christ church in chelsea is c of e its a lovely scool but very difficult to get in you neeed to go to the church which is next to the schcool but need to go regually there is also a playgroup in the church every thursday called the A B C club. good luck

Dear Emfletch - my daughter started at Macaulay last Sept (open place on distance, not church attendance) and I'm really pleased. It's a lovely school but very oversubscribed. They have open days in Oct/Nov so call the office and sign up. The catchment areas for last years intake will be out in Sept so you should get a feel for whether you'd get in but distance for open places is tight (close to the school) whereas distances for faith places goes much wider. You should be able to get last years booklets online so you can see what all the catchments were and good luck!

To add to this already popular thread - would be interested to hear anyone's feedback on schools closer to the Battersea Park area - Chesterton and Somerset specifically and also any in Westminster - new Pimlico Primary opening in Sept (which would be close to my husbands work and on my way to work) although I suspect it also very overscribed.

To add to this already popular thread - would be interested to hear anyone's feedback on schools closer to the Battersea Park area - Chesterton and Somerset specifically and also any in Westminster - new Pimlico Primary opening in Sept (which would be close to my husbands work and on my way to work) although I suspect it also very overscribed.

I don't know a lot about ARK, other than that they are a charity (and amongst other things fund some student bursaries for students at Oxbridge / other top end unis), but I think high staff turnover is very common when there's new management / including a new head at a school is it not? Sure I've seen on here that this was true at Belleville for e.g. when current head took over (others on here will know more). Agree those numbers sound high though. In any case it is not entirely relevant for a new school set up from scratch, where the teachers will be joining knowing that ARK is the sponsor, in contract to where they have come in as Academy sponsor.

I rather enjoyed this article about them http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/may/2 ... newschools (it is old)

First post! (i signed up to read on other threads but this caught my eye)

Interesting all these comments about bollingbroke and then it caught my eye the poster said it was an ARK school. I know nothing about Bollingbroke, but do know an (ex)senior teacher in another Ark school. Since ARK took over, they had a teacher turnover of about 40 out of 70 teaching staff in a year - not good stuff from a childs/parents point of view. (not sure why he said out of 70 staff as thought he had previously said there was about 170 staff but maybe this included non teaching staff) The school was not in Wandsworth but a much less affluent (nearby) area of London.

The view my friend said ARK's attitude was that the teachers were dispensible and it was the management (i.e. ARK) that was critical for a successful school and were happy to micro manage everything to the point it drove the teachers away.

Applicant pupils sit a test and the school determines the % admitted per band. And hence gaming of the system could occur to skew the ability level and so subsequent exam results upwards.

I didn't realise this - at Dunraven, where they do banding, we were told that the school takes 20% from each band therefore making the school truly comprehensive and deters skewing in either direction (at the initial entry stage; further down the school I presume the hope is all the kids skew upwards!).

Also, while using banding Ashcroft also have a selective stream - not as famous as Graveney's; it concentrates on 'engineering and technical' promise. You can get into Ashcroft via this route regardless of where you live whereas the normal banding process takes distance into account too.

Hi,
Emfletch - Macaulay is a lovely school but it is really hard to get into as it is a very popularfaith school, we are in the 80's on the wait list. You have to attend church every 2 weeks for 3 years before applying for a church place otherwise you have to live on the doorstep for the open places. Last year all I wanted was Macaulay Nursery but now my child goes to Nursery at Wix I am really happy with it and looking forward to starting reception in September.
Like others we were originally got our 3rd choice, John Burns which has an outstanding by ofsted but I wanted Wix as my child is already there and happy. I am a lucky one and would like to pass my luck and understanding onto everyone else who are in the position I was in!

best advice...and I have been a teacher for more than twenty years....go and visit the school and get a feel for it. The test results and the Ofsted gradings tell you very little about the school or how good the teaching and practice is nor how well your own child would thrive there.....

Sure. BV having more places available makes sense but I can see it becoming at least as competitive as BV. I have no doubt whatever that the school will receive more than 120 applications within a short time period from the feeder schools (if not already). If it is a real success the number of BV/HW parents going private may drop, increasing overall apps from those schools and the smaller school will be at a disadvantage (inc HW). Kids from the Kambala / Winstanley / York Rd estates who attend FB / HV are likely to miss out on places whereas their class mates who live in the (on average more affluent) streets closer to CJ and St Johns Hill etc will come ahead in the queue.

