Ballot on Reading Grammar and Kendrick

[Bewildered]

Reading doesn't have enough secondary school spaces for all it's secondary school kids. More Wokingham children goes to reading GSs than Reading children go to Maiden Erlegh

I would be extremely interested to find out where you found this information. It really does not fit the figures.



I will also contact my DD's Primary, as it is on the list, next week.

Do people have nothing better to do than stir up trouble?

[Goldens Mum]

From this years admissions figures .
In Sept 2011, 26 WBC girls will go to Kendrick, and 51 boys to Reading School (just over half the year group for day-boys).  
•  At the same time, 64 RBC children will go to ME.

This is similar to previous years, though I don't have figures to hand for those.


In addition Mark Ralph (who was Lead Councillor for Education in Reading)
Mentioned in Get Reading today, "Reading are 600 places short for secondary school places and this is likely to increase to 1100"

Reading do need more secondary school places for it's children. However changing to status of the GSs is not really going to make an impact on that sort of number.

It's these sorts of issues that have probably brought things to a head and led people to try and trigger a ballot.

[R3ad1ngDad]

i am very suprised my sons school not on list as 2 this year and a friends sons we know of there - does this years intake not count ?

[Bewildered]

I'm still confused. By these figures 12 less children will go to ME. How many Reading school children will go to Bulmersche - another Wokingham school? More than 12? Thereby Wokingham are taking more Reading children, than Reading are taking from Wokingham?
Wokingham also took the majority of the Reading school children that went to Ryesish Green into its schools.

Is the issue not enough school places for Reading Borough children? More Wokingham children going to Reading grammar schools than Reading children? or supposedly not enough Reading children going into Wokingham schools?

In addition Mark Ralph (who was Lead Councillor for Education in Reading)
Mentioned in Get Reading today, "Reading are 600 places short for secondary school places and this is likely to increase to 1100".
I would think those numbers smack of a new secondary school. How do they compare with 12 less at ME or plus X amount of places at Bulmersche? (Would appreciate if you could post me the link to your figures...Thx)

BW

[Torrylee]

Torrylee, thanks for the school lists, I think Reading may not have sorted theirs alphabetically but by numbers but the lists still don't match.

You are quite right Steve. I had assumed that the Reading list wouldn't include any girls only schools but it does because it lists The Abbey for example. So I guess this is all or nothing for both schools ie. it is not an independent ballot for each grammar school - but either both or them go non-selective or neither. I assume then that it is one ballot and one petition that covers both schools, rather than one for each school? Not that there is any realistic prospect of getting a different result for each school ...

[Goldens Mum]

I think we are getting a bit off topic here tbh yes you are right, the big issue here is that RBC council don't have enough spaces and as a result, a large number of RBC secondary school children are indeed educated outside RBC. This is a hang up from how BCC was split.

There are plans for another secondary school in Reading. It is likely to be in East Reading and be a University college type school. It already has backing from RBC, WBC, Reading School, Reading Uni, Microsoft and yesterday it was announced that Cisco has joined up. This has been led by the local MP. There was an article in yesterday's get reading on this.

It is also the case that in the next few years WBC will not enough secondary school places either. There is a group trying to open Ryeish Green as a free school.

The figures are taken from Reading school admission figures and Wokingham admission figures. I will try and find the links for those. They are hidden in my emails somewhere so it will take a bit of trawling for them.

But as I began, this is getting off topic a bit. We all need to focus in ensuring that thus ballot doesn't get off the ground.

[stevew61]

So I guess this is all or nothing for both schools ie. it is not an independent ballot for each grammar school - but either both or them go non-selective or neither. I assume then that it is one ballot and one petition that covers both schools, rather than one for each school? Not that there is any realistic prospect of getting a different result for each school ...

Yes, it was at the end of the homework I set last night.

SCHEDULES

Schedule 1
Local education authorities the areas of which are relevant areas under paragraph (a) of the definition of “relevant area”.
.Schedule 2
Groups of grammar schools.
.Schedule 3
Stand alone grammar schools.
.Schedule 4
The ballot information code.
.

[Torrylee]

i am very suprised my sons school not on list as 2 this year and a friends sons we know of there - does this years intake not count ?

Have had another update from Kendrick:

Dear Parents/Carers of All Students at Kendrick School
Thank you for your many emails of support regarding the current situation with the petition. A number have questions have been raised which we are unable to answer immediately but please be assured the situation is being dealt with the utmost importance and urgency.
One question that can be answered is regarding feeder schools. A feeder school is a school which has sent 5 or more students to Kendrick School and Reading School combined over the last 3 years (2008, 2009 and 2010).

[Complete Novice]

Does anyone know whether the eligible schools which are Junior schools rather than Primary schools are entitled to add their Infant School parents to the electoral role as well? I expect the answer to this is no but it seems unfair that some eligible schools are allowed to include the parents of Reception age children on their electoral register and others, through their divided system are precluded from doing so.


CN

[Goldens Mum]

Interesting reading.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... chool.html

And the other side (in the interests of neutrality of course). This also mentions that Infant schools do not count as feeder schools.

http://www.comprehensivefuture.org.uk/P ... gsFAQs.pdf

They have until end of July to get the required number of signatures, otherwise they have to start all over again.

From what I'm reading, the petition has to be paper based, there is no online facility. This means that the campaigners will have to approach people door to door, and believe me, thats going to be some effort.

(BTW, I emailed DDs school about this, they are sending out something this week.
Note Bewildered- searched my email, the figures came from an email from RBC admissions -Maggie Buckley)