Save money and put it into existing schools

A report at the end of April 2017 from the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) identified ‘incoherence and wastefulness’ in the way the DfE and its agency, the Education Skills and Funding Agency, disburses funds for, amongst other things, new free schools, with a budget for 500 such schools to be built by 2020-21 of £9bn, which PAC members recommended should as a matter of urgency be transferred to existing schools in England.

This brings us to the proposed illsited Swan School in Old Marston, for the moment in limbo because of over-costings by contractors Galliford Try, with the current budget set at £30.5m for the proposed Swan and a rebuilt Meadowbrook College to the south-west of the free school. Rumours have it that Harlequins RFC might be vacating their Marston Ferry Road ground and adjacent car park, just next to The Cherwell School south site. If more than a rumour this would be a perfect site for a modestly costed Cherwell annexe which could very easily meet the demand for rising secondary places in Marston and Headington (even if the Harlequins stay put, an annexe could still be possible on Cherwell land, with ‘safe’ access already in place!) and Meadowbrook could stay put at the Harlow Centre. The millions saved could then be fed into existing school budgets.

In a FOI request from me of August 31, 2016, on Year 7 (first year secondary) for 2016-2021 admissions combined across Cheney, Oxford Academy, Oxford Spires, St Gregory the Great, and The Cherwell, the following: for 2016: 1081; for 2017: 1146; projected for 2018: 1,110; projected for 2019: 1,223; projected for 2020: 1,208; projected for 2021:1,290.

Yes, the projected numbers might now be greater: for those above the difference in demand for Year 7 secondary places between 2016 and 2021 is plus 209. The Swan, to open in September 2019, would at full pitch be a 1,260-pupil school. Or would it?

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH

Bowness Avenue, Headington