Plans for the former Wildernesse School site will be on display between 3:30PM and 9PM tomorrow (16 September) at the Donnington Manor Hotel in Dunton Green. I will be there at the opening of this exhibition.
This comes as we conclude a long period of uncertainty over the site. The Department for Education at one stage proposed taking the site from Kent County Council for the use of the Trinity Free School. KCC always made clear its opposition to this proposal, not least because it would undermine the proposals for a Sevenoaks grammar school satellite (post of 21 March). After lengthy negotiations between KCC and the Department, agreement has been reached that the Trinity Free School will take part of the site. The remainder of the site will be available for the proposed grammar school satellite, for which Valley Invicta Academies Trust and Weald of Kent Grammar School have both put in applications.
The plans shown tomorrow will show both the proposed allocation of different parts of the site, and various details of the proposed grammar school satellite buildings. This will be in advance of KCC submitting a planning application in October.
The decision as to whether or not to approve the proposals for the grammar school satellite rest with Education Secretary Michael Gove, and this is clearly an entirely separate decision from that regarding the site. However, it is clear that the issue of the site at least will not be a stumbling block to the grammar school satellite proposal. That is a very welcome development.
Further background is available in a KCC press release, and in an article in the Sevenoaks Chronicle.
Showing posts with label grammar satellte. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grammar satellte. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Monday, 24 June 2013
Public meeting on Sevenoaks grammar satellite
On Thursday evening I attended a public meeting at Amherst School as part of the consultation on Invicta Grammar School's proposal for a Sevenoaks annex, and chaired the question and answer part of the meeting. Dr Phil Limbert, chief executive of the Valley Invicta Academies Trust (which includes both Invicta and the non-selective Valley Park School, both rated Outstanding by Ofsted) and Julie Derrick, head teacher of Invicta, set out their thinking and their motivation for pursuing the annex application.
They set out some of the detail of their plans: the satellite would come under the overall Invicta governors and head teacher, though wth a head of school in place in Sevenoaks; the satellite would develop its own staff, so that there would be little need for staff to travel between the Maidstone and Sevenoaks sites; and the aim is to open on the former Wildernesse site with six forms of entry in autumn 2015. They also set out some of their thinking and values: a belief that being Outstanding under Ofsted's criteria was a starting point but not an end point, the aim being to provide world class education, with schools in Finland, Germany, the United States and elsewhere seen as benchmarks and a peer group.
The meeting was very well-attended, and there were a lot of questions. The overall mood was enthusiastic. The consultation on the Invicta proposal closes on 19 July (for details of how to submit a response, see post of 20 May), and soon after that a formal application to expand Invicta will go to Education Secretary Michael Gove (since Invicta is an academy, the decision will rest with Mr Gove rather than with KCC).
The other major development of the last ten days has been the expression of interest from Weald of Kent grammar school As I made clear in interviews that I gave at the time, KCC was not informed in advance of this application; our earlier discussions with the school had ended in January with a clear statement from Weald of Kent that it did not wish to pursue a Sevenoaks satellite. Clearly, any application of this kind from a Kent school must be examined seriously by the local authority; at the same time, we have made clear that the Invicta proposal represents a strong partnership between the school (and the Academies Trust) and KCC, and is one that is now a very long way down the track towards the point of decision by the Secretary of State.
The Sevenoaks Chronicle has covered developments extensively; here is their latest account, while Invicta's page on its Sevenoaks proposal can be found here.
They set out some of the detail of their plans: the satellite would come under the overall Invicta governors and head teacher, though wth a head of school in place in Sevenoaks; the satellite would develop its own staff, so that there would be little need for staff to travel between the Maidstone and Sevenoaks sites; and the aim is to open on the former Wildernesse site with six forms of entry in autumn 2015. They also set out some of their thinking and values: a belief that being Outstanding under Ofsted's criteria was a starting point but not an end point, the aim being to provide world class education, with schools in Finland, Germany, the United States and elsewhere seen as benchmarks and a peer group.
The meeting was very well-attended, and there were a lot of questions. The overall mood was enthusiastic. The consultation on the Invicta proposal closes on 19 July (for details of how to submit a response, see post of 20 May), and soon after that a formal application to expand Invicta will go to Education Secretary Michael Gove (since Invicta is an academy, the decision will rest with Mr Gove rather than with KCC).
The other major development of the last ten days has been the expression of interest from Weald of Kent grammar school As I made clear in interviews that I gave at the time, KCC was not informed in advance of this application; our earlier discussions with the school had ended in January with a clear statement from Weald of Kent that it did not wish to pursue a Sevenoaks satellite. Clearly, any application of this kind from a Kent school must be examined seriously by the local authority; at the same time, we have made clear that the Invicta proposal represents a strong partnership between the school (and the Academies Trust) and KCC, and is one that is now a very long way down the track towards the point of decision by the Secretary of State.
The Sevenoaks Chronicle has covered developments extensively; here is their latest account, while Invicta's page on its Sevenoaks proposal can be found here.
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