History of change of designated area for Secondary Schools in Maidenhead
23 Oct 2008 A report was put to RBWM Cabinet as to whether any of the Royal Borough’s secondary school designated areas needed to be changed.
Should School Designated Areas be Changed - 23 Oct 2008
Dec 2008 Building Schools For The Future Consultation sent out about future provision for schooling in Maidenhead with question about designated areas at end and no information about the possible consequences of the change. Parents of Year 5 children (going to secondary school in 2010) were not aware of the Consultation as they were not given copies.
Building Schools for the Future Consultation - Maidenhead (.pdf 674KB)
16
Jan 2009 response date. Very
small response, the actual questionnaire was at the end of the Building
Schools for the Future and it seems a lot of people were not aware of it,
including Cookham Parish Council – of the 539 responses only 484 accepted for
analysis, so a fairly large percentage were rejected, of those accepted 39% were in favour of the change and 38%
for the status
quo or the status quo slightly tweaked.
The
three Maidenhead secondary schools who responded in detail asked for the
effect of any changes to be modelled – this was not done.
RBWM Results of Consultation Executive Summary (.pdf file)
Furze
Platt School Response to Consultation (.pdf file)
Cox Green School Response to Consultation (.pdf file)
Desborough School Response to Consultation (.pdf file)
26
Mar 2009 the Borough Council agreed that the change should take
effect for the next round of applications.
CABINET AGENDA AND MINUTES
26 March 2009 - Report to Cabinet (RBWM) .pdf
CHILDREN'S OVERVIEW AND SCRUTINY
23 March 2009 (Reconvened 20 April 2009) - Childrens' Services Overview and Scrutiny Panel page iii and iv
March
2010
Only
on the publication of the allocation of places is it obvious that for
popular schools the designated area would be the only criteria counting
after statements and looked after status and that this would be strictly
on a nearest first basis. So for Furze Platt Senior School on the north of
Maidenhead, for instance,
only those living within 1.134 miles of the School have a place
there. Cookham is only just over this distance.
The
allocation has left only one school with spare places and, as that is a
boys' only school, there are 6 girls at Cookham Rise Primary School who
have not been allocated a school place and at least one more at other
schools in Cookham. Parents allocated places at Cox Green do not know how they
are going to get their children across Maidenhead to the School there,
which they know little about as it is outside their local area.
Initial Secondary Schools' Allocation Chart (.pdf file)
This
is the initial position only and the situation may change slightly, but it
has been a major shock for the children involved, for their parents and
for the primary schools, as there had been no warning of the effects of
the change and people have not been able to prepare for this.
Under
the original designated areas and feeder schools over 94% of parents
obtained their school of choice for their child.
Parish
Councillor Fiona Hewer has also written a must read piece on the history
and implications of the designated boundary decision.