A Freedom of Information Request to the Department for Education has discovered that three grammar schools have made enquiries about opening possible annexes in the past year, one of which is the mixed Barton Court Grammar in Canterbury.
With the new Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds signalling his ‘enthusiastic’ support for grammar and faith school expansion, this now looks very much on the agenda.
I have followed the Barton Court proposals closely and commented on them for some years, proposals which date back to the 1980’s when KCC planned to move the whole school to the coast. A satellite provision in Herne Bay was proposed in 2013, followed by a proposal to shift the whole school, which was dropped in the face of opposition by parents.
In the case of Faith Schools, the proposition is to remove the current requirement to remove the 50% maximum bar on faith children being removed. The Roman Catholic Church is currently refusing to sponsor new Free Schools whilst it is in place and it may be that Mr Hinds, a Catholic himself, has a different take on the consequent issues.
The school has recently taken over the Charles Dickens School in Broadstairs as a Sponsored Academy and is also sponsoring a new secondary Free School on the old Chaucer School site. It is also in the process of a major building scheme on the school site, to cater for its recent expansion to an intake of 150 pupils. It clearly feels capable of taking on new challenges, although it faces its own issues, including a surplus of girls’ grammar places in the town, losing a quarter of its Year 11 pupils before the Sixth Form on a regular basis, one of the highest grammar school drop out rates in Kent, with more going at the end of Year 12.
There is no doubt an annexe would be popular with families in Herne Bay and Whitstable, but the children would be mainly drawn from Barton Court main school itself, and Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar, Simon Langton Boys being heavily oversubscribed. This would weaken both schools as there is no overall shortage of grammar places in the District. This is a very different picture from that at Weald of Kent Grammar, where there were always additional girls who would be able to fill up the new places created by the Annexe. The 2017 October census notes that both Weald of Kent main school and its annexe are full in Year Seven.