Speaker 1: Stan Dias
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I am a Year 6 Parent living in Southdown Harpenden that has been affected by the Schools Admission process this year. In order for the Topic Group to be able to make informed recommendations to the CSF, I would like the opportunity to give details to the Topic Group about what has happened to me this year and also clearly demonstrate and provide evidence as to how the application of the Admission Rules is fundamental and critical to the forecasting and planning process.
Whereby the Council forecasts the total number of applications for
admission, profiling of Parishes against the available actual places at each school needs to be carried out to see if there are any ‘hot spots’. In my case, at the first round of allocations, I did not receive any of my ranked choices (St Georges, SirJohnLawes & RoundwoodPark). From my Pupil Audit report as of 01/03/2006, my distance to RoundwoodPark is 3,534.480m, yet the last child to qualify under Rule 6 lived 8,714.240m away! Eighty-one children were admitted under Rule 6 to RoundwoodPark, of which we know that 35 were allocated from Redbourn, yet all children from the Cross Farm estate in Southdown Harpenden were excluded from consideration, as we would only be
considered under Rule7! I cannot believe that the current forecast and
planning processes can foresee this, yet it is fundamental as to why I did not receive any of my ranked schools.
Here is an extract of some text from Sarah Vize, Senior Manager Admissions and Transport School Access, Children Schools & Families :-
In summary this means that, within their priority area, every applicant will qualify for up to one community or voluntary controlled school under Rule 6, and for all others under Rule 7.
In your case, at the initial allocation stage, you are correct that you were considered for a place at Sir John Lawes under Rule 6, as it was your closest school and you lived within the priority area. As there were more applicants to be considered under Rule 6 than there were places available, distance was used to decide who would be offered the place. Unfortunately, all places were allocated to children who lived closer to the school than you, and hence better met the rules. For RoundwoodPark, you are correct that you were not considered for a place under Rule 6 because it was not your closest school. You were considered under Rule 7 but, again, the places available under that rule were filled by applicants who lived closer to the school than you.
This clearly shows that if enough school places are available for the
demand, there will be no issues in the Greater Harpenden area. However,
without any extra capacity being introduced into the schools, it also
implies that the Priority areas may be too large thereby causing undue extra demand (please refer to the fact that someone gets into Roundwood Park with a distance far greater than mine as stated above) to the Harpenden schools and in particular, the two non faith schools of Roundwood Park and Sir John Lawes as St.Georges applies it's own Admissions criteria, which is different to the ones used by the two non faith schools.
Speaker 2: Sara Hart
During the previous meeting of the Scrutiny Panel on Thursday 18th May 2006, one of the topics discussed was the possible occurrence of short-term rental of properties in Harpenden.
I have been asked to represent a large number of local parents and request permission to present evidence on this subject, which we think, will be of interest to The Panel and will hopefully assist them with the overall investigation that they have undertaken.
The evidence I would like to present is as a result of discussions which have taken place with several Estate Agents based in Harpenden, on the subject of short-term rentals and purchase of property to rent out immediately in order to ‘grab a favourable Harpenden address’, thus giving them an advantage over people who have lived in the area for a significant length of time. We believe that measures should be instigated to prevent/minimise the number of people taking advantage of this. (We accept that this is not an illegal practice but neither is it just and fair to the majority and planning and forecasting must adequately compensate for it.)
We believe that the planning/forecasting completely underestimates the size of this growing trend in the Harpenden area and the planning/forecasting stats will always be prone to error because of this and I would therefore also like to provide evidence that indicates that the effect of late applications as a result of late arrivals to the area needs to be considered when forecasting for admissions.
Specific individuals linked to these Estate Agents have offered to provide me with written evidence to reflect this and one agent has indicated that he would like to be given the opportunity to provide evidence himself, as they all feel strongly about the subject and fully understand the concerns of people living in the area.
Speakers 3: Peter Hart and Graham Carr
Subject 1 :Harpenden Secondary Schools– Supply vs Demand
Seemingly, gone are the good old days when you could live in a town and rely on your children being allocated a local school in the very town you live! We now seem to be in the business of allowing a situation to exist whereby we are content to spend taxpayers money to run children miles away to a school well outside the town they live and split them up from others in their own town community ! What’s more, thismakes a mockery of theauthority’s healthy guidelines policy ofencouraging children to walk or cycle to a local school !
Although the 2006 places shortfall situation has been mainly resolved (after anhorrendous period of worry for those 2006 parents !), my group is in urgent need ofbeing given a level ofreassurance thatthe reasons for theforecasting/planning issuesin 2006are fully understoodand that there is a strong desire to implement effective measures to resolve these issues going forward.