Does anyone know the split of applications by feeder and if the distance criteria was used for 2013 entry? It will be an interesting trend to watch as will any knock on impact on the popularity of FB/HV.

I'm not really criticising the process - nothing is ever going to be perfect and distance from school is clearly relevant. But if social mix is important this issue may need to be addressed at some stage IMO.

Thanks for posting NSC - really interesting. Sorry to derail thread a bit OP but I think it's relevant to primary school choices too!

FR, the feeder model was designed to flex in any given year. It works on a simple pro rata basis. So the more parents that apply from High View for example will then get a bigger proportion of places offered under Tier 1. It is a 4FE intake, so 120 places in total. Hence Tier 2 triggers if the total applicants exceed 120 - ie, distance to the academy. Banding as you say works on ability levels so is by definition selective. Applicant pupils sit a test and the school determines the % admitted per band. And hence gaming of the system could occur to skew the ability level and so subsequent exam results upwards. Banding/selection goes against everything we wanted for the school - which was a genuine comprehensive intake. In short, places will be there for High View and Falconbrook kids no matter what. Just how many per school per year depends on the parents willingness to apply to the school in the first place. That's entirely their choice. But BV is the biggest feeder, so its not unreasonable that a lot of the kids would come from there. Or to flip that logic, why would it be fair for the most kids to come from the smallest feeder for example. There is no perfect admissions policy but I think the feeders work pretty well. At the end of the day, the school ethos/vision has to be the right fit for the child, so just because its the closest doesn't mean its the right school for every child.

Thanks so much for that NSC - very helpful. Just to clarify, banding isn't the same as being selective - as it takes children from every ability group. If places for the Academy become very difficult to get, there will be an obvious bias towards Belleville children (simply because the school is so much bigger than the other feeders and so a greater % of applications will come from there and probably a greater proportion of siblings too if recent times at Belleville admissions are to go by). By using distance to the school gate as the determining factor, the school will - if it is successful - end up with places going to those who live in the few streets around Northcote Road, with a couple of dozen max outlying children who live nearer to Wix/Falconbrook/north side of High View, which could mean that those in the more 'deprived' areas will, again, lose out, despite it being their nearest school. So, including banding at some stage could help the school to stay truer to its roots as serving a wide cross section of the local area, rather than just BTC parents. But that's just my thinking based on my interpretation of the policy and nothing more. It would add additional complexity to the system so I can see why it wouldn't go down well and in the event of this scenario playing out, the Governors may feel there are benefits to leaving things like that.

Jon De maria

many many thanks for clarifying everything and for your post. It is good to hear from the parents founder of the academy.

Supergirl.

Hello there, I was one of the parent founders of the Bolingbroke school. I've enjoyed reading the recent comments on this thread and across the site about the academy. Just to confirm a couple of points on banding and the like. Our original vision was for a secular non-selective local school - hence why faith schools are not included as feeders and why I would hope banding is never introduced. The local faith schools were (and I imagine still are) undersubscribed. So if you want a faith based education you should have no problems. The feeders model was adopted to help drive the social gap in the borough via a mixed intake. I should add that I now have no connection with the school at all, so cannot confirm what ARK will or wont do over the coming years - they in effect hold a 3 line whip on the local governing body, so they can pretty much do as they please. But having founded the campaign, I would be disappointed if they altered the feeder or non-selective nature of the school. I don't think they will however. As for the wider context of school places, there is a 90,000 shortfall of 'basic need' places currently hitting the system in London. So as some have said on this site, the answer locally BTC is to promote a new primary school as a free school to increase supply. But you need to find a site and more likely an operator. Finally, the current admissions policy is what it is, until you boost local supply to meet demand there will always be winners and losers. But I would add that High View is an excellent school and the new(ish) head there Shaf is brilliant. Why not go and have a look? Good luck to you all and the very best with finding places for your kids, Jon De Maria.

Results are not a factor in the admissions policy supergirl. Although I can imagine it might go that way in the next 5-7 years - for example introducing a banding system, like the one used at Ashcroft (rather than a selective stream like Graveney). That's pure speculation on my part though.