

..

[EDmummy]

Does Cllr Barber actually live in ED? It has been pretty obvious to anyone who has lived here for a while that the number of young people moving to the area has increased. Even more obvious are the numbers of those young people with children.

Cllr Barber writes "It?s believed that changes in London?s demographics, combined with the impact of the recession, have led to an extraordinary rise in demand for new reception places. Southwark's rapidly improving results are also believed to be having a strong impact. Appears fewer people are moving to the suburbs and more children are living in flats."

There should be nothing surprising about this for anyone who understand economics.

What we need is stop pointing fingers and attributing blame. Nothing will be gained and it will not comfort the parents who have suffered this time around or who are concerned about getting their child into a school in the next few years. What we need is decisive action to prevent this happening again.

[sian]

James are you opposed to increasing provision in local faith schools? I note that you say that "government rules would probably result in a religious school and would an Islamic, CoE or Catholic school with seperate admissions policies solve things?" This conveys great negativity on your part to those members of the local community who do wish their children to attend faith schools.

Does this mean that St Anthony's School does not have your support for increasing the school entry to 2 class sizes?

[James Barber]

Hi Sian,

I think its great that we have a diversity of school types in Southwark with community, CoE and RC schools for families to choose from. Any negativity I gave is purely about how draconian govt laws tieing local govt hands from quickly doing things.

The last piece of legislation Tony Blair passed was that when planning for a new school the local authority must seek others to run it, taking 12 months doing so, and as a last resort if no other bodies come forward run any new school themselves. This means that any new school would be a religious school. The problem with a non community school is that they have their own admissions criteria. Any new school, which would most likely be religious, is unlikely to provide anywhere near the school places local families would expect but would provide greater choice for the large footprint religious schools tend to support. So any new Southwark religious school is likely to increase choice for some Lambeth and Lewisham religious parents as much as some Dulwich religious parents. Even with a new religious school we'll still have most of the same sized problem. It will be extremely hard to find one site. But having to potentially find more than one site as only some of any new schools places would be theologically available to locals leaving the majority of parents who are not religious or of a different religion without new places makes finding a solution involving new schools near impossible.

[Fuschia]

What makes the council think any of the churches/mosques would want to establish a new religious school in ED? I think there is an element of scaremongering here. The LA where I work has established several new primary schools in recent years, and is planning more in response to the current population boom.

[intexasatthe moment]

James The problem with a non community school is that they have their own admissions criteria.

What like all Southwark's secondary schools ,none of which remain community schools being either Academy's or Foundation schools ?

Or is it only a concern if it's a primary school ?

[toast]

In his defence I interpreted James's comments to reflect the fact that a faith school is selective and therefore has a very large catchment area and may not help releave the shortage of places in the hotspots (or blackholes as they have been refered to) rather than being down on religion.

sian Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> James are you opposed to increasing provision in

> local faith schools? I note that you say that

> "government rules would probably result in a

> religious school and would an Islamic, CoE or

> Catholic school with seperate admissions policies

> solve things?" This conveys great negativity on

> your part to those members of the local community

> who do wish their children to attend faith

> schools.

>

> Does this mean that St Anthony's School does not

> have your support for increasing the school entry

> to 2 class sizes?

[James Barber]

Southwarks secondary level schools have agreed common admissions criteria.

Cllr Caroline Pidgeon was particualrly successful in achieving this when she was the cllr in charge of education.

As toast suggests my concern is with the large catchment areas which means they'd have little impact helping solve 2010 problems.

[intexasatthe moment]

" an agreed common admissions crtieria "

Off topic for this thread so I'll try and be brief.

There may be some agreed criteria ,like priority for children with statements ,but if you look at the criteria applied when places are oversubscribed you will find a huge variation in Southwark Secondary schools.( None of which are community schools under the control of the LEA )

Which is why Southwarks booklet ( find it here http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/educationandlearning/Admissions/startingsecondary.html ) on applying to secondary schools says

Voluntary aided, academies and foundation

schools have different admissions criteria,

Because Academies and Foundation schools can determine their own admissions criteria.

Bacon's has a stringent inner and outer geographical requirement ,the Harris Academy's mainly require children to sit a test and places are allocated by banding.In some cases this banding is" referenced to the national distribution of ability ".

The Charter bases their admissions criteria around geographical distance ,and Kingsdale goes for banding ,only 3 bands as opposed to Harris's 9 ,but gives priority to " Children who satisfy our scholarship criteria based

on aptitude for music or sport." over that of siblings.

So huge variations.

[toast]

Evidence that the Peckham Rye councillors are still alive!

http://www.southwarklabour.co.uk/lib-dems-push-school-offers-back-until-after-election-as-shortag

edited to add another one

http://www.southlondon-today.co.uk/tn/news.cfm?id=37889&headline=Southwark%20%27playing%27%20primary%20places

[James Barber]

I can assure you I was furious when I found out about this delay and the political point scoring being attempted over this. Before any election a 6 week period called purdah is legally required and all politicians know this.

I expect the next round of admissions to go much much more smoothly as we'll be prepared belt and braces and the stats professionals know the modelling needs serious adjusting. So to have this delayed due to purdah to beyond the local and probable national elections is to put it mildly infuriating. Purdah is meant to ensure no party gains a material advantage or disadvantage by making announcements. I've asked if the letters could be sent five weeks earlier just before purdah but apparently this isn't practicable.

