CASE STUDY: BECCLES FREE SCHOOL, SUFFOLK DUE TO OPEN SEPTEMBER 2012

Background In 2007 Suffolk County Council launched the Suffolk Organisational Review (SOR) a phased move from a three-tier school system to two-tier. As a result of the Review, The two middle schools that send students to the Sir John Leman High School Worlingham Middle School and Beccles Middle School are due to close in August 2012. Significant investment has been made in every local primary school to enable them to accommodate Year 5 pupils from September 2011, and Year 6 pupils from September 2012. Sir John Leman High School has served the Beccles community since it was established in 1631 and has been on its present site for about 90 years. From September 2012 it will take Year 7 and Year 8 students for the first time. The school had been promised use of the Beccles Middle School building for the period September 2012-August 2014 as part of the organisational review, to accommodate a temporary bulge of approximately 400 students. Due to falling demographics the school will be smaller than its current size by September 2014, and so able to accommodate all its students on its current site only. Beccles Free School Some local parents objected to the Suffolk Organisational Review and the resultant closure of Beccles Middle School. A small group of parents began a campaign to convert the school into a free school using the slogan Save Beccles Middle School. According to the Head Teacher of Sir John Leman High School, their campaign was accompanied by inaccurate criticism of his school. In October 2011 it was announced, that the Beccles Free School bid for a new secondary school had been approved to the pre-opening stage. The Beccles Free School bid is being back by the Seckford Foundation, a charitable trust which runs the fee-paying Woodbridge School. The educational consultants Cambridge Education have been employed by the DfE to oversee the consultation programme and report on the schools viability.

Free School Location Solicitors for Sir John Leman High School (SJLHS) have since been actively seeking to ensure that the Beccles Middle School building will in fact be able to be used by SJLHS for the two critical years. Since the approval of the free school, officials from Partnerships for Schools (PfS) have been visiting the area to look for locations for Beccles Free School. Options for a way forward included: Temporary portacabins on the SJLHS site, at a cost estimated to PfS of almost 1m. SJLHS and the free school sharing the Beccles Middle School building/site. The free school being temporarily located in Carlton Colville Primary School, which is five miles away and scheduled to close in February 2012, again as a result of the Suffolk Organisational Review.

Local people are currently being formally consulted on the Carlton Colville option. The intention would be that the free school would relocate to the Beccles Middle School site two years later when it is vacated by Sir John Leman High School. Current and Future Over-Capacity of Secondary Provision There is a large and protracted fall in secondary students in the area, meaning all schools are already facing the problems associated with operating with lower student numbers. The new school will significantly add to the current overcapacity of secondary school places in the Waveney area. In its first year of opening the free school plans to take in students for Years Seven to Nine. However to date it has had expressions of interest for only 81 of the original 330 places it offered (Year Seven: 34, Year Eight: 25, Year Nine: 22). Currently the average number of students in each year group is 611. Suffolk County Council has provided/planned 660 places for each year group, in line with Audit Commission advice for a five to ten per cent surplus across an area. However, projected secondary age student numbers for the next ten years show that there will be a dramatic dip in the future number. Beccles has a population of just 9,000 and is too small to support two economically viable secondary schools. The number of children Suffolk County Council have recorded as living in the South Lowestoft and Beccles catchment areas, age zero to nine is: 2

0 59 7

692 632 666 628 577 558 592 594 571

As the above figures demonstrate, the provision for 660 places per year group will only be filled twice in the next decade in 2019 and 2021. That is without an additional free school. Impact on Neighbouring Schools Beccles Free Schools website includes a Q&A for parents which contains the following Q&A: Q: My child's currently a pupil at another secondary school. Can I move her/him to Beccles Free School? A: Yes, as long as there are places available, you have the choice to send your child to whichever school you choose. The first step is to contact the admissions team at Suffolk County Council, who will notify your child's current school, and Beccles Free School, of your intentions. Impact on Sir John Leman High School The creation of a second secondary school will take students from Sir John Leman High School. According to Jeremy Rowe, the Head teacher at Sir John Leman this will reduce the curriculum, extra-curricular opportunities and pastoral care and support the school is able to offer. Mr Rowe has been vocal in his criticism of the plans which he says could cost his school 1 million, or 15 per cent of his budget. The school became an academy in August 2011 and its October 2011 Ofsted rated it: Good with a number of Outstanding Features. Its 2010 and 2011 GCSE results were in the top 25 per cent nationally. The school is proud of the fact that no student who left the school in 2011 had ever received so much as a one-day fixed-term exclusion. The Head Teachers states that at the moment the school: Offers 200 different combinations of courses at KS4. Subjects with small classes, such as Latin, Music, French, Spanish, Engineering, Construction, would be cancelled. Is the largest partner involved the North Suffolk Skills Centre. The schools involvement means its students have opportunities to learn a range of trades including engineering. The schools withdrawal could mean the closure of the facility. 3

The vocational North Suffolk Skills Centre, jointly established with other local upper schools, has had a powerful impact on the attainment of around half of the Year 11 students Ofsted 2011 Employs full-time Heads of Year with each year group which has an enormous impact on the students, in terms of resolving problems from outside school and the subsequent positive impact on their education. Offers a huge range of extra-curricular activities including: Duke of Edinburgh Award: Bronze, Silver & Gold A huge range of sports teams Gospel Choir Music opportunities including Saxophone ensemble, Wind band, Guitar group, String group Regular Performing Arts productions A Gifted and Talented programme including Latin

A significant strength of the school is what one parent described as the broad range of extra-curricular activities aimed at a wide spectrum of students (Ofsted 2011) The Head Teacher states: As an Academy, we expected joined-up thinking from the DfE. As a recent convertor academy, we are astonished that a different section of the DfE (i.e. the Free Schools team) could seek to overnight undermine the progress which was recognised in our successful Academy application, and subsequent 2011 exam results and 2011 Ofsted Inspection. Opposition to the Free School In February 2012 head teachers of five secondary schools in Lowestoft and Beccles signed a letter sent to thousands of parents and carers in which they described the free school as a waste of money and warned that it will affect the future of their own students and could damage other local schools. The letter was co-signed by head teachers Perry Linsley, of Pakefield High; Michael Lincoln, of Denes High; Jeremy Rowe, of Sir John Leman; Andrew Hine, of Benjamin Britten and Liz Redpath, of East Point Academy. A consultation meeting on the free school proposal held on 27 January also saw criticism from local residents. One parent described the plans as a shabby compromise whilst another said that students at the school would be guinea pigs. A group of parents outside the meeting handed out leaflets and collected signatures against the free school.

Opposition has also been expressed by: Peter Aldous Conservative MP for Waveney Simon White, Director of Childrens Services, Suffolk County Council Councillor Mark Bee, Conservative Leader of Suffolk County Council Councillor Graham Newman, Conservative Portfolio Holder: Children, Schools & Young People's Services, Suffolk County Council Councillor Brian Woodruff, Mayor of Beccles Beccles Town Council Every local primary Headteacher (except one) across the Sir John Leman High School partnership of schools Brian Lightman, General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) David Triggs, Chief Executive Officer of the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) Bob Blizzard, Former Waveney MP, Labour candidate for Waveney Stephen Twigg MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Education. Local residents Members of the Seckford Foundation