Although we’ve already issued an update this weekend, the arrival of the latest Arborfield News, which includes an item from the Parish Council talking about school provision has meant another update.
Firstly, we’d like to echo the message from that item, that it is vitally important for local parents to get involved, the new secondary school when it comes, by whatever route, will be for young people from a number of parishes, and it is important that the views of parents in all of those areas are adequately represented. As the Arborfield News article suggests at the most recent meeting parents in Finchampstead were largely unimpressed with the site being pushed by Wokingham Borough Council and the Parish Councils, nor to be fair the option of West Court that the South of Wokingham Free School analysis favoured. Both sites would require potential students from Finchampstead to be travelling up and down Nine Mile Ride, and Finchampstead parents seemed unconvinced that adequate improvements could be made to Nine Mile Ride to make it safe for their children to use on a daily basis, especially given the increased traffic that would be directed down the road.
However, one of the big take away messages from the meeting that the article in the Arborfield News fails to mention is that parents, from whichever parish, are angry that having been demanding a local school for over a decade, we have now reached the point where school places will run out, and the council will not be able to provide a school for a number of years after the places have run out – council officers were quite clear at the meeting that as a fallback they will be asking the existing local schools to squeeze in the excess students whilst they wait for the preferred site on the garrison to become available, and the council has enough money together to start building. Whilst in the Arborfield News the parish council criticises West Court as not being available and needing conversion, the parish council preferred site is also in one of the last parts of the garrison to be occupied, on a site that will need to be cleared before a brand new school can be built.
What is clear is that by encouraging a free school bid, whilst not fully understanding the way such a bid works, Wokingham Borough Council and the Parish Councils have opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box. There seems to have been a naive expectation from our elected representatives that a parent led bid would dutifully follow along and agree with their choice of location, and essentially provide exactly the school laid down in the plans, just a few years earlier.
But that hasn’t happened.
Instead, local parents have taken up the challenge, and having spoken to local parents, spoken directly to the Department for Education, and consulted with experts in the field such as the New Schools Network, following through on the advice they have received, they have not come to the same conclusions that are being pushed by our councillors. One of the key drivers behind the free school policy is to give parents control, and take control away from local councils, as we have said several times before the Government is not above using Westminster power to push through free school bids against local planning, as has happened with the Slough Sikh School.
From the point of view of getting a clear path forward, perhaps it would have been better had the box not been opened, but that is where we are. It seems clear that the parish councils have some serious work to do in selling their vision of a school built on the SDL to local parents, so perhaps it would be better if rather than slinging criticisms at other proposed sites that can very easily be levelled at their own idea, they need to start putting forward convincing arguments otherwise they may well find that the Department for Education will go with the free school bid and leave local residents with a great big school shaped hole in development plans, something that most people living on the garrison believe will be filled with even more houses – something that nobody wants.
Opening Pandora’s Box
Although we’ve already issued an update this weekend, the arrival of the latest Arborfield News, which includes an item from the Parish Council talking about school provision has meant another update.
Firstly, we’d like to echo the message from that item, that it is vitally important for local parents to get involved, the new secondary school when it comes, by whatever route, will be for young people from a number of parishes, and it is important that the views of parents in all of those areas are adequately represented. As the Arborfield News article suggests at the most recent meeting parents in Finchampstead were largely unimpressed with the site being pushed by Wokingham Borough Council and the Parish Councils, nor to be fair the option of West Court that the South of Wokingham Free School analysis favoured. Both sites would require potential students from Finchampstead to be travelling up and down Nine Mile Ride, and Finchampstead parents seemed unconvinced that adequate improvements could be made to Nine Mile Ride to make it safe for their children to use on a daily basis, especially given the increased traffic that would be directed down the road.
However, one of the big take away messages from the meeting that the article in the Arborfield News fails to mention is that parents, from whichever parish, are angry that having been demanding a local school for over a decade, we have now reached the point where school places will run out, and the council will not be able to provide a school for a number of years after the places have run out – council officers were quite clear at the meeting that as a fallback they will be asking the existing local schools to squeeze in the excess students whilst they wait for the preferred site on the garrison to become available, and the council has enough money together to start building. Whilst in the Arborfield News the parish council criticises West Court as not being available and needing conversion, the parish council preferred site is also in one of the last parts of the garrison to be occupied, on a site that will need to be cleared before a brand new school can be built.
What is clear is that by encouraging a free school bid, whilst not fully understanding the way such a bid works, Wokingham Borough Council and the Parish Councils have opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box. There seems to have been a naive expectation from our elected representatives that a parent led bid would dutifully follow along and agree with their choice of location, and essentially provide exactly the school laid down in the plans, just a few years earlier.
But that hasn’t happened.
Instead, local parents have taken up the challenge, and having spoken to local parents, spoken directly to the Department for Education, and consulted with experts in the field such as the New Schools Network, following through on the advice they have received, they have not come to the same conclusions that are being pushed by our councillors. One of the key drivers behind the free school policy is to give parents control, and take control away from local councils, as we have said several times before the Government is not above using Westminster power to push through free school bids against local planning, as has happened with the Slough Sikh School.
From the point of view of getting a clear path forward, perhaps it would have been better had the box not been opened, but that is where we are. It seems clear that the parish councils have some serious work to do in selling their vision of a school built on the SDL to local parents, so perhaps it would be better if rather than slinging criticisms at other proposed sites that can very easily be levelled at their own idea, they need to start putting forward convincing arguments otherwise they may well find that the Department for Education will go with the free school bid and leave local residents with a great big school shaped hole in development plans, something that most people living on the garrison believe will be filled with even more houses – something that nobody wants.
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