Why is the undersubscribed Saxmundham Free School building an extension?

Saxmundham Free School Extension Plan
Click on image to enlarge

The press is currently full of stories about schools full to capacity and a shortage of school places especially at primary level in urban areas. Even Suffolk is not immune to this with, for example, shortages of primary school places in Brandon highlighted recently.

Given the situation common sense would suggest that available resources, especially in a time of austerity, were targeted to areas of need in order to build additional capacity.

However this does not actually seem to be the case as the example of Saxmundham Free School shows.

Saxmundham, Free School opened on the site of the former Saxmundham Middle School which had capacity for 344 children. Initially it was planned to open the school with three year groups of up to 108 children (a total of 324) but these initial numbers were changed to 3 year groups of 72 (a total of 216).

In fact the school opened with only 106 children and there are reports it has even less now. If the school took five year groups with the same average number of pupils per year group as it had when it opened there would be 176 children, considerably fewer than the current capacity of 344.

However Saxmundham Free School are currently applying for planning permission to build an extension on the school building in order to provide capacity for up to 540 children (5 year groups at the originally intended 108 per year).

You can see the planning application on Suffolk Coastal’s website with a huge number of detailed drawings and other documents. The production of just the plans and planning costs must already be into the 10s of thousands of pounds. The Seckford Foundation recently refused to answer a freedom of information request that asked for the costs of this work but it is clear to run into millions of pounds.

The planning statement prepared on Seckford’s behalf makes the following statement:

There is a need for additional secondary school places and improved teaching facilities in the area. 

This statement is not substantiated in any way, quite probably because it is simply untrue. Alde Valley School (the former Leiston High) already provides enough capacity for all of the secondary age pupils in the area and as current numbers show there is just not the demand never mind the need for places in Saxmundham.

The whole policy seems premised on bizarre supply side economics that believes "if you build it they will come". This might work in a big city but the essential problem in Saxmundham is there just aren’t enough children living locally to make the school viable. Even if Saxmundham did fill 540 places, something that looks incredibly unlikely, it would only do so by leaving Alde Valley half empty.

Seckford refuse to say how much Beccles and Saxmundham Free Schools are costing

The Seckford Foundation Free Schools Trust have refused to answer a Freedom of Information (FOI) request first sent in early July asking for information about how much Beccles and Saxmundham Free schools are receiving in public funds.

After procrastinating for weeks claiming they were not yet subject to the Freedom of Information Act they eventually responded claiming no less than four exemptions under the Act including "commercial sensitivity" and claiming that responding to the FOI would “inhibit advice, frank debate or prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs”.

The response even failed to identify which exemption was claimed for each of the questions and they failed to carry out any of the “public interest tests” that are required when claiming the qualified exemptions under the FOI (see the FOI exemptions guidance).

This response was to an FOI asking quite simply the pupil numbers the school’s funding was based on, its operating budget and the costs of any building work done. Basic financial information that should be readily available for any public sector organisation.

Meanwhile the earlier FOIs that the DfE “forgot” to respond to about Beccles Free School until after the decision was made and then claimed yet more exemptions are now being investigated by the Information Commissioner.

There is a climate of secrecy around free schools with the DfE and free school providers appearing reluctant to tell us just how much public money is being spent on these projects. It is almost as if there is something to hide...

Pupils reported to be leaving Saxmundham Free School "like flies"

Saxmundham children on the opening of the school
Apparently as uniforms had not arrived they did PE
for the first few days of term (EADT)

When Saxmundham Free School opened its doors in September it had 109 pupils. It had capacity to take 219 which itself was a drop from the original 300 places it planned to offer across Years 7, 8 and 9.

There are now reports that 9 children have already left the school leaving it with fewer than 100 on roll.

Various attempts have been made to confirm this with Seckford but they do not seem keen to reply and a Freedom of Information Act request has now been sent to get the true picture. However despite the information obviously being at Seckfords finger tips they have the legal right to delay 20 days before sending us the information.

Back in early September Principal of the Seckford Free Schools (and the Headteacher at Saxmundham) Rob Cawley was speaking with typical Seckford optimism as the EADT reported:

 But the Seckford Foundation, which runs the schools and has supported independent Woodbridge School for around 150 years, said it was confident more pupils would join throughout the year. Mr Cawley added: “The Department for Education would not have allowed us to proceed had we not been ready and financially viable. We expect a higher intake as we prove that parents are making the right choice by sending their sons and daughters here.

