Bristol's Got Talent

The fact that not one but two of the finalists of the BBC show The Speaker attend the same Bristol secondary school is a credit to the school and the city.

Series winner Duncan Harrison and runner-up Irene Carter both attend St Mary Redcliffe School, the Church of England secondary currently undergoing a major rebuild on its small city centre campus.

The prestigious national competition, which ran over eight episodes and saw thousands of initial applicants whittled down to a final three, was judged by entertainer Jo Brand, speaker and broadcaster John Amaechi and actor/director Jeremy Stockwell. The series of challenges competitors went through were designed to test their verbal communication and improvisation skills across a range of disciplines.

Sucess in the competition has resulted in a series of interviews and media opportunities for 15-year old Duncan, including, it is rumoured, the offer of his own radio show on Star FM. Duncan's brother Angus, a student at the North Bristol Post-16 Centre, is a part-time actor and appears in a major role alongside Mel Smith in the British film Halo Boy.

Runner-up Irene Carter, meanwhile, was mentored over part of the series by news broadcaster Kate Silverton who, Trym Tales understands, took quite a shine to the 17-year old and has urged the Bristol sixth former to stay in touch in order to develop her career as a news reporter.

BS9 is already the sector the the city which sends the largest number of students to St Mary Redcliffe School and there is every possibility that The Speaker will have increased interest in what the specialist humanities school has to offer.

As a voluntary-aided Church of England School, Redcliffe, is permitted to set its own faith-based admissions criteria which gives priority to familes who are regular and long-term committed members of a Christian church. The policy also provides for a specific number of places to be allocated to children of other faiths and to children in the immediate parish of St Mary Redcliffe. In a typical year, the school receives three times as many applications as it has places.

The Redcliffe Sixth Form centre has no faith-based admission requirement.

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Redland Green Catchment Area - the Facts

Statistics have emerged on the numbers of families living within the designated area of first priority for Redland Green School who have not been allocated places at the school.

Bristol City Council has revealed that 87 children who live within the catchment area have failed to obtain a place at the new school. This is despite the Council reducing the size of the catchment area in response to the large number of families who have moved house to be near the school and increase their chances of gaining a place for their child.

Further statistics reveal the nature of the school's new popularity:

• 688 families applied for Redland Green year 7 in 2008
• 343 listed the school as their first choice school
• 189 places were available in Year 7 for the same academic year

Statistics for other popular Bristol schools include:

• Cotham School received a total of 672 applications for its 180 places
  
• St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School received 500 applications for 216 places available in Year 7
• Ashton Park, City Academy, Henbury School, St Bede’s and St Bernadette’s were also oversubscribed

For the full list of posts on this site focused on Redland Green School, click here.

For a wider range of education-related posts on this site, please click here.

Individualised programmes in maths and English for all ages and abilities. Redland Kumon Centre.

Redland Green Catchment Area Changed

Plans to change the designated area of first priority (the catchment area) for Redland Green School have been finalised following an indication earlier in the school year that Bristol City Council was intending to make such a change.

As a result, Westbury on Trym and Stoke Bishop families now find themselves in the areas of first priority for Henbury and Portway Schools respectively.

The Council has also created a new area of second priority which encompasses BS9. Places at Redland Green School will, in theory, be available to children in this area once all families living in the area of first priority have been allocated places. Westbury on Trym residents are therefore effectively excluded from the new school as the area of first priority is already heavily oversubscribed.

Please click here for a map of the new catchment area. The area of second priority can be viewed here.

For news on Portway School, which is in the process of applying to become an academy, please click here.

For all posts on this blog dealing with Redland Green School, please click here.

Individualised programmes in maths and English for all ages and abilities. Redland Kumon Centre.

Colston's Girls' Most Popular School for North Bristol Families

Colston's Girls' School has topped a poll of schools that local families would choose if they were not successful in their application for Redland Green School.

The poll took place over the last month here on the Trym Tales site and when asked, "If not Redland Green, which school will you choose?", 25% of participants stated a preference for Colston's Girls', the independent school on Cheltenham Road which plans on converting to an academy this September.

