The Government has recently announced plans in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to introduce new duties for schools and local authorities to co-operate with each other regarding admissions and for schools to co-operate with local authorities regarding placement planning.

Cllr Penny Frost, Chair of the Richmond Education and Children’s Services Committee has welcomed the proposals. She told EastSheenMatters:

“If the Bill goes through and gives Local Authorities more power to work with academies to manage school places, this will be very beneficial to the overall planning of school places and management of school admissions within and across boroughs.

“Currently, academies can refuse to take individual students which can lead to erosion of inclusive practice which then affects other schools and leaves students without a school place either at the start of an academic year, or as an in-year admission when a family has moved into or across the borough. Conversely, an academy school can choose to increase its own numbers without any consultation and in a way which can challenge the viability of other nearby schools.

“For Richmond upon Thames, we strongly believe in the value of our ‘family’ of schools working together, and this proposed change of legislation will be of great benefit to our being able to even out numbers across the borough and manage individual applications. At present, we would have to apply to the Department for Education if we wished to be able to challenge an academy which has refused to take a child whose needs we think the academy should be able to manage.”

This appears to make a lot of sense. It will no doubt be helpful to the Council’s case in support of having a 1200 pupil academy secondary school at the Mortlake Brewery site, in view of the concerns expressed in evidence at the Planning Inquiry about the impact on other local schools, especially given the drop in pupil numbers. This is of course wholly dependent on central Government since they are supposed to be providing the funding. A decision about whether to continue to fund the academy is currently with the Minister.

If the Council could come up with as good a solution on the inevitable local traffic problems for rail, bus and car users in Mortlake and East Sheen, and the safety of those seeking to cross the railway line at Mortlake, we might be somewhere near a sensible outcome for the Brewery site,