The Story Behind the Bristol Free School - Part Three

The Russell Education Trust - which as we saw in the last post on the subject - is a private company based in Leatherhead, and is the partner organisation for the Bristol Free School, due to open in Westbury on Trym in September 2011.

The Russell Education Trust (RET) is an off-shoot of Education London, a private education company offering a wide range of services from "curriculum planning" to "Enhancing School Image and Pupil Recruitment" and "New Schools". Education London have an ongoing contract with the Department for Education to deliver its Keys to Success programme in London schools.

Many of the same people are involved in both companies, notably Daniel Lynch and Karen Lynch, who are described in official documents as education consultants. Both individuals are named as directors of Education London, incorporated in February 2003. The same individuals are named at Companies' House as the founding directors of the Russell Education Trust.

Not only that, both Education London and the Russell Education Trust are based at the same building in Leatherhead:

James House,
Bridge Street,
Leatherhead 

KT22 7EP

Here's the building, courtesy of Google Street View.

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More on the Lynchs and Education London in the next update....

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Bristol headteacher threatens legal action on ‘free school’ | Bristol24-7

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Bristol headteacher threatens legal action on ‘free school’ | Bristol24-7

Clare Bradford, headteacher of Henbury School, has threatened to take legal action over the proposed Bristol Free School, due to open in Westbury on Trym this September. 

The head has written to the Department for Education, saying she will seek a judicial review if funding is approved, claiming that the new school has been set up without sufficient local consultation, and that its impact will be to reduce numbers at other local secondary schools, thereby reducing funding and range of subjects offered at schools such as Henbury.

The Bristol Free School will be the largest of its type in the country if it opens as planned. 

Full story.

Follow the Free School story on Trym Tales here.





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Party On for the Royal Wedding

Westbury on Trym's reputation as the party capital of Bristol (ahm) will be enhanced next Friday as the village hosts not one but eight street parties on the day of the royal wedding.

With so much bunting, sausage rolls and royal revelry to fit in to a single day, Trym Tales is pleased to present the official eco-friendly walking tour of Westbuty's street parties on April 29th. 

Starting at Downs Cote Avenue, just off Falcondale Road, the committed gatecrasher should follow a broadly clockwise route around the outskirts of Canford Park, before heading back along Canford Lane and ending up at College Road for live music (allegedly) outside the Villager Restaurant. The roads highlighted have all applied for road closure orders on the big day, according to Bristol City Council's website.

With so many road closure orders in place on the great day, pedestrian power or cycles will be the only viable options for the serious party hopper.

 

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Westbury on Trym Centenarian Passes Away

Trym Tales is sad to report the death of Westbury on Trym resident, and near neighbour, Netta Hodges.

She was 101.

Netta passed away on Christmas Day afternoon at her bungalow in Westbury-on-Trym.

Trym Tales wishes to pass on its sympathy to Netta's family. Her daughter Hilary Wall was a daily visitor to Netta's home and, with her husband Ray, cared for her mother over many years, enabling her to spend her final years at home.

Netta's granddaughter Mandi and great-granddaughter Charlotte were both in Westbury over the Christmas weekend, on one of their regular visits from their native Denmark.

Netta's funeral is likely to be in the New Year.

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Alternatives to Trym Tales

When not publishing Westbury on Trym's leading independent online media outlet (a position that may be challenged in this bleak midwinter by the arrival of The Bristol Nine, to which I offer festive salutations) I have been writing a variety of articles on weighty matters for a range of perspicacious publications across the world wide web.

Should you wish to cast an eye over any of the said articles, they include, The Politics of the X Factor, being a reflection on the statement by Damon of Athens, "Give me the songs of a nation, and it does not matter who writes its laws.”

In addition, Muckrakers: Whistleblowers from America's Gilded Age illustrates that Wikileaks is not a fundamentally new phenomenon. Finally, The Rise of the Data Journalist surveys the way in which open access, freedom of information and colourful mashups are all changing the way that news stories are being researched and reported in the digital age.

Your indulgence is appreciated. 

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Last Minute Shopping Bargains - Without the Crowds

Image by mattbuck4950 via Flickr

For Westbury on Trym residents celebrating mid-winter festivals this month, and for those who tend to leave gift shopping to the last minute, the arrival of The Original Factory Shop in Shirehampton may provide a welcome alternative to the imaginatively-named The Mall at Cribbs Causeway. 


