In his last action just twenty minutes before standing down as Leader of Kent County Council on October 17th, Paul Carter vetoed the proposal to build a new non-selective school in Thanet on the grounds that population numbers had not risen as fast as forecast. Instead he stated that what Thanet needed was better schools rather than additional ones, and that the financial cost to Kent was not necessary.
Preceding this decision, the Kent Schools Commissioning Plan 2019-2023 stated that: The new secondary Free School has been commissioned on the site of the former Royal School for the Deaf. The Howard Academy Trust has been confirmed as the successful sponsor via the DfE Free School Presumptive process. The School will open in temporary accommodation in 2020 with 120 Year 7 places, and in 2021 on the new site as a 6FE school. The support of existing schools will be required to provide temporary Year 7 places for 2019 until the new school is delivered.
KCC’s Scrutiny Committee on 19th November considered Mr Carter’s decision as reported here, pp 17 – 28, and I have considered it in detail below. The two key outcomes of the Open part of this meeting were: firstly it appears clear that the decision to veto the original decision was the right one even if the alternative proposed would create other problems and; secondly that KCC officers were seriously wrong in their number planning as demonstrated by KCC’s own Commissioning Plan and my simple charts below, their excuses for not noticing the population trend not standing up to scrutiny and with no one to be held accountable for this debacle. A subsequent closed session may well have looked at the data, but we don't know.
The agenda papers for the Scrutiny Committee make clear that Mr Carter’s decision could not be overruled by the Committee and so it still stands, but his decision could yet be cancelled by Lord Agnew, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the School System and the original proposal reinstated. Unfortunately, because the subsequent meeting on 18th December was cancelled, the Minutes of the Committee are not yet in the public domain, and in any case there was a private part of the meeting, but there is a webcast of that part of the proceedings open to the public here.
The pressure to get the right answer can be seen from the October 2019 Schools Census which show that for 2019 entry, 1142 Year Seven places were taken up in the six schools, against a total Published Admission Number of 1159, a very small margin of error. You will find an analysis of the last five years outcomes and the potential numbers for the next five years below.
Paul Carter's Presentation
As Leader of Kent County Council Paul Carter possessed Executive powers for 'Issuing a public notice for any significant change to a school in terms of number of pupils, age range, type or status of school, closure or merger, or creation of a new school' (KCC Constitution p 16). In order to meet the short term need for places, Paul has gained agreement for Ursuline College be expanded on a permanent basis from 5 Forms of Entry (5FE) to 6FE and King Ethelbert's School from 5FE to 7FE. Royal Harbour Academy with capacity for two extra forms of entry is also to be temporarily expanded to meet the additional need up to 2023/24. Hartsdown Academy is in receipt of a £12.5 million development scheme replacing unsatisfactory premises, which would also enable additional places to be offered.
In addition to the above, Mr Carter made the following points in his presentation to the Scrutiny Committee: He argued that the original decision was brought about by a short term demand, rising to a shortage of 5FE in 2021, but falling to 1FE in 2025, and that a decision was urgent if preparation works for a new school were to be halted. As any new school would not be built until 2022, the ugly interim plan was for Year Seven pupils at the new school to be educated at the site of the old Walmer School for the year 2021-22.
He also argued that the expansion would enable Hartsdown, Ursuline and King Ethelbert’s to offer a wider curriculum and that there was evidence both Hartsdown and Royal Harbour were both on an upward trajectory in terms of performance. He initially promoted a new proposition by the three form entry Ofsted Outstanding Newington Primary School in Ramsgate, to become an all through school, of the same size, although this would be a secondary intake of only 90 pupils leading to a very narrow curriculum (Two other free schools have opened at this size: Wye and Hadlow, and both have very rapidly expanded, realising the problems that a small sized secondary school incurs, probably in terms of curriculum choice and provision). Later in the meeting he appeared to backtrack on this for the same reason.
To present the case were: Paul Carter, ex-leader of KCC; Roger Gough, new Leader of KCC and ex-Education Cabinet Member; and Richard Long, new Education Cabinet Member. There were two witnesses representing Thanet secondary schools, both from the Coastal Academies Trust (CAT), which runs three of the six non-selective schools. These were Paul Luxmoore, Executive Head of CAT, and Kate Greig, Executive Head of two CAT schools, Dane Court Grammar and King Ethelbert, both witnesses being prominent in support of Hartsdown, King Ethelbert and Royal Harbour in their evidence. With no officer present, there was nobody to give an alternative or independent view on the situation, which would have made proper scrutiny possible.