Very frustrating that the purdah period seems to be much more pronounced these days. If it had been realised sooner perhaps the whole process could have been brought forward but to late this time round. Something to set in motion next year which with increasing numbers of on-line regristrations should be possible to achieve for 2011.

[alfie]

James - I'm a bit confused... 'purdah' refers to the period between a GENERAL election being called and the actual event.

1) why on earth would the timing of LOCAL elections impact the announcement of primary school places?

2) it this has been taken into account by Southwark, why have other local boroughs (Lambeth included according to the article) stuck to the usual April announcement?

[everyman]

Caroline Pigeon was councillor in charge of education until recently when she was elected as a GLA member.

She was presumably therefore responsible, or at least happy with, the way that forecasts were done - ie using GLA data.

Surely she is the ideal person to have a comment on the GLA data fiasco.

James I applaud your appearance on this forum - it is excellent. What is a pity is that you seem to be a lone voice - what have the other 2 ED councillors and the Peckham Rye Councillors to say on the matter?

[everyman]

So Councillor Smeath (Peckham Rye), you seem to be happy to make political capital out of this situation - but where is there any evidence of campaigning by Labour? The last leaflet through our door from Labour made no mention of the primary school issue. Granted, the Lib Dems decided make it a political football by blaming "Boris Johnson's office" - whatever that may be.

Politicians need to understand, our children's education is far, far too important to be reduced to a mere political football.

[James Barber]

Hi alfie,

Purdah applies to all elections - even by elections.

Can cause real catch 22. By-elections are great for Lib Dems making gains but when you're running things such as Southwark Council everything grinds to a halt during purdah. With fixed terms purday from by-elections really eats into the time avialable to make changes to improve things.

The purday rules are interpreted locally by monitoring officers. Who have a statutory role effectively to ensure fair play. With over 600 counils each with seperate monotiroing officers surprising amount of variability how the purday laws.rules are implimented. If you google Purdah you don't find one definitive set of rules.

[James Barber]

Hi everyman,

education is too important for it NOT to be political.

Lib Dem policy based on various research reports is that all children upto and including 7 years old should be taught in classes of 20 or less. Labour has made achievements reducing such classes to 30 or less from the time they took over from the Tories. Pushing 20 or less class sizes is political.

[everyman]

James,

Please you misunderstand me. I said that it is too important to be a political football. What I mean by that here in Peckham Rye ward all I have seen from local politicians are two leaflets. LAbour didn;t even mention the primary school places issue and Lib Dems made a strange comment about the problems being down to "Boris Johnson's office".

Don;t get me wrong, these leaflets are obviously nothing more than party political soundbites, but my problem is where is the serious campaigning from Labour, Lib Dems, Tories, Greens etc on this issue to lobby for my 4 year old son to be able to go to a school which will give him the necessary start to life.

Politics is vitally important. Do not misunderstand me. But do you really think that flawed leaflets=politics?

I have to say that I think you and Fiona Colley are fantastic - you are the only two councillors who seem to be interested in this issue. I note from Southwark webssite that you James are Lib Dem and Fiona is Labour, so it's good to see two of the four main parties involved. But where are your lib dem colleagues on this (Richard Thomas and Jonathan Mitchell) and where are the Peckham Rye labour councillors (Robert Smeath, Evrim Laws or Aubyn Graham). To all of you we would love to see some proper cross party campaigning to put worried parents' minds at rest and to demosntrate that politics in this area is working.

[Don Quixote]

Hi - I've been following this thread with interest as I also have a child about to go to primary school. Firstly well done James, you and Fiona Colley seem to be the only councillors in this area to care about this issue.

But James - you seem to be saying that the council outsourced the gathering of the forecast data to the GLA. But surely the responsiblity for ensuring that the data was correct still remained with the Council who were going to have to use it?

I like Everyman's point earlier - surely there should have been some triangulation or reality check by the council to see if these figures were at least in the right ball park.

Blaming the GLA sounds like a mighty load of buck passing for a complete buck up

[Fuschia]

The Council must have realised back in January when there was an excessive number of applications. By all accounts communication with parents over the problem was very poor and caused unnecessary stress and anxiety. None of this can be laid at the door of Boris Johnson or the GLA.

[Smiler]

Fuschia, any feedback from your FOI request to Southwark yet? Sorry if it's earlier on this thread and have missed it.

[Fuschia]

Smiler Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Fuschia, any feedback from your FOI request to

> Southwark yet? Sorry if it's earlier on this

> thread and have missed it.

I got the info about the no of admissions to heber on each criteria.. in short, about half the places went to siblings, othe rhalf to those for whom it is their nearest school, max distance from school was 611m.

They didn't know if they'd discussed the pupil place crisis in ED, at the time they replied to me! No answer on that has been forthcoming so i emailed the other day to chase that up.

[James Barber]

After January many more applications came in - late applications. For the Dulwich area 304 applications made on time and another 45 late applications.

So no, Southwark Council could not forecast an extra 15% late applications would arrive after January.

I genuinely believe that what we've witnessed has been completely against any trend, or predictable pattern based on the previous 50 years admissions.