However the EADT also report the views of one of the pupils saying that he could have gone to Alde Valley or Thomas Mills but going to Saxmundham meant he did not have to wake up as early for his paper round!

It may be that some pupils and parents are realising that convenience, although important, is not the most important issue when choosing a school.

Seckford admit financial advantage from free schools to Woodbridge School

Graham Watson

Graham Watson, Director of the Seckford Foundation gave a presentation at a meeting in London last month hosted by education consultants MTM Consulting and solicitors Veale Wasbrough Vizards. Readers of this Blog may remember that MTM Consulting is an outfit run from Southwold by Melanie Tucker  who was one of the four original proposers of the Beccles Free School.

Melanie Tucker

During this conference entitled practical strategies for recovery Watson was one of four people to give a presentation called Strength in Numbers about groups of schools. This is reported on the Veale Wizards website where Watson is quoted as saying:

For Woodbridge School there will be medium and long term financial advantages that flow from the economies of scale of the Foundation operating three schools instead of one

This is the first admission I have seen that as many suspected Seckford received a financial advantage from operating the free schools.

The possible advantages are explained in more detail:

for example there will be joint purchasing which they hope will drive down costs. There is also the opportunity to bring in expertise which the schools could not bring in on their own. For example there are already plans to recruit a Director of Strategic IT. It is anticipated that staff will benefit from opportunities to bring teachers together.  

It is worth remembering which way round this benefit is being described. Watson describes advantages to Woodbridge not to the free schools. When the Government announced that it wanted to encourage independent schools to operate free schools and academies one of the reasons was supposed to be so the free schools could benefit from the expertise of the independent school.

What appears to have happened is that it is the private school that benefits as I predicted in my February post Free School Project to “rescue" private education?

Seckford have consistently denied a financial benefit when questioned claiming the venture is “charitable” and that they are motivated by a desire to improve education in Suffolk but when Watson has an audience of fellow independent school leaders he seems to be telling them quite a different tale...

What's this Government got against Religious Education?

Gove: Prefers History

Since coming to office this Government has taken a decidedly elitist view of education especially when it comes to proper academic subjects - as opposed to so called “Mickey mouse subjects”.

When Gove first launched the “English Baccalaureate” it understandably included a Humanities subject as a requirement. However according to Gove there only were two Humanities subjects - History and Geography. RE teachers and others challenged this but inexplicably Gove refused to change his mind and would not include RE.

The impact of this is already becoming clear on the ground as The Telegraph report:

Figures show that a third of secondary schools now flout the law by refusing to allow pupils to study the subject in the final two years of compulsory education.

In a damning report, it emerged that rising numbers of schools were cutting specialist RE teachers and relying on staff with a poor grasp of the subject to deliver lessons.

The study by the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education also found that more pupils were dropping the subject at GCSE level or being forced to squeeze courses into just a year.

However as Ofsted are not asked to check on schools fulfilling their statutory requirement to teach RE there seems to be little or nothing that happens if schools just ignore it.

This week the DfE also announced another decision that will harm RE when it announced that the bursary of between £5,000 and £9,000 a year for graduates to study a PGCE in RE has been dropped. Bursaries (up to 20K) are still available for many other subjects. The rationale seems to be that RE is no longer a “shortage” subject - which the NATRE survey seems to show is a consequence of the EBacc policy!

Does any of this matter? Well the Archbishop of Canterbury perhaps understandably thought so when he criticised the decision against the background of what he called the  "marginalisation" of religion.

Then again he would say that wouldn’t he! But even amongst those who are not churchgoers, or even atheists RE is recognised as a valuable subject. RE and aligned subjects such as Philosophy teach children to think about values and moral problems not just about religion. With the concentration on academic subjects there is precious little of this kind of teaching left in schools.

Not that an understanding of religion is not a useful thing for people living in the modern world. Given we ourself live in a multi cultural society and the world is still heavily dominated by religion understanding it a key skill. With US embassies under attack due to religious offence taken and wars and disputes between nations with religious routes it is as vital as ever that people understand religious belief and world religions.

At one time the only subject you could study in University was Theology. Now study of religion and with it teaching young people to think about what they believe and why is rapidly disappearing from our schools seemingly due to the personal view of the Secretary of State who would I think rather children study History.

Update 2nd Oct Since writing this post I have learned that the University of East Anglia have now dropped their Secondary RE PGCE course all together. They say that the Teaching Agency did not give them enough places to make the course viable. The Teaching Agency (part of the DfE) say this is due to "low demand".