Meeting documents

Cabinet Meeting ~ 14^th May 2008 ~ Bath Guild Hall.

The Main Points of Speech Regarding B&NES Secondary Review Plan To Be Made By Mrs Julie Cope ~ A Concerned Parent.

I am very concerned that the only two state secondary schools (Oldfield and St,Marks) north of the river will be reduced toone Anglican co-educational school. Especially when Oldfield - a school classified as "Outstanding" after its last OFSTED inspection - has already indicated a willingness to provide boys with the same high quality of education as it currently provides for girls. As a parent living north of the river, I am certain that this move on the part of Oldfield would be welcomed by parents who currently have no chance of getting a place at Ralph Allen, and have to send their sons across town to Beechen Cliff or Culverhay. They will welcome the chance for their sons to benefit from Oldfield's strong ethos and outstanding educational standards. As a result, Oldfield is likely to fill all of its new co-educational places fromwithin B&NES, as opposed the current situation where girls are being bussed in from East Bristol and South Gloucestershire. In environmental terms alone, this is very desirable,

The closure of Oldfield is unnecessarily destructive and likely to negatively impact education provision in B&NES overall because it has taken years of establishing a strong leadership team, a successful ethos, and the gaining of three educational specialisms, in order to bring this school to the point at which it is both outstanding in terms of OFSTED and by reputation. As a result the LA will lose a working model of educational best practice.

Closing a school and opening a new one is very much seen as a last resort where a school is failing and educational standards are so low that things can only improve. That is manifestly not the case with Oldfield, and losing the Oldfield "brand" and ethos in favour of a totally new school with no track record of success is likely to be seen as a negative by parents. As a result the existing successful state secondary schools south of the river could become massively oversubscribed as parents plump for the known options rather than the unknown quantity. This in turn will lead to parental anxiety, undue stress on children, and the unseemly strife over secondary school places that we see in other parts of the country. Unhappy parents forced to send their children to the new school will generate negative publicity for a school already facing the long task of establishing the successful reputation that Oldfield already has.

I fail to see how one Anglican school north of the river improves the choice for parents in that location who are of other faiths or of no faith at all. Currently Oldfield school is amulti-faith school catering for students of all beliefs and denominations and isinclusive, whereas an Anglican school would give parents of other persuasions no choice but to demand places in non-denominational schools where children will have to travel further each day.

The received wisdom that only church schools can deliver the ethos required for children to succeed, and that parents would choose a church school over a non-denominational one is not supported in Bath where theexisting Anglican school is undersubscribed, and in the recent survey only a minority of Bath parents said they would like a faith school option. Faith schools are also increasingly being seen by experts as divisive and damaging to social cohesion.

I remind you that the original educational review sought to address the problem of spare school places in B&NES. If the government's "Building Schools for the Future" policy is to have any validity at all, then it needs to provide choice for the increase in parents who want mixed-sex schooling and not cater for a diminishing requirement. The original and agreed recommendation that Oldfield become co-educational as soon as funding was made available to adapt its facilities was both sensible and welcome. This uncalled-for and politically-motivated revision to replace an outstanding school with a less flexible and less inclusive one is both nonsensical and short-sighted.