The forecastingstatisticsalready show a shortfall for 2007-2008, although it is still very unclear what that shortfall truly is. 2006 reflected a similar forecasting shortfall before the actual figure proved to be even worse. This can only give us a very grim and unacceptableview of the future.
The forecasting and planning processappears lacking in anumber of key areas and the statistics produced from the planning process to-date just don’t help to build confidence that the following factors are adequately compensated for in theDemand vsSupply modelling for this priority area :-
- Based on the last TG meeting, there appears to be a level of uncertainty as to the coverage of the priority area and the difference between the planning area and the priority area – clarity of this point is critical as it is obviously fundamental to the workings of the forecasting/planning model
- Harpenden is a growth area, Harpenden Secondary Schools are in strong demand year after year, they are continually oversubscribed and with further development in the area (e.g. Wheathampstead and Rothamstead Estate) and with future changes such as the fast train link to London and Eurostar link to France – demand can only grow !)
- Only 2 Harpenden Secondary Schools (Sir John Lawes and Roundwood Park) can be considered to serve the general Harpenden Community and Outlying Villages and these have serious capacity issues (it must be noted that St George’s is faith maintained and, consequently, cannot be considered to serve the wider community and additionally allows 10% intake from outside the priority area and has 20 border places which we believe ‘skew’ the available allocation figures)
- Late Applications/Short Term‘Buy to Rent’ and Short Term Rentals are not adequately factored and from Estate Agent feedback this is a constant/growing trend
- Admission Rules/Changes in Admission Rules (e.g. Redbourn ‘Shortest Designated Route’ Nicky Line Ruling) impact forecasting/planning but this impact on allocation trend only appears to be adjusted after the impact has fed through to the figures of the following year (this is completely illogical as impact to forecasting and planning should be fully understood as ‘part and parcel’ of the rule approval process)
-Transfers from the Independent Sector schools are not adequately factored
-Soliciting of external authority’s feedback on likely movement into this authority’s/priority area also does not appear to be factored
-The reported stats have a tendency to show allocations in line with the PAN numbers but this effectively ‘hides’ year on shortfalls and additional numbers which schools have agreed to take to alleviate these shortfalls (The problemsexperienced in 2006 are not a 1 year blip !)
All the factors above influence demand so must be adequately compensated for in the forecasting and planning and supply/demand model.
The current priority area coverage is large butHarpenden Secondary Schools ability to meet the demand fromthis large priorityarea is limited and clearlyalready‘strained to the limits’
I don’t believe anyone would dispute the fact that the ideal outcomewould be a solution that‘fits all’ but clearly this is untenable and difficult decisions need to be taken now.
Quite simply the forecasting and planning figures just don’t add up and I implore the TG to register this fact and take appropriate actions to resolve the situation.
Subject 2 :- Mitigation/Contingency and Forward Planning
From the feedback and experience so far, there seems to be a complete lack of both of these planning elements in theforecastingand planning process.
In our view there needs to be 2 clear areas of focus :-
1) A shortfall in places is already forecast for 2007-2008 and we need to know that this forecasted shortfall is accurate and not prone to the error experienced in 2006.
Mitigation/Contingency measures need to be taken now to alleviate/resolve this shortfall situation (a ‘hope it goes away mind set’ is not acceptable to any of our parents and this certainly appeared to be the case for the known shortfall forecast for 2006 when no tangible mitigation/contingency measures were in evidence).
We believe the following factors need the TG’s careful consideration:-
There are an estimated 23 children (without older siblings) who are currently in Year 5 in Grove School who live in similar South Harpenden areas equating to the children whoexperiencedschoolallocation problems in 2006 i.e. this means that on a‘like with like’Rule 6/Rule 7 comparison basis there is apotentially bigger problem brewing for 2007-2008 allocations than experienced in 2006 when 16 children from GS were impacted.
RoundwoodPark, Sir John Lawes and Sandringham increased their intake over their agreed PAN for 2006 to alleviate the 2006 shortfall. Evidence suggests this is getting a more and more remote possibility for future years as there is a clear limit to these schools admission capacity and the forecasting/planning process needs to fully acknowledge this situation.RoundwoodParkmay have additional scope for extra‘mobile’ capacity but this requires clarification. Consequently,I would like tosuggest to the TG thatit would be asensible measure to formally solicit feedback from the heads of these schools to confirm their view on their ability to take extranumbers in 2007 as they have done in 2006.
The impact of Admission Rules on forecasting and planning cannot be conveniently ignored e.g. it is clear from 2004/2005 stats that since the introduction of the Shortest Designated Route ‘Nicky Line Ruling’ virtually all Redbourn children are now obtaining a place at Roundwood Park effectively reducing the pool of places available for Harpenden children. This impact to the Harpenden community should have been forecast and mitigated.
