Impact by area:
Moulsecoomb and Bevendean
UPDATE
The decision
What does this mean for parents and children in this area?
Be prepared to consider Falmer
What happens if a schools is oversubscribed?
Outcomes are difficult to predict
The fight will continue
Potential Academy at Falmer
As a result of the disgraceful meeting of the Children, Families and Schools Committee on 2nd February, this area was treated with a lack of concern that beats all previous examples. Yet again, the needs of Moulsecoomb and Bevendean have been ignored.
Six members of the Committee, including most astonishingly Jack Hazelgrove, a Labour councillor for Moulsecoomb and Bevendean, ignored pleas from local parents who feel that they are being denied access to other schools. They also ignored appeals from our Falmer School governors who asked for the catchment boundary to be extended south to Elm Grove to ensure a more comprehensive intake.
Secondary school admissions will now run on a system of fixed catchments, which means children living in a catchment, or with a sibling at a school, will get priority for places at that school. This system will affect all children in Year 5 and younger.
Moulsecoomb and Bevendean are in a single catchment for Falmer School. This catchment now includes the estates and roads in Moulsecoomb, Bevendean and Coombe Road along the east side of the Lewes Road. Coldean is now in the Patcham catchment. The southern boundary of the Falmer catchment splits Bear Road in two. You can download the full catchment map from the Argus website. You will need a 'pdf' file viewer like Adobe Acrobat to see it.
What does this mean for parents and children in this area?
Children in Moulsecoomb, Bevendean and Coombe Road get priority for places at Falmer School.
If you already have a child at another school the sibling link will remain until 2013 and your next child will have priority of access at that school regardless of your living outside the catchment area.
Some catchments, particularly the dual catchments for the popular schools Dorothy Stringer/Varndean and Blatchington Mill/Hove Park are likely to be oversubscribed by children with priority for those schools – the catchments will not catch – and this will be worsened by the sibling link. In the case of Dorothy Stringer/Varndean, the catchment is oversubscribed by as many as 80-120 children. Unless you have a sibling link with those schools, your child will not get in under the new fixed catchment system.
This oversubscription is also exacerbated by the lack of leeway in the system. There is a surplus of only 15 school places across the city. And with the new developments this will disappear completely. So the ratio of places to pupils is tight, and this system is inflexible. The notion of expressing a preference, particularly for children in the single catchments, is a joke.
In effect, this fixed catchment system will dictate the minimal choices available to Moulsecoomb and Bevendean parents. Officials consistently stated, you can express preferences for other schools on your admissions form. However, the reality of the situation will make those preferences meaningless. Nonetheless, you should state your preferences.
So, for those in single catchments like Falmer, there will be the slimmest chance of getting your child into an out-of-catchment school, even though you may believe that another school would be more suitable for our child.
Be prepared to consider Falmer
Falmer's bad reputation precedes it. In addition, the league table rate it as the worst performing school for GCSE results in Brighton and Hove (17% gain 5 GCSE grades A*-C including English and Maths). It gains a "satisfactory" grade overall on the Ofsted report – which is currently better than Patcham.
However, the league tables also show Falmer doing well on the value-added score. This means that compared to schools with pupil intakes that get similar results in school tests at age 10/11 (Key Stage 2), Falmer does well at improving those childrens' results by the age of 15/16 (Key Stage 4). You can see the league tables for Brighton at the BBC News website. (Click on the column headers to see how Falmer does for the value-added score.)
But parents should be aware that Ofsted and league tables, although worth considering when you make your choice, do not tell the whole story. You can and should also visit the school and see it in action. It is worth visiting Falmer, even if you are an old pupil and think you know it well, as Ofsted also state that it is an "improving" school. A school can turn itself around in a matter of a few years.
Even so, you may still decide that Falmer is not right for your child. Then, under the new system, you face a very difficult task to get your child into another school in the city. If this is the case – and it is wise to view several schools first – it may be worth asking the advice of your primary school head teacher.
What happens if a school is oversubscribed?
If a school is oversubscribed there will be a lottery to decide which children get the places at the school. Children might have to go through several lotteries before they get into a school if all the schools listed on their admissions forms are popular. They might even end up without getting one of their preferred schools.
