What's the WHIF over West Hampstead?

As free schools become an issue in Brent, Anne Clarke writes a Guest Blog on the West Hampstead International School on our borders

Campaigners for the West Hampstead International Free School (WHIFS), an all-through (ages 4-19) free school hoping to open in 2015 or 2016, say that West Hampstead is a black hole when it comes to secondary school provision and the available local schools are not good enough. According to Dr. Clare Craig, the group's lead petitioner:

There are no good schools just over the borough borders and children end up travelling a long way to attend Barnet grammar schools or church schools elsewhere. 

In fact, NW6 is home to St. Augustine's Cof E School which OFSTED deems to be "outstanding" and Queen's Park Community School which is a solidly "good" school. The local comprehensive, Hampstead School, in Camden and just outside the NW6 postcode is "good with some outstanding features" according to OFSTED and is now in the top 2% of the country for A-level results.

Dr. Craig repeatedly claims that there simply are not enough secondary places for an incoming population boom. She has all sorts of graphs and charts with data modelled herself based on GP birth records in Camden, Brent and the NW6 post code. Predicting student numbers is very difficult and the GLA and Camden spend a lot of time and money hiring people to do this work on their behalf.

Camden insist there will be sufficient secondary places until 2022/2023, their numbers can be found HERE. 

Schools are funded on a per head basis so undersubscribed schools suffer from funding shortfalls. To build schools 8 years before they are needed would be catastrophic for all local schools, including new ones.

 

The addition of the primary offer from WHIFS came after Camden identified Liddell Road as the site where they plan to expand Kingsgate School. Camden does face a current shortfall of primary places and they need to add more places urgently. Regulation from the current government means Camden cannot simply open a new community school but are restricted to free schools or academies. However, they can expand an "outstanding" school such as Kingsgate. Camden's plans to expand Kingsgate School on Liddell Road will provide an additional 420 primary places.

Camden's own plan is not without controversy as in order to pay for the new school, they will need to raise the money themselves as central government will not fund a community school expansion. They plan to build flats and the additional Kingsgate School building on Liddell Road which is currently an industrial estate. This will mean the loss of 250 jobs according to the Save Liddell Road campaign. 

If the free school builds on Liddell Road, they will also lose the same businesses and jobs because of the larger school buildings they would require. The total area of the Liddell Road site is just over 3 acres, by contrast, Hampstead School sits on just over 4. To put this in local perspective, WHIFS would like to squeeze the student population of Emmanuel and Hampstead schools onto a site only 3 times that of Beckford School. The facilities needed for both a primary and secondary are extensive. WHIFS has said they expect theirs will be a tall building in order to accommodate their needs.

It is hard to imagine that the WHIFS campaign is just about numbers as it would be Camden's legal obligation to address any shortfall of places. Dr. Craig is quoted in the Ham and High on 5/9/13 that Hampstead School is simply too big. "One of the problems people have with Hampstead School is that it is a massive school. It has 210 children in each year group.That is not much bigger than your average Camden school but a lot of people want a smaller, community school for their children. Part of going to school is being part of a community, but if your community is 1,500 people, it’s hard to feel like you belong.”

It is interesting that the school Dr. Craig now proposes is a two form primary (60 per year)  with a 6 form secondary (180 per year) plus a sixth form. WHIFS would be the largest school in Camden and her secondary would only be one form short of Hampstead School. Dr. Craig has her numbers wrong again, the actual number of pupils in Hampstead School is 1,280, WHIFS would total 1,570.

As Brent residents have seen, all 3 of the free secondary schools due to open in September 2014 are still advertising for applicants. Only one has a confirmed site which is not looking in good shape. In an unusual twist, the College of North West London building on Priory Park Road, Kilburn will host Marylebone Boys School for two years whilst they build their permanent site on their secret Marylebone location. 

Currently Camden has 170 unfilled Year 7 places and neighbouring Brent and Barnet have around 200 each. The addition of 3 new free schools in Brent and an academy in Barnet opening this September, on top of the free school added in Barnet in September 2013, add a total of over 700 additional secondary places per year group from September 2014.

The DfE final sign off on free schools is unpredictable. Many free schools have failed to open after being given initial funding to proceed, including the Institute of Education bid south of the Euston Road in Camden. Jeopardising the expansion of an outstanding primary school in order to make way for an all-through free school will deepen the primary place crisis.

Ultimately, the quality of education WHIFS would provide is unknown. What we do know is that Camden has an excellent record of running schools, with 95% rated as "good" or "outstanding" by OFSTED. The one school requiring improvement is nowhere near West Hampstead and Camden is working very hard to improve that school.

By contrast, one of WHIFS partner schools is an academy in Hertfordshire requiring improvement.

