Oasis Academy Hextable to close

Oasis Academy in Hextable has announced that it is due to close. Current Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 students will be offered places at alternative schools. No new Year 7 will join the school in September but current Year 10 and Year 12 students will remain at the school to complete their studies. The school will finally close in summer 2016.

Clearly this is a worrying and distressing development for students and their families, as well as for teachers and other staff. Many of the families affected live in my colleague Robert Brookbank's Swanley Division, but there are certainly also Darent Valley constituents of mine (chiefly from Swanley) with children at the school. In any case, as KCC Cabinet Member for Education, I have been very much involved in discussions about the prospective closure and was interviewed about it by Dominic King on BBC Radio Kent drive time yesterday.

Since Hextable is an academy, the decision for closure was not for the County Council; the proposal came from Oasis, the academy sponsor, and was ultimately agreed by government ministers. The County Council was, however, involved in discussions on the proposal, not least because we have the responsibility to ensure that students displaced by the closure are found new places.

We opposed the initial closure proposal, not least because we expect the population of secondary school students to grow strongly in North West Kent in the coming years. However, the school was certainly operating far below capacity and faced the prospect of relatively large numbers of students leaving in the next couple of years while current Years 7 and 8 are much smaller groups. The pressures faced by Oasis are in part a reflection of the current school funding system, introduced in 2013, under which more than 90% of a school's funding reflects its number of pupils on roll. Add to this the current dip - soon to be reversed - in secondary school numbers, and any school which finds it hard to attract pupils can find itself very vulnerable. We understood the pressures Oasis faced, but remain very concerned about the need to ensure adequate secondary places in the future. In any case, the Department for Education approved the closure proposal.

KCC's role is to secure places for the 150 or so students currently in Years 7 - 9. Letters offering a new school place will go out at the start of next week, and should arrive with families on Tuesday. We have had extensive discussions with local secondary schools, as well as with neighbouring education authorities. Orchards Academy, Wilmington Academy, Ebbsfleet Academy and Dartford Science and Technology College are among the schools likely to offer the largest number of places.

For current Year 6 pupils, preferences for Hextable have been removed from the system for primary offer day on 2 March. Parents who did express a preference for Hextable - and have therefore 'lost' one of their options - will be able to add in an extra preference at the time of the reallocation of places in the spring.

Longer-term, we will have to look to the need for secondary provision in the area. As with any academy that converted from being a community school, the academy trust leased the school buildings (on a 125 year lease) but the freehold of the land remains with the local authority. The Hextable site will therefore revert to KCC on then closure of the school next year.