Two of Bristol's other would-be academies came joint second in the poll, with 16% of the votes cast in favour of Cathedral School and an equal number for Portway School. Whereas the former two are independent schools already, Portway is set to follow the route of the majority of academies as the new trustees attempt to turn around a historically poor-performing school. Oasis Trust are the proposed charity aiming to take on Portway, a move which local parents appear to welcome if the poll results are at all representative. More on the planned change to Portway School here.

With families in Westbury on Trym effectively excluded from the new school following the change in the Redland Green School catchment area this year, the poll results indicate a swing away from the independent schools historically favoured by families in the Westbury on Trym area, with Redland High School for Girls, Bristol Grammar, Red Maids and Badminton School receiving no more than two votes each. This is anecdotal evidence, perhaps, of the popularity of the academy model among local parents at the expense of the traditional independent sector.

Full results, which may not be representative of local opinion as a whole, are reproduced below.

If Not Redland Green, Which School Will You Choose?

Henbury	3 (12%)
Portway	4 (16%)
Colston's Girls	6 (25%)
Bristol Grammar	2 (8%)
QEH	3 (12%)
Colston's	3 (12%)
Cathedral School	4 (16%)
St Katherine's	1 (4%)
Gordano	3 (12%)
Red Maids	2 (8%)
Badminton	2 (8%)
Redland High School for Girls	1 (4%)
St Ursula's	2 (8%)
Other	4 (16%)

The poll was conducted over 28 days in March and April. 40 votes were cast by 24 voters (multiple choices were permitted). St Mary Redcliffe School and St Bede's Catholic College remain very popular with local families but were not included in the poll as their admissions policies do not make them viable choices for all children.

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Redland Green School - Elmlea Parents Protest

As Westbury on Trym and Stoke Bishop parents learn this week which secondary school their children have been allocated for the coming academic year, parents at Elmlea Junior School have presented a petition to Bristol City Council urging them to rethink their planned changes to the Redland Green catchment area.

The new catchment area would result in most Westbury on Trym children being offered secondary school places at Henbury School.

Trym Tales is actively following the Redland Green story and all posts on the subject can be found here.

Also, the reader poll in the top right hand corner of this blog asks "What school would you choose if not Redland Green." All answers are anonymous.

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Locked Out of Redland Green? Keep Your Eye on Portway - Seriously

With the new proposed changes to the Redland Green School catchment area (here) Westbury on Trym parents have been left with a limited range of options for their children's secondary education.

Until now.

Plans are apparently at an advanced stage for Portway School to become an academy - a state- funded non-fee paying school independent of the local authority.

The proposed academy - which has to be agreed by Bristol City Council - will be run by Oasis Community Learning founded by Baptist minister and TV presenter Steve Chalke (MBE).

Oasis already has seven academies in its portfolio, and reports improvements in academic outcomes and behavior accompanied by increasing numbers of applications for places at them. Oasis is also due to re-open the Hengrove Community Arts College in South Bristol as an academy in September 2008. Westbury parents will therefore have a year to asses the work of an Oasis school before deciding whether to take the plunge and apply. The proposed takeover is scheduled for September 2009 if agreed by all parties.

In recent years Portway School has had low achievements in GCSEs and a high staff turnover - only 16% of students gained five or more A-C grades at GCSE last academic year and the school has had seven head teachers over the last 5 years.

The Oasis Trust is founded on Christian principles but does not use church attendance as a basis for applications. Chalke claims that "There will be people who won't send their kids to Portway. They are late adopters, not early adopters. In three years' time they will wish they had done." The Oasis Community Learning ethos and values can be seen on their web site here.

If successful, Portway will become one of five possible academies in Bristol - others being in St George, Hengrove and with proposals underway for Colston's Girls' School and Cathedral School to become academies over the next two years.

Some of the main questions people ask about academies are answered here and details of the new Redland Green catchment area can be found here.

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What Are the Actual Sale Prices of Local Houses?

If you've ever wondered what the difference is between the advertised price of a property and its final sale price, the information you are after is now available free of charge at Our Property.

The web site allows users to find the final sale price of any property in the UK, the data being generated from the Land Registry on completion of the sale. You can search by address, postcode, street name, neighbourhood or town/city.

With schools being one of the driving factors in the Bristol property market, the site is particularly useful for local families considering moving houses to be near their school of choice. This continues to be a live issue in light of the Council's plans to re-draw the boundaries for the Redland Green School catchment area, a development commented on at Trym Tales here.

