Thursday 5 July 2012

When School Sums Don’t Add Up…

When our concerns were initially raised regarding the lack of school places for the children of Kings Hill at The Parish Council meeting earlier this year, an attending Kent County Councillor announced figures for what he believed to be the total sum of those who did not get a place, and maybe at first glance these would seem small in relation to those that had applied.  At this meeting we were told that the number of children who were not offered a KingsHill or Discovery School place, living in Kings Hill was a total of 8, but with the petition we had already started; our figures superseded that, with us having a total of 11 signatures to date. 
There was an admission that there had been a mis-judgement in regards to the high birth rate in the community and so this could be one of the reasons why our children were suffering the consequences of that mis-calculation.  But the figures announced at that meeting in comparison to the number of signatures we had collected from those parents whose children were rejected, did not add up.

Following this, the working party contacted Kent County Council and under The Freedom of Information Act, requested recorded figures for the last two years, here is that response below:

“On Offer Day 2011, 6 pupils living in addresses with a postcode beginning ME19 4 were not offered either KingsHill School or Discovery Primary School after naming at least one of them as a preference unless they were offered a higher preference outside of the KingsHill area.


 On Offer Day 2012, 17 pupils living in addresses with a postcode beginning ME19 4 were not offered either KingsHill School or Discovery Primary School after naming at least one of them as a preference unless they were offered a higher preference outside of the KingsHill area.”

Ok, so at the parish council meeting we were told 8, the Working Party has the number of 11 via our petition and KCC are now giving us the figure of 17? The plot thickens!
More worryingly is the dramatic jump in those numbers received from KCC. Don’t forget this is not a steady increase over a number of years; it went from 6 - 17 in just one year!
Obviously this does not take into account those parents who did not even attempt to apply for a place in a KingsHill School. We heard from some parents at that first parish council meeting who fall into this category.  They knew of the problem already and decided that applying for Non-Kings Hill Schools, would better their chances in being given a 1st or 2nd choice and therefore opted out of the primary school place lottery.    

What were the catchment areas this year?

With some of the parents we know of seemingly living so close to their chosen school but still being rejected, we wanted to know this year’s current figures for the distances of the ‘last child accepted’
These are the figures from Kent County Council

Discovery: 90 places - 2 by looked after children, 42 siblings


Last child accepted:  0.4593 miles


KingsHill: 60 places - 23 siblings,

Last child accepted 0.3677 miles

We believe the distance for Discovery has got smaller and this will be due to the new developments near the Discovery School. The distance for KingsHill School still remains roughly the same but when they finish the new builds near Asda that will surely have a noticeable impact on the distance of the last child.

Where are we going to be in 2013 with the prospect of another 400 new homes being built on the existing KingsHill development phase? Some of the rejected families we know of live within 0.2 of a mile from the Kings Hill schools and still didn’t get a place.  Add into that factor, siblings in the next intake who will get priority, the birth rate of any given year, new children moving into the area with existing homes being purchased and any number of children moving into those 400 new homes.

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