Hartsdown Academy and Royal Harbour Academy
Both schools are run by the Coastal Academies Trust (CAT) which provided the two witnesses representing Thanet schools at the Scrutiny Committee Meeting. Royal Harbour Academy is a County Maintained school managed by CAT (see below for further details).
I last looked at secondary provision in Thanet here in March, which highlights the key issues, with Hartsdown and Royal Harbour (not an academy) having 189 pupils allocated between them for September 2019 who had not applied to either school. Hartsdown has the lowest Attainment 8 GCSE score in the country for 2019, and the fourth lowest Progress 8, being bottom in Kent on both measures. Royal Harbour Academy came next lowest on both in Kent, 14th in country on Progress 8 and 10th lowest on Attainment 8). Both of these schools serve areas of severe social deprivation. At the other end of the scale, St George's CofE and King Ethelbert are two of the most oversubscribed schools in Kent, with Charles Dickens, just out of Ofsted Special Measures, still turning away 77 first choices. Hartsdown has the second highest proportion of pupils leaving for Home Education in the county at the same level over at least the past four years, and second highest proportion of Fixed Term Exclusions in Kent, both for 2018-19. For 2017-18 (latest figures available) it had the 3rd highest absence rate of any secondary school in the country, at 13.2%, and also of pupils who were 'persistently absent' which amounted to an astonishing 41.2%. Amazingly, Hartsdown’s apparent ‘upward trajectory’ comes eight years after it chose to become an academy with the CAT, in hindsight clearly a disastrous decision. In 2012, Hartsdown made 110 offers to children who had applied for the school for Year Seven; by 2019, this number had fallen to 74. One can only speculate how it fell so far from grace over these eight years to become the lowest performing school in the country in the summer of 2019, and what has changed since then to produce the upward trajectory that the Trust failed to find in the interim period. Several fine sounding procedures were put forward as solutions, several apparently approved by The Education People, KCC's School Improvement Service. This service is hardly independent as it will be responsible for oversight of the school, and whose performance I have discussed elsewhere. Pity about all the children who have paid the price.r offer day
The Problem
It emerged at the meeting that the main reason for Paul Carter’s late decision was that forecast secondary numbers for Thanet schools are turning out considerably lower than reported in the 2019 Commissioning Plan published just 12 months ago. Various reasons for this were given, blame being focused on double counting of births in Thanet by the NHS. I monitor and have full data for pupil numbers in primary schools, and one can only ask why KCC officers did not bother to do the same, when any discrepancy with NHS data should have been obvious. Two other reasons were also put forward, with housing developing more slowly and migration into the District also falling, but again these factors were knowable.
One Member of the Committee did rightly suggest that KCC Officers should have spotted this long before last January, but there appeared no appetite to follow this query through and no officers were present to defend themselves, perhaps deliberately as their position is surely indefensible. As is so often with such failures, no one is accountable, but excuses are manifold. The two tables below confirm at a simple reading firstly, that there has been an increase of just 50 pupils joining Year Seven in Thanet non-selective schools over the past five years, and secondly that there is now a steady decline in the number of primary pupils working through the system. I have given the relevant data for the same peer groups for 2018 and 2019 separately, to see if there is inward migration, only to discover that if anything there is a decline in nearly every age group. If you, the reader can follow this, then you may well ask why KCC officers have failed completely to do so!
Thanet Non-Selective Schools Year Seven intake and Capacity. | |||
| Year 7 | Total PAN* | Vacancies | |
| 2019 | 1142 | 1159 | 17 |
| 2018 | 1073 | 1099 | 26 |
| 2017 | 1097 | 1098 | 1 |
| 2016 | 1050 | 1117 | 67 |
| 2015 | 1092 | 1199 | 107 |
* Published Admission Number
Note: In several of these years additional temporary places were created to meet the pressures.