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Redland Green Catchment Area - Latest Developments

Westbury on Trym parents have been thrown another curved ball concerning admission to Redland Green Secondary School.

Last academic year, Westbury on Trym was located within the area of first priority (i.e. the catchment area) for Redland Green School. Many local parents were therefore understandably disappointed when their children failed to secure a place at the new school in 2007. In fact, virtually no families outside of the immediate neighbourhood around the new school were allocated places.

In response to this fact, the Bristol Admissions Forum (part of Bristol City Council) has put forward a proposed change to the area of first priority for Redland Green and at the same time is proposing a new area of second priority (encompassing Westbury on Trym).

The proposal is on the Council web site here.

The proposed area of first priority would include Redland, much of Bishopston, both sides of Kellaway Avenue and Westbury Park. The northern boarder would be at the junction of Westbury Road and Brecon Road (at the corner of St Ursula's School) and would run from there through Henleaze to Tescos at Golden Hill. The official map of the proposed area is here.

The area of second priority would mean that once all applicants from the first area had been allocated places (and not all will, of course), then priority will be given to children in the area of second priority. This area runs to the north and west of the downs, taking in Sneyd Park, Westbury on Trym (to the south of Canford park) and part of Stoke Bishop around Coombe Lane. The official map can be viewed here.

The proposed changes will become operational from the academic year 2009/10.

Meanwhile, governors at Elmlea Junior School - which so many of last year's unsuccessful students attended - have written a one-off newsletter to all parents inviting them to comment on the proposals via the junior school's governing body.

The bottom line seems to be this:

1. Westbury on Trym parents were spectacularly unsuccessful in getting their children into Redland Green School last academic year
2. The council is recognising this and changing the catchment area to reflect this reality
3. The designated area of second priority may appear small comfort to Westbury parents as it offers little realistic prospect of spaces being offered to their children
4. The best chance of a family getting their child into Redland Green School is to move to the catchment area - but even then, a place is not guaranteed
   
5. Westbury on Trym remains in the area of first priority for Henbury School.

One added variable: if, as looks likely, Colston's Girls' School does become an academy, this move is likely to ease pressure of applications for Redland Green School in the coming years, which may result in more families from the area of second priority being accepted to the school.

Trym Tales has published numerous posts about the Redland Green School and application process. Please click here to see all items on this subject area.

Individualised programmes in maths and English for all ages and abilities. Redland Kumon Centre.

Secondary School Options for Parents in Westbury on Trym

It's the time of year when parents of Year 6 students at Elmlea Junior and Westbury on Trym Primary Schools are left waiting to hear which secondary school their children have been allocated for the coming academic year.

Following the shock of last year when hardly any families in Westbury on Trym were allocated places at the newly opened Redland Green School, the options seem a little brighter this time round, especially in the longer term.

With plans for Colston's Girls' School to become an academy at an advanced stage, the pressure is likely to be reduced on places at Redland Green in September. This trend is likely to continue in future years, especially if Cathedral School is also successful in its attempt to be granted academy status. Details of how to apply for Colston's Girls' School this year are here and for the smaller Cathedral School here.

Colston's Girls' is further along the path to becoming an academy than Cathedral, though with the former defining its catchment area as "the former county of Avon" (Bristol, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Banes), pressure on places will be real.

Among students who were not successful in getting into Redland Green last time, reports to Trym Tales say that St Katherine's School in Pill has been a positive alternative for several local families. The school seems to have a positive and developmental ethos built on a foundation of good behaviour - a commitment which was reinforced in the autumn term of this school year by the permanent exclusion of two severely disruptive pupils.

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North Bristol Post 16 Centre and the Triumph of Feminism

I took a look round the new North Bristol Post 16 Centre at Redland Green School this week. Much about it was impressive.

One thing that struck me as of more dubious value, however, was the way that the "women's agenda" seems to have won the day at the new school.

Consider the following:

• In almost every A Level subject area, girls significantly outperformed boys last year. The figures (provided by the school) speak for themselves: in Geography, whereas 100% of the female applicants achieved an A-B grade, only 44% of the boys did; in Psychology, the figures were 50% and 33% while in Business Studies half the girls compared with one-third of the boys achieved an A-B in the A level course.

