Parents and staff at Cornwall’s first free school fear it will soon be closed just three years after it opened at a cost of £4.5m, in a blow for the Conservative party’s controversial flagship education policy.
The fate of St Michael’s Catholic secondary school in Camborne, the first and so far only Catholic free school, will be announced next week, with the school expected to be absorbed into a nearby academy and stripped of its religious designation.
A parent of one pupil said she feared the school would be “airbrushed” out of existence because of its poor performance in recruiting students, with parents put off by Ofsted rating St Michael’s as “requires improvement”, along with poor GCSE grades and turmoil among the school’s leadership.
“No one wants to send their children here, and why not? Because there are plenty of other good schools just around the corner,” said the parent, who did not want to be named.
Rachel Curley, the ATL teaching union’s senior regional official for the south-west, said: “We are deeply concerned about the situation at St Michael’s school and the reported massive hole in its finances. We are worried that pupils, parents and staff will pay the price for poor management at the school in the past.”
The school’s first head, Neil Anderson, resigned abruptly last summer after complaints by teaching unions, and this year rumours began to circulate that the school was in financial difficulty.
A letter from the acting headteacher told parents in March: “We have recently become aware of rumours circulating that St Michael’s is going to close. Can I take this opportunity to reassure you that this is not the case.”
But shortly afterwards parents were told that the Catholic diocese of Plymouth’s academy trust declined to manage the school after looking at its finances – described as “a money pit” by staff – and that it would instead be taken over by the nearby Camborne Science and International Academy (CSIA), which installed its deputy head as St Michael’s new principal.
“As there is no other possible Catholic sponsor, this decision meant that St Michael’s could not continue, legally speaking, as a Catholic school,” John Mannix, director of schools for the diocese of Plymouth, told parents in a letter.
Many parents remain unhappy with the decision, saying that their children benefit from the school’s smaller scale and teaching. “I wouldn’t want to send the dog to Camborne school, if I had one,” one parent posted on St Michael’s Facebook page after the news was first announced.
CSIA did not respond to requests for comment over the school’s future.
The school sits in the marginal constituency of Camborne and Redruth, which the Conservatives won by just 66 votes from the Liberal Democrats in 2010. Sitting MP George Eustice has been involved in negotiations over the school’s outcome, as has the south-west regional schools commissioner, Sir David Carter.
St Michael’s was given the go-ahead to open in Camborne despite warnings that a sustained oversupply of places in nearby secondary schools – some rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted – meant that there was no demand for a free school.
Tristram Hunt, Labour’s education spokesman, said the experience of St Michael’s showed the flaws in the free schools project. “David Cameron’s free school programme has failed parents and pupils, damaging standards and wasting money which would be better spent capping infant class sizes at 30,” he said.
The school had previously operated as a private school in Truro and was given permission to open in 2012 as part of the second wave of free schools. But despite the Department for Education spending £4.5m on land and buildings, St Michael’s has about only 140 pupils, and is unlikely to grow further.
The DfE’s impact assessment warned in 2012: “Secondary schools in the area, like many across Cornwall, are significantly undersubscribed and, over the next few years, the county will see this problem increase as the number of secondary school pupils declines. We estimate that, by 2015, around a quarter of all secondary school places in the county will not be filled.”
GCSE results at St Michael’s in 2014 were the worst in the county, with just 21% of entrants achieving five good passes in five subjects, including English and maths. In contrast, CSIA’s results were the best by a state school in Cornwall, with 71% getting five grades of C or above.
