Displaying items by tag: thinking schools

The Rochester Grammar School is proposing to make considerable  changes to its oversubscription criteria for entry in 2019, giving priority to girls who attend one of the Trust’s four local primary schools and those with siblings who attend one of the Trust’s three local secondary schools. 

These categories will now rank above the previous priority of high scorers irrespective of residence, and so will no doubt displace some of the high scoring out of county girls, 76  of whom were allocated places at the school last March, in a welcome change of direction supporting local children.

This reflects the considerable change in attitude across most other oversubscribed Thames side grammar schools, with the two Wilmingtons', Gravesend Grammar and Rainham Mark Grammar all having tackled what they consider an excess of London children taking up places by different strategies.

It would also further undermine the Trust’s Holcombe Grammar proposal to change from a boys’ school to become co-educational for 2019.  This been under consideration for nearly a year by the Regional Schools Commissioner with no sign of a decision yet, hopefully to be turned down for the reasons I have set out in previous articles.

I am looking at proposed changes in admission criteria for other secondary schools across Kent and Medway, and will publish these in a separate article to follow. …

Update: See latest article here. 

According to The Times, Denise Shepherd, who is Chief Executive of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust, where she is paid £215,000 a year, was suspended from her post last month. The reason put forward by the newspaper is that the suspension was for alleged snooping on staff email accounts and doctoring parts of an external inspection report.

Meanwhile the controversy at Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar School in Canterbury is spiralling to an almost unbelievable level for any school, certainly a state of open warfare the like of which I have never before seen in a school. The protagonists have made extensive claims about the actions of Headteacher and Governors relating to the school’s application to become part of a Multi-Academy Trust whilst absorbing the struggling Spires Academy into the Trust. Kent County Council is being heavily drawn into the controversy with no obvious strategy to ease the problems

.......