Thanet Primary School Cohort for October 2018, tracked for 2019 | |||
Oct 2018 | Oct 2019 | Increase over Year | |
| Year 6 | 1622 | Secondary | |
| Year 5 | 1622 | 631 | 9 |
| Year 4 | 1538 | 536 | -2 |
| Year 3 | 1594 | 1585 | -9 |
| Year 2 | 1563 | 1562 | -1 |
| Year 1 | 1528 | 1520 | -8 |
Whatever, there are just two ways forward on the table at present. Firstly, there is still the original proposal to open a new school on the site of the Royal School for the Deaf in Margate which is recoverable and could yet be imposed by Lord Agnew. However, without sufficient pupils to go round, seven schools, at least one of these is going to become vulnerable. The following table underlines the fragility of both Hartsdown and Royal Harbour who depend to a large extent on Local Authority Allocations, children whose parents do not apply to the school they have been allocated, and in many cases have made choices deliberately in an attempt to avoid these schools. The October 2019 census shows the fallout with 75 children disappearing from the two schools almost before the school year started, with Hartsdown also seeing the second highest proportion of pupils withdrawing for Home Education in the county. Without the numbers coming through some 150 pupils could vanish from these two schools, unless parents are left no alternative by squeezing out all choice for many.
The second solution as set out above, is dependent on both Hartsdown and Royal Harbour being expanded, when on a variety of performance measures they are both, especially Hartsdown, amongst the lowest achievers in the country.
| Thanet Non-Selective Schools Admission September 2019 | ||||||
2019 PAN | Places Offered | 1st Choice | 1st Not Offered | LAAs* | Census Oct 19 | |
| CharlesDickens | 232 | 232 | 219 | 77 | 0 | 232 |
| Hartsdown | 180 | 175 | 46 | 0 | 101 | 144 |
| King Ethelbert | 150 | 150 | 266 | 122 | 0 | 154 |
| Royal Harbour | 200* | 241 | 92 | 0 | 88 | 197 |
| St George's | 217 | 217 | 390 | 182 | 0 | 226 |
| Ursuline | 180 | 180 | 152 | 23 | 0 | 189 |
* Local Authority Allocations
*Royal Harbour increased to 250 places fo
Thanet Non Selective Schools
Much was made of the collegiality of all six Thanet non-selective schools, and the massive experience and ability of all the local headteachers. The meeting had two witnesses to speak for these Thanet heads, who fortuitously both came from The Coastal Academies Trust (CAT) which ran Hartsdown, Royal Harbour and King Ethelbert. At the meeting, Ms Greig quoted the good leadership of the headteacher of Hartsdown according to Ofsted, but both witnesses then rubbished the performance of Ofsted with regard to schools in difficult circumstances to suggest they could be overlooked in the cases of Hartsdown and RHA . Naturally, there was no mention of the previous and highly respected headteacher of Hartsdown, Andy Somers, whose leadership was itself disgracefully rubbished in the Report, despite his having led the school to Good four years earlier and consistently attracted more first choices to the school than his successor. I have reported many times on the controversial statements and actions of the current head of Hartsdown, most recently here, which themselves go to undermine potential progress and recruitment of pupils at the school – hardly good leadership as claimed by the Trust. His Headteacher welcome (most of this page deleted since this article appeared, but reproduced here) on the opening page of the school website hardly reads like that of someone in touch with reality.
Ms Greig also made great play of her own performance at King Ethelbert, which according to her had been a sink school until she became head, to demonstrate her abilities in turning such schools around. This is the second occasion I have come across when she has made such a claim. On the previous occasion I was lobbied by members of the school before she took over, with a contrary view. This was because the school had been awarded two Outstanding Ofsted Reports before it became an academy (the second time with Mr Luxmoore as headteacher), but on her first Inspection after academisation was found to Require Improvement (Ofsted Quote:While the school judges leadership and management to be outstanding, inspectors judge them to require improvement!), before climbing back to Good (twice). Throughout this time the school had been heavily oversubscribed, so could never have qualified for her epithet ‘sink school’.
The geography of the Thanet non-selective secondary schools plays an important role in considering the problem, with three of the six schools, Ursuline Convent to the west, King Ethelbert, and Hartsdown situated in a row along the main coastal road in the north of Thanet and less than three miles apart. Ursuline College in Westgate is a Roman Catholic school in the Ursuline tradition, private until 1998. So non-Catholic pupils in North Thanet will always look to King Ethelbert and its good Ofsted Reports (although very disappointing GCSE performance), it becoming the fourth most oversubscribed school in Kent this year. Inevitably this is at the expense of Hartsdown, and will remain so even if there is no new school, even though CAT would like to share popularity around. Interestingly, Ursuline has been taking six forms of entry for each of the past two years, above its Planned Admission Number, so the proposed increase in Mr Carter’s plan merely formalises the current arrangements, except that it will no doubt lead to further funding for the school.
