Secondary Schooling (Sevenoaks)

Michael Fallon Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of secondary schooling in Sevenoaks. Parents in the northern part of my constituency have a choice of existing secondary schools in Swanley and Hextable. They can choose the Leigh technology academy and the new Longfield academy, and they also have access to the Wilmington and Dartford grammar schools further north. I am sure that all those schools are looking forward to the package of reforms that is coming from the Department for Education, giving head teachers and their governors more freedom to decide for themselves about the education they deliver.

So I shall focus on Sevenoaks itself. It is particularly appropriate to do so in the week that the new Knole academy opens its doors. There is always something exciting about the launch of a new educational venture and the promise that it holds for a whole new generation of pupils, and I know that the Minister will want to join me in wishing the new academy well under the leadership of its principal, Mary Boyle. It is also right to pay tribute to the enormous personal contribution of the lead sponsor, Gordon Phillips, and to the commitment and hard work of Mike Bolton and his team from Sevenoaks school, the co-sponsors, as well as to the support from Kent county council.

The Knole academy replaces two single-sex schools, the Bradbourne school for girls and the Wildernesse school for boys, and their replacement has involved much discussion and consultation over the past couple of years, not least with parents who, initially of course, supported single-sex schooling. One of the major reasons why those parents were in the end won over to the concept of a new academy, however, was the promise of a new building.

The Bradbourne site was already inadequate, even for the girls’ school that was sited there; it became too small. The Wildernesse site consists of a series of buildings, some of which are more than 60 years old. In fact, the school opened its doors 60 years ago this very month, and its buildings are certainly well past their fit date and need renewing.

Operating the new academy, which is supposed and aims to coalesce two previous schools, is much more difficult on two separate sites that are well over a mile apart. Operating on two sites adds considerably to the costs and management issues and involves the duplication of a whole range of functions that simply would be unnecessary if the school were on a single site. While the site is still split into two halves, it is also difficult for the new management team, educationally I suspect, to build quickly the new ethos and purpose that they seek for a single, all-ability, co-educational school.

The new building was originally promised for 2012, and I must press my hon. Friend the Minister on how much longer it will be delayed. We must bear in mind that the academy has already been delayed, with its launch being about a year later than originally envisaged. That is nothing to do with my hon. Friend; it is down to the long delay in getting Ministers in the previous Government to sign the revenue funding agreement. What will give parents real confidence is a commitment by this Government to the principle of a new building and some indication of the likely timetable. I have pressed the matter several times with the Secretary of State, and as my hon. Friend the Minister knows I have written on the subject to his colleague Lord Hill. I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that parents are now entitled to a firmer indication of when a new building will be started, and when they are likely to be able to move to a single site.

I want to raise one adjacent issue. Despite the arrival of the new, all-ability academy, a significant number of children in Sevenoaks will continue to choose the grammar school route that the selective system in Kent offers. It is right that they continue to have that choice, which has, in recent years, become more restricted owing to the pressure on grammar school places across west Kent. We face an increasing birth rate and the development of some significant new housing. It cannot be right for children in Sevenoaks who succeed in passing the 11-plus then to be allocated grammar school places as far away as Folkestone or Ashford—or indeed, allocated places at non-selective schools, or told to continue to fight for a grammar school place through the tortuous process of waiting lists and appeals. That is especially unfair when so many places—more than 300—are given by Kent schools to out-of-county applicants.

These are currently matters for the adjudicator, who is considering a number of appeals to the existing admissions schemes, and I would not expect the Minister to comment in any detail on that. I am sure, though, that he would sympathise with my view that grammar schools that recruit some numbers from outside the county, as they are entitled to do, need to remember that they are Kent schools paid for and supported by Kent council tax payers and supported by parents who have chosen to live under a selective system.

My main purpose tonight is to mark the launch of the new Knole academy, to wish it well as the first new secondary school in Sevenoaks for a generation, and to ask the Government, in the shape of the Minister of State, to make the commitment to the new building that is desperately needed if the academy is to be a success.

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has made a very powerful case for funding for the new Knole academy. He will be aware that the secondary schools in Sevenoaks, including Knole academy, are a major source of secondary education for my constituents in Edenbridge, which sadly lost its secondary school some years ago. I want to say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I support most warmly and strongly the case that my hon. Friend has made for the funding of Knole academy, which will be of great benefit not only to his constituents in Sevenoaks but to my constituents in the Edenbridge area.

[Michael Fallon]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. He reminds me that the new academy expects to draw pupils from a wider area than my constituency—indeed, from right across west Kent, as Bradbourne school for girls did before it was merged into the academy.

The point I am making—I will not labour it further—is that for the academy to be a success in the short, medium and longer term, it needs to be established in modern, fit-for-purpose buildings on a single site rather than spread across the two sites of the two previous schools. With that, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to give me some comfort.