Although the emporium is not on the same gargantuan scale as certain other retail outlets, the Factory Shop offers branded and high street items at significantly lower prices than elsewhere.







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Oasis School Westbury Open Evening

Image via Wikipedia

Went to the Open Evening at Westbury on Trym's new Oasis School last week and was left with the overall impression that Steve Chalke and his team have their work cut out in order to turn this formerly bankrupt Catholic Independent into a flourishing and broad-based community academy.

Greeted at the door as I was by the head - Lynette Carter - who introduced herself by name, I felt immediately immersed in the ethos of a fee-paying independent school. Which, of course, the school still is, until it achieves academy status. Tours of the school were conducted by the uniformed pupils, and everyone was, well, awfully nice.

I was struck, secondly, by how small the school is - both in terms of student numbers - and teaching facilities. More familiar with the large state secondary sector, I was surprised to discover, for instance, only two functioning science labs, one DT room, and a close overlap between the secondary and primary wings of the school.

In addition, the physical fabric of the school has obviously been neglected during the St Ursula's era. The exterior, for instance, reminded me of one of those small French provincial towns that you stumble upon while on holiday: grey rendering peeling away from nineteenth-century brickwork, which seems to have a certain charm when on holiday but, when thinking about your child's secondary, speaks of decline.

I was also surprised by the presence of numerous statues of Mary, and other Roman Catholic paraphernalia around the site, not because they would be out of place in a Catholic school, but because they have been left in place after the school has been taken over by Oasis Community Learning. Although Oasis states in its education charter that "We are motivated by the life, message and example of Jesus Christ", they are not, specifically, a Roman Catholic charity (Steve Chalke is a former Baptist minister) and their academies are "non-selective...open to students of all religious faiths and those of no faith."

It's easier to change a building than it is to change the ethos of those who use the building, of course, and there did seem to be among the existing parents I talked with in the school hall, a hope that the new school (which, interestingly they talked about as a future rather than present institution, despite the change of name) would not abandon its distinctive features. As an independent, St Ursula's was known for being non-selective and welcoming pupils with a range of learning needs, and others who may not have fared that well in a larger school.

Perhaps the Mary statues symbolise exactly where Oasis Westbury is at the moment: in transition, but not very far into the process. Which is not surprising, since the school has been through a roller-coaster of change in 2010. This journey has included the former school going into administration, the City Council buying the land to enable Oasis to re-open as a fee-paying school this academic year, a further drop-off in student numbers, a 25% increase in fees, and the small matter of a general election in which the school featured prominently at a local level.

Steve Chalke is in Bristol this week to update existing parents on the journey towards becoming a state-funded academy. He states that he has been in recent contact with Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, who is "committed" to helping Oasis Westbury Academy status "on, or before, September 2011" and that he is "confident" that this will happen.

Assuming that takes place, there seems plenty of work to do in turning the school into a broad-based community academy. I expect a few feathers will have to ruffled in the process and some difficult decisions will have to be taken by skillful leaders and change managers.

If anyone can pull this off successfully, I reckon Oasis can.

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Growing Local Food in Westbury and Henleaze

Image via Wikipedia Know any land suitable for growing food on in the area?

The Council's Land Use Consultation comes to BS9 this month with an open event at Trinity Henleaze United Reform Church, Bradbury Hall on 20th September. Members of the public with an interest in seeing more land released for local food production are invited to drop in any time between 12.00 noon and 8.00 pm.


An identical event for Henbury & Southmead will run on September 27th at the Greenway Centre, Doncaster Road, Southmead.

Information and opinions gleaned during this city-wide consultation will, apparently, help to inform decisions on land use in the city for the coming decades.

Here's my off-the-top-of-my head list of possible food growing sites in the area:

• the Dairy Garden at Blaise Castle Estate
• part of the Arnall Drive Open Space at Henbury
• a corner of the field at Henbury School
• the front garden at Elmlea Junior School and the back garden at the Infants' School
• the grounds of the former Elmfield School on Greystoke Avenue
• the hidden valley between Channell's Hill and Bowness Gardens (might be a bit steep?)
• the small plot adjacent to the Westbury on Trym surgery
• a slice of the Coombe Dingle Sports Centre field

Where have I missed?

For an introduction to the rationale of growing and consuming locally produced food, there's a short introductory article here.

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