Coming round the coast to the middle of Thanet, we find Broadstairs, with St George’s CofE having been one of the two most oversubscribed schools in the county for some years. Charles Dickens School, the other school in Broadstairs, went into Special Measures in 2014, whilst being run by KCC, was then managed by CAT, taken away from them, passed over to St George’s and is now an academy in the Barton Court Trust, based in Canterbury. In spite of its poor record, Charles Dickens also remains one of the most oversubscribed schools in Kent, turning away 77 first choices in 2019, both schools benefitting from the poor performance and reputation of RHA to the south, as parents try to secure places at the nearest alternative.
Then there is Ramsgate with Royal Harbour Academy split across two sites the result of two mergers, firstly as Ellington High School for Girls was combined with Hereson School for boys to create a further good school. Then, what was the most notorious school in Kent, Marlowe Academy, the first new build academy in Kent was closed, with the premises being given to Ellington/Hereson to form the monstrous split site Royal Harbour Academy, complete with the Marlowe reputation, which still haunts the school and the people of Thanet. With a PAN of 200 for September, the school offered an additional 50 places to meet the shortfall in 2019, producing a struggling school which then lost 50 pupils to others before the Autumn Term started in September. I would be glad to learn of the upward trajectory, but the other evidence I have put forward here suggests this may be optimistic. Councillor Mrs Binks, from Broadstairs, bluntly described RHA as a sink school in the meeting. Staggeringly, the view was put forward without challenge that the Regional Schools Commissioner is wrong in his view that struggling schools should not expand, as such expansion would give them more opportunities. Apparently the ‘opportunities’ are for the school to offer a wider curriculum and be more cost effective. Whatever the opportunities for the school are, the RSC is right, as it is clearly wrong to force more pupils into failing or poor schools and this remains the underlying problem.
As I prepared this article, Ofsted has published: 'Fight or flight? How ‘stuck’ schools are overcoming isolation: evaluation report', but surprisingly neither school qualifies. Hartsdown was found to be Good by Ofsted in 2018, and both Ellington and Hereson were good schools before they were swallowed up by RHA. However, the article still offers much good advice.
I would be delighted to support a viable solution for the sake of Thanet families, but fear one does not exist. The key part of the problem is the performance of Hartsdown Academy and Royal Harbour Academy over the years, with no one willing or able to resolve it. Normally after eight years of abject failure by its leaders, an Academy would be re-brokered to another Trust to try and do better. The problems here are (1) which Academy Trust would be willing to take the school on. Evidence is that Trusts are far more picky now, about taking on difficult cases, although I can think of two large ones in Kent that have the ruthlessness and ability to do so if anyone can. (2) Even if some one could pick up the school and turn it round, this would take several years and the problem is now.
In spite of its name, Royal Harbour Academy is not an academy, as Ellington School for Girls, one of its forebears, was rebuilt under PFI and KCC cannot afford to let it go because of the crippling financial penalty, as explained both here, and in another article to be published shortly. Whilst KCC has asked Coastal Academies Trust to manage the school, it is clear they do not have the answers to turn the school around and perhaps, as happened with Charles Dickens School, the Council should make fresh arrangements.
It is clear that Paul Carter's 'solution' to the problem is the least worst, but it is no use pretending that Hartsdown and RHS are on this 'upward strategy' with eight years of failure by CAT at Hartsdown as evidence, against possible new ideas put forward by the Trust representatives which they claim will solve the problems. What is needed is a radical solution and serious investment of money and skills, dare I say it, in the 'Cummings' mode.
However, even if those responsible have the courage to take these actions it is going to take years to turn the two schools round and even more difficult to restore confidence in them amongst parents. In the meantime, further generations of Thanet children are going to have their life chances seriously damaged, but as usual no one in authority is culpable. It won't help, but there should be immense anger about this cock up, instead the local newspapers looked at the issues mildly before the Scrutiny Committee Meeting, so without the facts reported above. Since then not a whisper anywhere as we all wait for Lord Agnew's decision.