• The trend remained strong even in some of the subject areas that boys have historically performed well in: in Physics, 67% of the female students achieved an A-B compared with 50% of the boys; in History the split was 50-42 and in Sports Science only 17% of the boys achieved the higher grades compared with 100% of the girls.

• Boys did outperform girls at the higher grades in Chemistry (45/20), French (80/85) and Maths (82/33) but these were very much the exceptions that proved the rule.

• While listening to the presentation on A Level English, I felt like I had fallen into a black hole and traveled back to the 1980s. The syllabus for both the language and literature courses was heavily peppered with feminist ideology, most obviously in the "language and gender" modules and also those investigating "language and power". Apparently it is not enough for 18-year olds to study the content of the set texts; they also need to be taught a particular way of "reading" them.

Of course, there is often a knee jerk reaction to anything that questions the success of girls and women in education. Working in this field myself, I am only too familiar with the reaction - it usually consists of a smirk (or a snort) and a knowing look that says, "Well, you know, boys..." and then trails off into a smug acceptance of the status quo. It never seems to occur that were such an attitude displayed towards girls, the law suits would be flying.

My point is simply this, that while there has been much that has been positive about the achievement of girls in education in recent years, the systemic and wholesale failure to deal with the under-performance of boys remains the elephant in the living room: everyone knows it's there and everyone's ignoring it.

Well, nearly everyone.

What are Academies?

Interest in the nature of secondary school academies has increased in Bristol in recent weeks due to the announcement that Colston's Girls School on Cheltenham Road has applied to become one. Although the application is at an early stage, it has raised some questions among local parents about what these schools are and how they operate. In response to these questions, I've compiled a question and answer post for parents. If I've missed any questions, get in touch and let me know.

1. In One Sentence, What is an Academy?

An academy is an all-ability secondary school financed by the Department for Education and run in partnership with sponsors from the business, charity or faith sectors.

2. How Much do They Cost to Attend?

Like all state schools, academies are free of charge. Parents do not pay to send their children to them.

3. Do Academies Follow the National Curriculum?

Only if they choose to. Like independent schools, they are free to not follow it if they see fit. Students do, however, work towards the normal GCSEs and A levels. Academies are free to choose what to teach and how to teach it.

4. Do Academies Have OFSTED Inspections?

Yes, just like all state schools.

5. How Many are There in the Country?

47 as of July 2007.

5. Do They Specialize in Particular Areas of Study?

All academies specialize in one or more areas. This does not mean that they don't offer courses in other subjects, but they do put more resources and time into that area of specialism.

6. Can you Give an Example?

The City Academy Bristol (located in Whitehall) specializes in sports and is jointly sponsored by Bristol City Football Club and the University of the West of England.

7. What do the Sponsors Bring to the School?

Expertise and advice on their area of specialism, including perspectives that may not be brought to the table in a traditional school setting. Also, enrichment and extension activities, contact with business and community organisations, etc. Typically, the governing body is made up of a majority of members representing the sponsoring bodies. The sponsors are required to not profit financially from the academy but can be required to put some money in, especially to the extension activities.

8. I've Read that Academies can Select Pupils Based on Ability. Is that Correct?

Academies can select up to 10% of their pupils according to their aptitude for the specialism of that academy. They cannot select on the basis of general academic ability. Existing state schools which have a stated specialism (it should be noted) are also allowed to do this.

9. What about SEN students?

They attend academies and are included as they would be in a normal state school.

10. How Well do Academies Perform?

It's early days. Because most of the academies have replaced "failing schools", often in areas of deprivation, we would expect to see an improvement in standards and results if the new management team were doing their job properly. This improvement is often evident to a greater or lesser degree. To what extent this can be attributed to the academy model as such is a matter of on-going debate and opinion.

10. Any Other Plans for Academies in Bristol?

It's not been widely reported, but a brand new academy will open in September 2008 on the site of the former Hengrove School in South Bristol. The Oasis Academy will be sponsored by the Oasis Trust, run by Baptist minister and GMTV presenter Steve Chalke.

More questions? Please leave a comment and I'll try and include an answer if I can provide one.

If You Can't Beat Them....

Wow!

Colston's Girls' School has applied to become a city academy - that is, an independent school funded by the state.

Three thoughts:

1. The move is a testimony to the attraction of the academy model. The present government has put a lot of store by them and, although they have not been in existence long enough for any rigorous research to be done on their impact across a city, the anecdotal evidence from those in favor of them is that they do help raise standards and behavior.

