According to the now out of date Commissioning Plan, 'Forecasts indicate a deficit of places for both Year 7 and Years 7-11 over the Plan period. In the short-term this increased demand will be met through temporary additional Year 7 places at Royal Harbour Academy, whilst bringing forward the permanent expansion of King Ethelbert School by 2FE for September 2022. Ursuline College will expand by 1FE later in the plan period to meet the forecast need from 2023'. Meanwhile, the misery for too many parents continues, with 187 children being allocated to Hartsdown and Royal Harbour academies through the LAA process, having tried to avoid the two schools. These are both managed by the Coastal Academies Trust along with King Ethelbert, the second most oversubscribed school in Kent, meaning the Trust controls over half of the secondary places in Thanet.  

St George’s CofE, whilst still the third most oversubscribed non-selective school in Kent, is declining in popularity! This year 129 first choices were turned down, against 2019’s 182, the fall possibly reflecting the disappointing GCSE performance in 2019. Performance is still significantly better than Hartsdown, Royal Harbour and Charles Dickens, three of the lowest five performers in Progress 8 GCSE in Kent.

It has now been overtaken by King Ethelbert, with 144 disappointed first choices. The other two oversubscribed schools are Charles Dickens, which has fallen from 77 to 37 first choices declined, and Ursuline College, which has chosen to reduce its intake back to 150 from the 180 of the two previous years, and is oversubscribed by 24 places (23 in 2019).

The previous link also provides much background information to the following data for Hartsdown and Royal Harbour, as my most recent article on the decision to reinstate the new Thanet Skies Academy.  

A further issue in the District is that 79 local grammar qualified pupils have been rejected from their first choice grammar school, so it is unlikely that many will be taken out of these two schools through grammar school appeals.

I have written previously about the avoidable disaster that led to Holmesdale  being placed in Special Measures following repeated failures by KCC to take action. A more recent article contains further revelations about KCC’s failures. The school is now rapidly improving its standards under the leadership of Swale Academies Trust with a much better GCSE performance and pupils no longer leaving the school during the course; however it takes time to rebuild a school’s reputation. As a result, there are still 70 LAAS out of the school’s 155 offers, and it currently depends on children from Medway to keep it afloat. 

Hayesbrook School continues on a downward slide as GCSE performance continues to decline from being the fourth highest performing Kent non-selective school in 2015 to Well Below Average and one of the lowest Kent performers in 2019. This will no doubt have influenced its current sorry state where it depends on pressure for places in Tunbridge Wells to keep afloat (see below). 56 of the 133 places awarded were LAAs, more than the number of first choices, at 54 the lowest number of any school in the county. Even more worrying, last year 59 of the 130 pupils offered places in March 2019, did not arrive in the school according to the following October census. That is 45% of the original number of places allocated, the highest dropout rate in the county. There is an item about the Brook Learning Trust which runs the school, earlier in this article. 

The crisis in secular non-selective provision in Tunbridge Wells is set out clearly in my 2018 article, which explains how a new school was lost through lack of a sponsor, and drawing on the Kent Commissioning Plan for 2018 which set out the need. The 2019 Plan was much less clear about the problem, stating that: 'the strategic response to this demand is a proposed 6FE expansion of an existing school or a new school from 2021-22'. There is no explanation how this is to be achieved, and the idea of expanding an existing school by 6 FE, is mind boggling. The 2020 Plan loses the problem completely recording that:

The use of the term ‘permanent’ makes it unclear if this extra provision, presumably at Skinners Kent Academy, is in addition to its current intake of 240 pupils, or if it is merely consolidation of the 60 places put in last year. 

So how is this sleight of hand achieved? Quite simply by spreading the children across a ‘Planning Group’ vision that takes in Tonbridge and Cranbrook, with some Tunbridge Wells boys unable to access local schools being dispatched to Hayesbrook (56 LAAs) and, I suspect, mainly local girls off to High Weald (32 LAAs), 20 miles away - last year some came from as far away as Edenbridge. TW girls cannot access the heavily oversubscribed Hillview School in Tonbridge. That totals up to 88 Tunbridge Wells children excluded from schools in their own town. There is still plenty of room in the low performing Hayesbrook and High Weald schools, both Brook Learning Trust Schools, see earlier item. 

High Weald Academy in Cranbrook, has recently had a major building programme, at a cost of some £13 million, replacing most of its older buildings. This has to be a high risk strategy, as the school has seen for some years the  biggest vacancy rate in the county along with a regular replacement programme of leaders in a vain attempt to improve matters, but no doubt the new premises were seen as an attraction to improve matters. Perhaps because the premises works were not completed by the time secondary admission forms were submitted in November, this hasn't worked yet, attracting just 55 first preferences with 96 places being offered in total for a school with a PAN of 180, at 36% the highest vacancy rate in Kent.  

Apart from the lack of the planned new school, the root of the problem lies with the two church schools. Bennett Memorial Diocesan School, which is consistently the highest performing (together with attainment) non-selective school in Kent and amongst the most oversubscribed, turning away 85 first choices this year. A key factor in this success is its highly selective religious criteria for admission, across seven categories, which only give limited priority to distance from the school. As a result, 41 places are going to Out Of County children this year (39 from East Sussex), and many others will be drawn from outside TW, at the expense of local children. St Gregory’s Catholic, 37 first choices disappointed, has a similar complex arrangement, but with just eight children from East Sussex. This leaves just one secular school in TW, Skinners Kent Academy, with 12 first choices oversubscribed for its 240 places, having expanded from 180 last year. 51 children from the area have decamped to East Sussex schools, 44 of them to Uplands Community College, the nearest school to TW.

Mascalls School in Paddock Wood has seen a sharp loss in popularity for reasons that are unclear, down by 59. but still leaving just one vacancy. 

Last year I finished this section with: 'In other words, KCC does not know either where  the needed additional places are coming from or where they are going to place non-selective children who don’t qualify for faith schools, an issue that is not even mentioned!' The quotation still stands.