The allocation figures for 2004/2005 also reflects that RoundwoodPark provides circa. 45% less places to the Harpenden community than Sir John Lawes under Rules 6 and 7. Other villages in this large priority area (Flamstead, Kimpton, Markyate, Redbourn, Wheathampstead) absorb the remainder of the RoundwoodPark places under these rules. This is a key fact when considering that Harpenden children NOT getting into SJL under Rule 6 (nearest school) have little chance of a place at Roundwood Park under Rule 7.
Measures can, and must, be taken now to minimise the ‘opportunists’ who obtain a favourable address in Harpenden around the time of the admission process to get ahead in the allocation queue.Prevention controls to limit this number must help the overall numbers situation.
The sibling rule accounts for a large % of allocations at all the schools (40% – 50% for SJL and RoundwoodPark). Surely planning capacity would be helped substantially by ensuring this rule applied only within the priority area (which after all everything else seems to apply to !) and that the older sibling should be at the school when the younger sibling actually starts school rather than purely at the time of admission.
It is clear that the size/coverage of the priority area is dictating the demand on Harpenden’s already over sub-scribed/over-stretched secondary schools – can this really be considered a sustainable proposition with a growing community and such a large priority area to service ?
Worryingly ! -Thereare only 3 months to go before theadmission process begins for the 2007 intake,please can I respectfully ask the TG to make some firmrecommendations onmeasures that should be takenimmediatelyto pre-empt andmitigate next yearsimminent shortfall issues.
2) Forward planning for 2008-2009 and onwards.
Irrespective of Birth Rate downward trends, the popularity of the Harpenden area, it’s secondary schools and the factors I have already outlined are likely to negate most of this positive factor – so there is no room for complacency !.
This problem is not going away, it needs effective forward planning now !
We urgently need a plan for the effective utilisation of current secondary school capacity mapped to sensible demographic priority areas and allocation criteria. This forward planning needs consideration of the need for additional secondary school capacity which could be the re-opening of closed schools/increased capacity in existing schools and/or re-allocation of primary school spare capacity in 'hot spot' areas. A review of the admission rules must be a key part of this exercise.
Speaker 4: Michael Brooks
I attended the meeting on the 18th May and would like to give evidence to the committee on the 7th June. I have a letter from Peter Lilley and John Harris (ChildrenSchools and Families Director, Herts CC) that I would like to put into the public domain and present to the topic group.
I would like to present this as evidence as to future numbers and I would also like to write to the topic group to give my feedback and suggestions which I would also like to be made public if possible.
As I am in the “financial modeling” business myself I feel I can bring some good suggestions to the table, although in doing so you will forgive my ignorance of council protocol and procedures and perhaps you could advise me on this in terms of any communication I wish to give.
Kind regards.
Mike Brooks
Speaker 5: Jonathan Wharton
Impact of Priority Area Size on Secondary School Allocation Planning Process
The council have a responsibility to support the educational needs of all children. However, the current process seems to address the needs of only 95% of children, with the remaining 5% being used to plug the gaps in the under-subscribed schools, irrespective of their location. For example, children in Redbourn were offered places in RoundwoodParkSchool, which is no easier for them to get to, than AstleyCooperSchool, given that the shortest designated route (Nicky Line) is unlikely to be used, due to safety concerns. As a consequence of this, a number of Harpenden children were allocated places at AstleyCooperSchool, 8 miles away. This would mean providing 'free' transport to these children, which the taxpayer would need to fund, and which would pass by Redbourn to get there! This clearly doesn’t make sense, when all these children, in both Harpenden and Redbourn, would be within cycling (or walking) distance of their school, if the allocation had been more equitable.
The Problem
For the last few years a number of parents within the Harpenden Priority Area have been let down by the process for allocating children to secondary schools. Once the local schools are fully allocated, any remaining children are being allocated to under-subscribed schools several miles outside their Priority Area and local community.
Impact of Problem
Other than the very negative message of refusing a child the opportunity to attend a local school, and allocating them to a far-off school that they probably know nothing about, these are the obvious impacts that come to mind:
· There is far less opportunity for social interaction/development outside the school environment
· The child will be unable to pursue a healthy policy of either walking or cycling to school
· Higher cost to the taxpayer as a result of the provision of free transport
The only way you can ensure that every child has the opportunity to attend a school within (or close to) their local community is by ensuring that the size of each Priority Area is based on the school places available within the Priority Area.
Cause of Problem
Although the overall supply of school places across the Harpenden, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead Priority Areas is sufficient to satisfy the overall demand, there is clear evidence that for the last few years, the demand within the Harpenden Priority Area has significantly outweighed the supply of it’s school places.
By contrast, the three Hemel Hempstead schools closest to the boundary with the Harpenden Priority Area, were all undersubscribed, following this year’s secondary allocation.