There has been a lot of discussion, and a good deal of anger lately over the issue of sixth form provision at Bohunt School, so as we were one of the groups that were pushing for a new school prior to the building of what became Bohunt School, we thought we’d post a primer on how we have ended up at this point.
Firstly it is worth saying that those of us who were involved in the campaign to launch a free school, one of the things that resulted in Wokingham bringing forward their school plan earlier are livid that what we were pushing for is not being delivered. However whilst we’ve disagreed with and campaigned against Wokingham Borough Council over a lot of things, they had a sound plan for the school, that had it been followed, would have delivered a full 11-18 school for our children.
Firstly, it is important to understand how schools are funded following the 2011 Education Act. As part of the governments move from local authority controlled schools to independent free schools and academies the 2011 Education Act contains what is known as the Free School Presumption. In simple terms what that means is that local authorities can no longer provide and run new schools directly.
Instead there are two routes to a new school, firstly if local authorities identify a need for additional school places they can build a presumptive free school, for which the council funds the capital costs, and then a competition is run to select the academy sponsor that will run the school. The school site is then signed over to the academy. After that the academy is free to run the school as they wish, including, and this is critical here, deciding on the size and make up of their intake. This is the route Wokingham Borough Council went with Bohunt.
The other route is for academy trusts or other groups to propose a free school. The requirements are different for these, so they can be approved even if there is not a shortage of places locally, so for example after Wokingham Borough Council close Ryeish Green school, a local group of parents successfully had it reopened via the free school route, despite Wokingham deeming there wasn’t a need. Free schools in this situation are funded direct from central government. Another example of a local free school is the second Maiden Erlegh site that was proposed by the school.
So what happened in Arborfield?
The account of how we came to get Bohunt School in the first place is documented elsewhere, however Wokingham came up with a three phase plan for the building allowing it to be expanded later..
Whilst there is some increased demand for school places in Wokingham from the new house building, another significant driver has been the baby boom that the country experienced. Wokingham had been forecasting the need for a new school for the borough for a number of years, but also that demand would keep on rising, so the plan with the Arborfield school was to expand to track the bulge in numbers coming up through the school. Their plan can be found in the initial planning application for the school.
The image is a little small, but the critical part is the numbers and for the three phases:
Phase 1: 210 pupils in Key Stage 1, and up to 100 sixth form students by September 2016
Phase 2: Expansion to accommodate up to 1200 students consisting of six form entry 11-16 years and 300 in the sixth form
Phase 3: Expansion to accommodate an additional 300 places consisting of eight form entry 11-16 years and 300 in the sixth form
Indicative dates in the introduction suggest that phase one was required by September 2016, phase two by September 2017, and potentially phase three to increase year 7 intake by September 2019.
With the councils predicted numbers the first two phases gave enough capacity for the current demand without leaving too many empty spaces in the system. This is important because schools are funded on a per student basis, so a school with empty spaces loses funding. With an increase in year seven numbers expected around 2019, phase three could be implemented to provide extra capacity.
That isn’t what happened. After taking 150 students in their first year of operation, Bohunt decided to increase this to 240 from the second year. As an independent free school they are entitled to decide on their own intake, whatever Wokingham initially specified. The maths for this is easy, 240 each year means that the phase two school for 1200 students is full with just 11-16, no space for a sixth form. Alongside that there isn’t the space for any additional year 7 students as planned, the space is for sixth form students. Whilst that did mean that the bulging year 7 were able to be accommodated, it only pushed the issue back a little, so the council still has an upcoming problem of accommodating year 7. They still need to provide school places for them, but what there isn’t is demand across the borough for is sixth form places, there are enough places across the borough, and we’re back to the same problem we had before Bohunt was built that the spaces are elsewhere in the borough, inconvenient for those in the south.
It is worth highlighting that the council has been well aware of the issue, indeed it is explicitly mentioned in their secondary school places strategy adopted in 2017. Bohunt is explicitly mentioned both in the Executive Summary, and also in this paragraph on page 22.
The details about funding later on are also important. The council is aware of the impending shortage of year 7 places in 2019, but also that council funding is under severe pressure, which has only got worse as time has gone on. The situation now is that they need to fund year 7 places, but their statutory requirement to provide sixth form places is being met across the borough – the sixth form capacity the phase 3 expansion at Bohunt would bring is not currently needed. They made a commitment to consider whether they could afford to fund the sixth form, not a promise to actually do it.
