Dear Sir/Madam,
I have decided to put my
response to the Schools Organisation review for Stowmarket and Stowupland in
writing as I have quite a few comments, suggestions and observations from going
to two of the parents meetings at Combs Ford Primary School and Combs Middle
School. I have a vested interest as a parent of four, soon to be five children
who will go through the school system in this area. I currently have two
daughters and a son in the school system. My eldest daughter is in Yr 6 at
Combs Middle School; my youngest daughter is in Yr 3 at Combs Ford Primary and
a son in Yr 1 at the same school. My two daughters have their opinions of the
school change and I will add some of their comments at the end of this
response.
I would like to start off by
saying that I have no problem with the fact that the county wants to change
from a three tier system to a two tier one. I feel that the statistics and the
national curriculum do make it necessary for this change to happen and as I
went through my schooling in a two tier system I am familiar with it and have
no objection to the system. I do however have a problem with the way that the
system is to be implemented at second tier (High school stage).
I would like it to be known
that the way that Combs Ford Primary School needs to add two new year groups to
the school seems in principle to be very workable. I am happy with the way all
the information regarding to the primary school has been presented and the
school team seem very confident that their new structure will be a great
success and I whole heartedly agree.
My issue comes over the suggested
solution for Stowmarket High School.
Firstly I have a problem with my children
walking the two miles through the town centre to the High school. They are not
as confident as I was at their age and I believe that there are a myriad of
distractions that will happen by having to walk through the town centre, I know
I would have been distracted by shops and such when I was that age. I also have
a safety concern as the roads that all the children from this end of town will
have to walk are very busy around the times that they will need to cross them.
I am not in a position where I can afford to give my children bus money every
day to use public transport and as we are a one car family the only option is
to walk. For my wife to walk my children both schools would be currently
impossible because of the primary and high school start times. We had moved into
the east end of Stowmarket specifically due to the fact that there was
schooling available from age 4-13 a short distance from our home. Thus allowing
the age that our children would have to walk to high school, to be higher. Would it be possible to look at staggered
start times for the primary and high schools to allow parents to walk both sets
of children to school?
My next issue is with the
split site suggestion. I feel that the Yr7 & 8 students using the Walnut
Tree Walk site will just feel that they are at middle School and get very
confused over which days they are at which site, due to the one day a week at
the Onehouse Road site. They may also feel isolated from the rest of the school
even with spending one day a week at the other site. I also feel that there will be problems with
children having the wrong books, homework and PE kits at the wrong sites. I
also feel that some students will use the split sites as an excuse to be late,
not hand homework in and cause disruption at school. I feel that the use of the
split site solution is not in the best interests of our children and that
perhaps the council should look at freeing up some of its reserve of £166
million to invest in the correct infrastructure for our children’s education.
This year has been all about ‘Inspiring a generation’ with the Olympics and I
feel with the split site solution we could ‘lose a generation’ here in
Stowmarket by not doing this reorganisation correctly!
If money is that great an
issue that we have to try and find a solution that is second rate, I see the
current proposal as about fifth rate, then I would like to see if a suggestion
that I have talked about with other parents would be considered, I know this
has come up in both meetings I have attended and was brushed under the carpet
quicker than an offending pile of dust, but here goes. The suggestion is that
instead of having two larger High schools in Stowmarket, why not have three
smaller community high schools. The current Stowmarket High school serving the
west end of the town, the current Stowupland High School serving the outlying
villages to the north and a new high school based on the current Combs Middle
School Site serving the east end of the town and the villages to the south. I
know there have been suggestions that the building in its current form would
not be large enough and would not have enough specialist facilities, but if you
are creating three smaller high schools then the money that would have be put
into building the new teaching block at Stowupland and using the Walnut Tree
Walk site could be used to extend the current Combs Middle School site and
provide those extra facilities. I understand that some work would also have to
be done by the council to redraw the catchment areas but this piece of work
would be well worth it if we get a more sensible solution to the high school
issues within this reorganisation. At
the meetings when this suggestion was put forward, there was resistance to the
idea from the panel as they believed that smaller high schools would not be
able to offer a broad range of subjects.
The high school I went to had around 160 pupils in a year and still
managed to offer the usual English language, English Literature, Maths,
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, IT, DT, PE, RE, PHSE, two modern foreign languages
and a few other subjects that I forget now and as a parent these are the
subjects that interest me for my children. I would like a school that offers a
good range of core subjects attained at a high level not a large range of subjects
attained at a moderate level. Once my children have attained their core GCSE’s
or whatever the equivalent is at the time, then we will look at what career
they want and look at Sixth form or college depending on what they feel they
want at the time. Now if my calculations are correct and as an area we need to
provide 480 places per year, then if we had three high schools then we would
have 160 places in each year at each school, leaving some room for growth at
Stowmarket High as the town expands that way. The current middle school site
has approximately 21 teaching rooms and I figure to house the extra students it
would need approximately 26 teaching rooms, leaving a deficit of 5 teaching
rooms, which could be built in a new block on the current site and linked by a
covered walkway. The other knock on effect of this all would be that the
conversion from middle to high school would allow the school to keep many of
its excellent teachers and provide stability for the children already currently
there and would also make negating any dip in exam results even easier. Further
to this I have looked at the Stowmarket town master plan and the plans for
Chiltern Leys. One of the options on those plans is to move and build a new
high school site even further west in the new development, making the distances
across town to the school even further. This would make having a high school at
the east end of town seem even more viable to all the parents I have talked to.
I also understand that the
Church of England Diocese of St. Edmundsbury is interested in the Combs Middle
site to set up a Voluntary aided school. I would like to ask the council how
much money would the Diocese be giving to the council for the use of the
building and who would pay for the conversion work that would be required on
the school and the provision of the temporary accommodation for a reception
class, as mentioned in the consultation booklet? I ask this because if the
council has set aside money for this then I would think that that money could
also be used to create better facilities on the Combs Middle school site,
should it be used as a high school.
I feel that the use of the
Combs Middle School site as a faith voluntary aided school in an age where
everyone is encouraged not to run cars around and to actively walk or cycle
would not be prudent and would lead to increased car congestion on the Lavenham
Park estate as a faith school has a much wider catchment than a traditional
school would have.
As promised at the beginning
of my response here are a few of my daughter’s comments, all of which are
genuine after my wife and I explained the proposals without our views aired to
her.
“It will be really difficult
to remember which books to take to which building.”
“I wouldn’t know which site to
go to.”
“I would be scared to walk
through town, it would be busy”
“I want to be at a school that
is closer than the high school”
When
I explained to my primary school daughter the only thing she said was “how are
they going to fit all the classes in my school”. It may therefore be prudent
for the schools to show their pupils how they intend the new setups to work.
I hope that my comments are
helpful and will be given due consideration during this review process and I
look forward to seeing some of my questions answered shortly.
Yours sincerely
Mr Alan Waters