2. As highlighted in a previous post, the new secondary school at Redland Green is starting to have an effect on applications for the independent Redland High School for Girls, situated less than half a mile away. The announcement from Colston's Girls may indicate that the ripple effect of a good state school in the area is now starting to impact this school as well. Informed sources say that applications to study A levels at Colston's Girls have been in decline since the opening of the new Redcliffe Sixth Form Centre, which has attracted a good number of girls from Colston's this academic year who would otherwise have stayed on at the independent school.

There's no doubt that the growth and strength of the independent sector in Bristol has been in direct relation to the weaknesses in many of the city's state secondary schools. If this latter problem is being addressed, we would expect to see a corresponding impact on the independent schools.

3. If (and it is a very big if) Colston's Girls does become an academy, one immediate effect will be to reduce the numbers of students applying for Redland Green School in the years to come. With places for 525 girls aged 11-16 (and 168 in the sixth form), the prospect of Colston's becoming a state school would have a major effect on secondary education in Bristol. If it were to happen, more families who have not been successful in applying for this school may find places becoming available. This would presumably include families from Westbury on Trym and Stoke Bishop, virtually none of whom have been admitted to Redland Green this academic year, despite living in the catchment area. More on that here.

We'll watch this one with interest.

The Redland Green Fiasco

Elmlea Junior School parents have been opening their post this week to discover which secondary school their children have been allocated.

Many have been disappointed that their children have not been offered places at the new Redland Green School, despite living in the “designated area of first priority” (that’s the catchment area to you and me).

Instead, the majority of Westbury parents have been offered places at Henbury or Portway Schools and many are unhappy with the offer.

The new Redland Green School has proven so popular that places have been allocated to those living in the area of first priority who are closest to the school as the crow flies.

The key paragraph from the City Council’s policy is:

Where there are more applications than there are places remaining within a particular category, the direct line distance from home to school will be used as a tie-break.

This means that despite the building of a new secondary school in North Bristol, many of those who campaigned for it appear not to be benefiting from it.

There’s a basic political issue here as well as a practical one. The practical one first. As a parent, I have to do one of the following:

(a) send my child to Henbury or Portway School

(b) appeal against the decision and hope that I can prove some failure of process

(c) pay for an independent school

(d) apply for a school in North Somerset or South Gloucestershire

The political issue is this:

Why is it so hard for middle income urban families to find a secondary school for their children that they have confidence in? Isn’t this a basic right for tax-paying families?

Redland Green School

Word on the street is that the opening of the new Redland Green School has had an effect on the local independent located less than half a mile from the new state secondary which opens this September.

According to one source, applications for places at Redland High School for girls are down by 50% for entry in the coming academic year. While this must be a concern for the management team at the independent girls' school, it is a reflection of the rising confidence local parents are placing in the newly-built state school - a confidence that is also finding expression in the rising house prices in the Redland Green catchment area.

To be frank, the private schools have done very well in recent decades on the back of the poor standards in Bristol's schools. Surely the greater good is served by successful state schools across the city which have the confidence of local parents and children.

Meanwhile, Westbury on Trym parents find out whether their children have been offered places at Redland Green.

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League Tables and the Local Schools

Love them or loathe them, the annual school league tables are out and being studied by parents across the country.

Locally, the two primary schools appear as usual in the top third of the Bristol league table. Westbury on Trym C of E Primary School has produced an average SATS score of 30, fractionally below the average for Elmlea Junior School of 30.3. As most local residents know, both schools produce higher than average results compared with Bristol as a whole.

In broad terms, there is often a correlation between a school’s SATS performance and its proportion of students with special education needs. Upper Horfield Primary School, for instance, is the lowest performing primary school on the current league table. It is also a school where 53% of its students are registered with special education needs.

One north west Bristol school to buck this trend in spectacular fashion, however, is Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Primary School in Lawrence Weston. Despite 23% of its student body being SEN (the figure is 7% for the two Westbury on Trym schools) this is now the top-performing primary school in Bristol, as far as that can be measured by the league tables. For the third consecutive year, the school has been awarded the National School Achievement Award and is described by Ofsted as an “outstanding” school.

Congratulations to the staff and pupils.