However there are other funding options available to academy trusts, but not available to the council. Maiden Erlegh got free school funding for their second site, why can’t Bohunt do the same for their sixth form? The answer is simple, in the current free school funding rounds the government is explicitly stating that new sixth form provision will not be funded if there is adequate sixth form places in the local area, unless the current provision is of a poor quality. Whilst parents may be concerned about their children having to travel further afield for sixth form, they all would agree that Wokingham is blessed with high quality sixth form provision across the borough.
So the question is, why did Bohunt take in more students than they were supposed to? If you look at the phasing they were intended to open with year 7, maybe year 8, and a sixth form, they opened only with year 7. They appear to have decided to use their sixth form numbers and take in the phase three intake, which because schools are funded on a per student basis would have brought them in more money annually benefiting the trust with a higher income. Maybe they assumed that they’d be able to get free school funding for the sixth form when the time came, or to find some rich benefactor? Maybe they naively thought that Wokingham Borough would be able to find the money in time – those of us who fought for a school for years could have told them that was unlikely, we got what we did in part from the developer contributions for Arborfield taking the largest housing development in the borough.
It is worth highlighting at this point that having these extra spaces in the system from Bohunt taking more students impacted other local schools with reduced funding, both Emmbrook and Forest schools have had a number of intakes of reduced size as families were attracted to the new facilities at Bohunt. You can get a hint of the feelings of those other schools by watching the episode of The Secret Teacher from Forest that Channel 4 aired recently. At one point the head teacher explicitly talks about the new school nearby, but for obvious reasons it isn’t named.
So what of the current situation. There is now a parent led petition calling on Wokingham Borough Council to fund the phase three expansion to provide a sixth form. However why should Wokingham, and the Wokingham tax payers across the borough fund a sixth form, where under the plans Wokingham submitted there should be one already? Why should we as tax payers bail out Bohunt Education Trust who took in more students than they were asked to, whilst promising parents a sixth form they didn’t have the capacity to accommodate? If Wokingham is going to fund a sixth form at Bohunt, what should they cut to pay for it?
Yes we’re livid that we’ve only got an 11-16 school when we thought we were getting a 11-18 school for our children in Arborfield, but Wokingham provided us with that, Bohunt caused the problem, Bohunt should sort it out.
The Arborfield Garrison Resident's Action Group (AG-RAG) represents the civilian residents who mostly live in the southern part of Arborfield. Although this area is adjacent to the Arborfield Garrison itself, the AG-RAG does not represent the views or interests of the MoD or the Military Commander of the Arborfield Garrison.
Arborfield Garrison SDL (WBC)
Arborfield Garrison SDL (Crest Nicholson/Marino Family Trust)
Arborfield Garrison at Present
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The Arborfield Garrison Resident's Action Group (AG-RAG) represents the civilian residents who mostly live in the southern part of Arborfield. Although this area is adjacent to the Arborfield Garrison itself, the AG-RAG does not represent the views or interests of the MoD or the Military Commander of the Arborfield Garrison.
Arborfield Garrison SDL (WBC)
Arborfield Garrison SDL (Crest Nicholson/Marino Family Trust)
Bohunt School and the Missing Sixth Form
There has been a lot of discussion, and a good deal of anger lately over the issue of sixth form provision at Bohunt School, so as we were one of the groups that were pushing for a new school prior to the building of what became Bohunt School, we thought we’d post a primer on how we have ended up at this point.
Firstly it is worth saying that those of us who were involved in the campaign to launch a free school, one of the things that resulted in Wokingham bringing forward their school plan earlier are livid that what we were pushing for is not being delivered. However whilst we’ve disagreed with and campaigned against Wokingham Borough Council over a lot of things, they had a sound plan for the school, that had it been followed, would have delivered a full 11-18 school for our children.
Firstly, it is important to understand how schools are funded following the 2011 Education Act. As part of the governments move from local authority controlled schools to independent free schools and academies the 2011 Education Act contains what is known as the Free School Presumption. In simple terms what that means is that local authorities can no longer provide and run new schools directly.
Instead there are two routes to a new school, firstly if local authorities identify a need for additional school places they can build a presumptive free school, for which the council funds the capital costs, and then a competition is run to select the academy sponsor that will run the school. The school site is then signed over to the academy. After that the academy is free to run the school as they wish, including, and this is critical here, deciding on the size and make up of their intake. This is the route Wokingham Borough Council went with Bohunt.
The other route is for academy trusts or other groups to propose a free school. The requirements are different for these, so they can be approved even if there is not a shortage of places locally, so for example after Wokingham Borough Council close Ryeish Green school, a local group of parents successfully had it reopened via the free school route, despite Wokingham deeming there wasn’t a need. Free schools in this situation are funded direct from central government. Another example of a local free school is the second Maiden Erlegh site that was proposed by the school.
So what happened in Arborfield?