Brent Labour takes on fight for community schools as secondaries consider academy options

The academies battle field

It was a busy day on the academies front in Brent yesterday.

At lunchtime a joint meeting of unions at Alperton High School voted unanimously for strike action if the school's governing body decided to apply for academy status. They called for the governing body to support the unions' opposition to academy or trust status. If the decision was to consider academy status they demanded a fair public debate and a secret ballot of staff and parents.

In the evening the Alperton governing body decided not to go ahead with academy conversion at this stage but instead agreed to invite the Cooperative Trust to handle a consultation process with five options:

1. Seek other partners to become a Cooperative Education Partnership which would require no change in the school's status.
2. Become a single school Cooperative Trust School which means that the school would remain maintained but change from a Foundation to a Trust school.
3. Become a Cooperative Trust in partnership with other schools (eg neighbouring primary schools). The schools would remained in the maintained sector with one Trust Board bur separate governing bodies.
4. Become a Cooperative Trust as a lone school or in partnership with others with a view to moving on to Cooperative Academy conversion. This would gain the 'benefits' of academy status but embed Cooperative values and ethos.
5. Maintain the status quo, maintained Foundation school.

In the South of Brent, Queen's Park Community School governing body, is concerned that it will be the only secondary school not looking at academy status, but has made it clear that it would like to stay as it is - a community school in the Local Authority. Though they are keeping abreast of the Coop moves in the borough they will have been heartened to hear that Alperton has not decided yet whether to go down that route.

While the Alperton Governing Body was meeting, down in Stonebridge, Labour Councillors and Labour nominated governors were meeting with some local teachers to discuss the current issues in school organisation with particular reference to academies. I attended at the invitation of Cllr Mary Arnold, lead member for children and families.

Melissa Benn, who is the parent of a child at a local community secondary school, gave an over-view of the current situation and some of the contradictions of Coalition policy. Academies had been able to boost their results by using vocational qualifications but Michael Gove had criticised such qualifications. By changing the rules to convert 'good' and 'outstanding' schools to academy status, the government had made academy results look better. Michael Wilshaw had been appointed as an independent chief of Ofsted but was also linked with academy provider ARK. She suggested the long-term aim was destruction of local authorities with a substitute unelected 'middle tier'. Academy chains were likely to move in to fill that space with 'for profit' schools not far behind. Labour had been stuck for 18 months, failing to react. She quoted an overheard conversation between Labour MPs 'we don't have an education narrative any more'.

Mary Arnold said that they had to recognise the pressure for academy status for short-term gain. It was important to recognise the impact on the whole Brent community of schools of fragmentation and the financial loss to the authority through top-slicing of the budget. The latter would affect the LA's ability to provide viable services. She said that present academies cooperated in the Brent 'family of schools', one less so than the others. She said that the role of the LA was essential and needed to be publicised by governors. These included:

• strategic planning of school places
• tackling underperformance of schools and particular groups of pupils
• meeting the needs of vulnerable children including looked after children, those with special education needs and those who had been excluded from school

In a key passage in her briefing paper she said:

The local authority believes that there will be overall adverse effects on children and young people if strong collaboration and collective responsibility is not maintained and if the LA education function reduces to the extent that statutory responsibilities cannot effectively be fulfilled.

Cllr Arnold said that she expected a good take-up of the council's traded services for schools in 2011-12 . (Schools 'buy-in' these services but can also go to other providers). I pointed out that it was hard to back-up calls to remain with the local authority when they were cutting their services and staff reductions were making them less efficient. The campaign against academies and campaign against cuts were part of the same struggle.

Hank Roberts said that the issue was one of democracy and the right of staff and parents to have a secret ballot on academy proposals, with the unions taking strike action if the demand was not met. I added that schools did not belong to individual headteachers or even governing bodies, but to the whole community. In a sense academy conversion meant that our schools were being stolen from us. The need to involve parents and inform them of the negative issues association with academies was stressed by a number of contributors with calls for joint meetings of parents and governors. I asked if the database of parents held by Brent Council could be used to initiate ballots of parents if schools refused to hold one.

Among the suggestions to make Labour more proactive on the issue were:

1. Support for the right to hear a balanced debate pro and anti-academy and a right to an indepenent ballot, for and against, or parents and staff. Governing bodies would be expected to take the result into consideration. There was also a sugegstion that student actionm such as that at Kingsbiry High, hould also be supported.
2. A leaflet about the issue for distribution to parents.
3. Lobbying by councillors of schools where there was no nominated Labour governor if they were considering conversion.
4. Promotion of the services offered by the education authority.
5. A Brent Governors' One Day Conference on the academies and free schools issue with a 'for and against' debate and information available.
6. The relaunch of an Association of Brent School Governors
7. The formation of a broad-based campaign to defend community schools in Brent.