Sevenoaks ACE to donate £450

The winners of the school’s competition have now been identified.  Amherst School, Springboard Pre-school and Chevening School Nursery will each receive a cheque for £150 by way of thank you for their help in distributing the Sevenoaks ACE Secondary School survey in July.

Participating schools, nurseries and pre-schools were asked to confirm the number of families at their setting.  Respondents who named the schools, nurseries and pre-schools currently attended by their children were entered into the competition, with the highest percentage of responses in each sector winning £150.

Amherst School received the highest response rate or all schools with 29% of families completing the survey, closely followed by Riverhead Infants (28%) and Sevenoaks Primary School (26%).

Chevening School Nursery achieved a 52% response rate followed by Acorns Day Nursery (30%) and The Lodge Nursery School (24%).

Among the pre-schools, Springboard Pre-school had the highest overall response rate with 54% of families completing the survey – the highest across all categories.  Followed by the Children’s Workshop (37%) and Bradbourne Park Pre-School (33%).

Sevenoaks ACE would like to thank the 35 schools, nurseries and pre-schools that took part in the competition.  

Without these organisations publicising and promoting the survey, the response rate would not have been so high.  It is thanks to their support that we have been able to collate some valuable data that we hope will help to inform decisions being made about secondary school provision for the area for the benefit of this community.

Any School Questions - July 12 2012

On 12th July we held a community meeting at Knole Academy taking the form of a Question Time panel debate.  The panelists were:

• Mary Boyle, Principal Knole Academy
• Peter Read, Education Consultant
• Bill Latimer, Chair, Sevenoaks Christian Free School bid team
• Cllr Richard Parry, KCC

The event was supported by the Sevenoaks Chronicle and chaired by Roger Kasper, Editor.

Andrew & Sarah Shilling of the Sevenoaks Grammar School Campaign were unfortunately unable to attend.

The event was put together at short notice. It was a busy night in Sevenoaks, with a District Council meeting, various end of term school concerts and parent evenings.  We would like therefore to thank those people who were able to participate at short notice and who contributed to the quality debate.

The event was kindly recorded for us by Chris Tizzard - the video can be watched below.  Apologies for the  varying sound quality in places.

Kent County Council Education Commissioning Consultation

Kent County Council has published a mammoth document which outlines its commissioning strategy for early years, primary, secondary, post 16 and SEN across Kent.


http://consultations.kent.gov.uk/consult.ti/EducationProvision/consultationHome


The document itself contains some interesting data on birth rates across the different districts vs Kent and the national picture and Sevenoaks in particular seems to be much higher.  


If you are interested in education provision locally, for any age group, please try to read it and provide feedback.  


Having attended a consultation meeting for Headteachers and Governors today it is clear that there are many valid points that should be raised during this consultation which runs until the 19th June.


The more we as a community get involved in this process, the more likely we are to end up with education services that meet our needs.


KCC is no longer an education provider - it is a commissioner.  What does this mean?  It means that they have to work with providers such as schools, academies, free schools and so on to meet the need for places.  Schools are able to expand almost at will (within their existing buildings) and if expansion will help KCC meet the need for places that it predicts is required, it will fund the capital to create such places.


The educational landscape is changing.  This is another chance for this community to have its voice heard.