In view of the Torridge District Council Planning Committee discussions being held today pertaining to the planning application for the Route 39 Free School, you may be interested to see the Impact Assessment for the Route 39 Academy Free School, recently released by the Department for Education.
The Department for Education report has only recently been made public, at a time when Route 39 Academy had already expected to have been granted permission to proceed with the construction of its 700 place school at Steart Farm, Bucks Cross. Route 39 would prefer not to have had this information made public, given their repeated claims to support sustainability of rural communities and the catastrophic effect that this report will have on our local secondary school provision and the pupils, teachers and parents that rely on these schools.
This report clearly shows that both Holsworthy Community College and Great Torrington School are at risk of closure due to a reduction in financial viability in the event that the Route 39 Academy Free School is granted permission to open.
Under Threat of Closure Due to Route 39!
Supporters of both Holsworthy and Great Torrington secondary schools, along with the Principals of Bideford College, Braunton Academy, Budehaven School and other local LEA and independent schools have consistently argued that there is no sustainable demand for a fifth secondary school within the proposed Route 39 Academy catchment, a fact that has been borne out by the massive under-subscription of children to the proposed new free school.
Meanwhile, the DfE have finally confirmed that there is currently an excess capacity of over 1100 secondary school places within the TDC area, with more than 665 surplus places within the direct catchment of Route 39 and little, if any perceived future demand, as numbers of secondary school age children within the Torridge area continue to fall in future years. The report clearly states that all the existing local secondary schools were undersubscribed in 2011/12 when the impact assessment was conducted, a situation that has continued in 2012/13 and 2013/14 and a fact that the trustees of Route 39 have continually chosen to ignore.
The impact assessment is also fundamentally flawed as it seeks to downplay the real impact of this proposed new free school by drawing direct comparisons between Holsworthy Community College and Braunton Academy, based simply on a distance calculation ‘as the crow flies’!
The DfE also need a lesson in geography, as anyone living in North Devon will be aware that in order to reach Braunton from Bucks Cross, one needs to cross both the Rivers Torridge and Taw, via Barnstaple. This is certainly not a distance of 11.3 miles as the DfE state (the distance is in fact 21.2 miles), and quite obviously, as the report states, the consequential impact on Holsworthy Community College of opening another 700 space free school in its immediate vicinity will be significantly greater than any impact on Braunton Academy.
Parents opting to send their children to Route 39 will inevitably deplete the cohorts of students attending existing local secondary schools, As these school rolls decline and as this report implicitly suggests, our local secondary schools may be forced to make additional teachers and support staff redundant and ultimately to close.
Another local secondary school and 6th form college, Budehaven, has been completely omitted from the impact assessment, presumably because it is just across the county border, and yet Budehaven is only 17.5 miles from Bucks Cross and will also suffer significant financial impact from a reduction in pupils should Route 39 be allowed to proceed.
The DfE impact assessment concludes for both Great Torrington School and Holsworthy Community College that “The Free School may affect the long term financial viability of the school.”
As each existing local secondary school sits at the very heart of its community, they are particularly important in our small towns, where they act as a focal point for our rural sustainability. We simply must not and cannot allow our communities to live under the threat of closure of our local secondary schools in this way.
Whatever happens today, I would strongly urge all parents, particularly those with children at Holsworthy and Great Torrington Schools, to read this report, consider the impact on your family and your children of your local secondary school closing and demand that your local Councillors protect our rural towns and our children’s’ education by immediately opposing this unwarranted, ill-conceived and expensive free school experiment.
northdevongovernor 