The account of how we came to get Bohunt School in the first place is documented elsewhere, however Wokingham came up with a three phase plan for the building allowing it to be expanded later..
Whilst there is some increased demand for school places in Wokingham from the new house building, another significant driver has been the baby boom that the country experienced. Wokingham had been forecasting the need for a new school for the borough for a number of years, but also that demand would keep on rising, so the plan with the Arborfield school was to expand to track the bulge in numbers coming up through the school. Their plan can be found in the initial planning application for the school.
The image is a little small, but the critical part is the numbers and for the three phases:
Indicative dates in the introduction suggest that phase one was required by September 2016, phase two by September 2017, and potentially phase three to increase year 7 intake by September 2019.
With the councils predicted numbers the first two phases gave enough capacity for the current demand without leaving too many empty spaces in the system. This is important because schools are funded on a per student basis, so a school with empty spaces loses funding. With an increase in year seven numbers expected around 2019, phase three could be implemented to provide extra capacity.
That isn’t what happened. After taking 150 students in their first year of operation, Bohunt decided to increase this to 240 from the second year. As an independent free school they are entitled to decide on their own intake, whatever Wokingham initially specified. The maths for this is easy, 240 each year means that the phase two school for 1200 students is full with just 11-16, no space for a sixth form. Alongside that there isn’t the space for any additional year 7 students as planned, the space is for sixth form students. Whilst that did mean that the bulging year 7 were able to be accommodated, it only pushed the issue back a little, so the council still has an upcoming problem of accommodating year 7. They still need to provide school places for them, but what there isn’t is demand across the borough for is sixth form places, there are enough places across the borough, and we’re back to the same problem we had before Bohunt was built that the spaces are elsewhere in the borough, inconvenient for those in the south.
It is worth highlighting that the council has been well aware of the issue, indeed it is explicitly mentioned in their secondary school places strategy adopted in 2017. Bohunt is explicitly mentioned both in the Executive Summary, and also in this paragraph on page 22.
The details about funding later on are also important. The council is aware of the impending shortage of year 7 places in 2019, but also that council funding is under severe pressure, which has only got worse as time has gone on. The situation now is that they need to fund year 7 places, but their statutory requirement to provide sixth form places is being met across the borough – the sixth form capacity the phase 3 expansion at Bohunt would bring is not currently needed. They made a commitment to consider whether they could afford to fund the sixth form, not a promise to actually do it.
However there are other funding options available to academy trusts, but not available to the council. Maiden Erlegh got free school funding for their second site, why can’t Bohunt do the same for their sixth form? The answer is simple, in the current free school funding rounds the government is explicitly stating that new sixth form provision will not be funded if there is adequate sixth form places in the local area, unless the current provision is of a poor quality. Whilst parents may be concerned about their children having to travel further afield for sixth form, they all would agree that Wokingham is blessed with high quality sixth form provision across the borough.
So the question is, why did Bohunt take in more students than they were supposed to? If you look at the phasing they were intended to open with year 7, maybe year 8, and a sixth form, they opened only with year 7. They appear to have decided to use their sixth form numbers and take in the phase three intake, which because schools are funded on a per student basis would have brought them in more money annually benefiting the trust with a higher income. Maybe they assumed that they’d be able to get free school funding for the sixth form when the time came, or to find some rich benefactor? Maybe they naively thought that Wokingham Borough would be able to find the money in time – those of us who fought for a school for years could have told them that was unlikely, we got what we did in part from the developer contributions for Arborfield taking the largest housing development in the borough.
It is worth highlighting at this point that having these extra spaces in the system from Bohunt taking more students impacted other local schools with reduced funding, both Emmbrook and Forest schools have had a number of intakes of reduced size as families were attracted to the new facilities at Bohunt. You can get a hint of the feelings of those other schools by watching the episode of The Secret Teacher from Forest that Channel 4 aired recently. At one point the head teacher explicitly talks about the new school nearby, but for obvious reasons it isn’t named.
So what of the current situation. There is now a parent led petition calling on Wokingham Borough Council to fund the phase three expansion to provide a sixth form. However why should Wokingham, and the Wokingham tax payers across the borough fund a sixth form, where under the plans Wokingham submitted there should be one already? Why should we as tax payers bail out Bohunt Education Trust who took in more students than they were asked to, whilst promising parents a sixth form they didn’t have the capacity to accommodate? If Wokingham is going to fund a sixth form at Bohunt, what should they cut to pay for it?
Yes we’re livid that we’ve only got an 11-16 school when we thought we were getting a 11-18 school for our children in Arborfield, but Wokingham provided us with that, Bohunt caused the problem, Bohunt should sort it out.
Also published on Medium.
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