You can still express your preferences, and you should still list your preferred schools on your admissions form. Don't just write "Falmer" if you are in the Falmer catchment. If you want Falmer School, you may find the school is oversubscribed and should list other options as well in 2nd and 3rd place. At the very least, your child's failure to access their first, second or third preferences will be registered and can measured against the success of the old system which places 82% of children in their first preference school.
There is a possibility that Falmer will be oversubscribed – the catchment numbers are tight – so be prepared.
Outcomes are difficult to predict
It is very difficult to predict the results of the new admissions system next year – and this is partly what we have been saying in our arguments against the proposals. One thing that is predictable is that the most popular schools, particularly Blatchington Mill and Dorothy Stringer will be oversubscribed and there will need to be a lottery to decide on places.
The uncertainty of change is enough without the uncertainty of the lottery thrown in as well. This fixed catchment system with equal preference and a lottery – and with a lack of surplus places – looks likely to create admissions chaos and great uncertainty next year.
Another prediction is that the house prices may go up or down in the catchment areas according to the popularity of the school they contain. House prices in Moulsecoomb and Bevendean may suffer. People may also choose to leave areas where the schools do not have a good reputation to move into other catchments, or even to move out of the city altogether.
We are continuing to fight against the decision taken at the Children, Families and Schools Committee on 2nd February; we want this new system thrown out. Until it is, those in the Falmer catchment will have to prepare and make the best of the situation. Local primary schools are trying to help parents and children deal with the changes. Speak to your child's school if you are concerned.
If the decision is reversed, we need to start thinking about ways the city might produce a fairer system for ALL the children who live in Brighton & Hove.
There has been talk of turning Falmer into an Academy, with private funding of £2 million from Jon Aisbitt, a city financier and member of the Times Rich List. If and when this is agreed, the government will inject a further £27 million into the school.
This would enable Falmer to replace the old school buildings and improve resources like classroom equipment, the school might even take on new teaching staff. It might also attain a specialist status in business and enterprise.
However, we are still concerned about Falmer becoming an Academy for these reasons:
- Will the building be built around the working pupils? This happened to children at COMART and it contributed significantly to the schools declined.
- How big will the new building be? Part of Falmer's attraction is the space around the school. As an Academy, the school grounds might be reduced from their current 21 hectares size to a meagre and DfES minimum of 4.2 hectares. This would be a massive loss.
- If the school site is reduced in size, what will the Council do with the rest of the land? Are they going to sell it off to developers? Will they be building a 1,000 space car park, as has been suggested?
- What will the school's curriculum be? Academies have powers to set their own curricula, and we hear, for example, of schools incorporating creationism to the detriment of evolutionary theory as just one example of a 'weird' alterations to the national curriculum.
- Whilst we support vocational education, we also want to make sure that the school thrives across the curriculum so that children who want to achieve academically can, and that children are also encouraged in a wide variety of sporting, and cultural pursuits. We want these options to be open to children from the area, and for them to receive the support at home and school that they need to achieve their potential and to be fulfilled, happy and productive members of society who care about their community.
- How much will parents be encouraged to be involved with the school? Academies can limit parent involvement on the governing board. Local parents want to be heavily involved. They want a good proportion of parents on the governing body of the school. They want to feel that the school is working WITH their community and not working ON their community.
- Academies are the intended panacea for schools that are failing, and yet Falmer has a 'satisfactory' for its latest Ofsted report, and is 'improving'. Why are they doing this to Falmer School? There is concern that this will disrupt and undermine the school's recent improvements.
- There is also concern that this is linked in some way to a new football stadium at Falmer. The decision for the stadium has not been taken, but the idea of a stadium being built in the area is worrying, especially if the school is also to be rebuilt.
The way that the Council behaved over the SAR process does not instill confidence in parents already uneasy at the idea of Falmer attaining Academy status. If the Council does go ahead with these proposals, we do not think they will listen to the concerns of local parents. So far, they have not consulted with or contacted parents in the Moulsecoomb and Bevendean area about the Academy, and the decision is to be made in the Spring.
Parents from this area need more information.