Defining the catchment area for The Heights

Following the public meeting last month, The Heights Primary Trust has received a request to justify how the school’s catchment area was defined. In response to these concerns, the Trust would like to present the key data from the Evidence of Demand survey required by the DfE as part of the Free School application process and the relevant and publicly available school admissions data from Reading Borough Council (RBC).

Background to the FreeSchool application process

Reading Borough Council’s forecast demand for school places from 2013 onwards showed that there was an extreme shortage of school places. A meeting was organised by the Caversham and District Residents’ Association, at which this was discussed with the community and the council outlined the free school approach as the best way to address this problem. The Trust was formed to set up a free school, and in order to fulfil the DfE’s criteria for assessment, the Trust was required to provide evidence of the need for a school and the location of that need. They were asked to demonstrate expressions of interest from parents for each of the school’s first two years of operation and illustrate that there was a lack of school places in the area. Expressions of Interest were collected via an online Evidence of Demand survey which was advertised widely across Caversham between November 2012 and March 2013.

Key Survey Results
Thesurvey elicited 363 responses.

  • 99.7% (362) recognised the need for more primary school places in Caversham.
  • 99.2% (360) agreed that a new school in Caversham Heights is needed.
  • 55.7% (190)of parents said they would select The Heights for one or more of their children.

On the basis of the survey, the need for (and support for) a new school in Caversham was clearly demonstrated.

Identifying a catchment area
The Heights Primary aims to serve the west side of Caversham, specifically the Caversham Heights area.  The two closest schools currently serving this area are Caversham Primary and Emmer Green Primary, which are both heavily over subscribed (i.e. they receive many more applications than places available), and consequently only those children living closest to these schools are offered a place, and many children fail to be offered a place, even though they are technically in the catchment area. 

The catchment area for The Heights was defined through analysis of reception intake data between 2007 and 2013 from RBC to establish the area served by the closest existing schools.  The analysis showed that these schools do not adequately cover Caversham Heights. This is evident from the graph below where the edges of the orange and red areas show the furthest distance where a reception place was offered in the years of least coverage for reception children living in the Caversham Heights area:

Map 1 – The Height’s catchment compared to Caversham Primary/Emmer Green Primary Admissions

map1

Notes

  1. The blue border showsThe Heights catchment.  The eastern boundary of the catchment area is based on the locational shortfall from Caversham Primary and Emmer GreenPrimary,and using expert advice fromRBC.  The remaining boundaries were definedby the Oxfordshire Country border (to the north and west) and the RiverThames (to the south).
  2. The orange arearepresents the location of reception places offered by Caversham Primary based on an intake of 60 pupils in 2011.
  3. The red area represents the location of reception places offered by Emmer Green Primary based on an intake of 60 pupils in 2013.
  4. The orange and red borders represent the catchment areas of Caversham Primary and Emmer Green Primary respectively.

Defining the data point
In the absence of a permanent school location, a geographical point within the catchment area (known as the “data point”) was requiredto administer the admissions criteria should The Heights Primary become over-subscribed. The Heights Trust, working closely with experts at RBC, derived the data point by weighting the geographical centre of the catchment area with the location and spread of the demand data collected as part of the Evidence of Demand survey required by the DfE. This was accepted and included in the admissions packs for the September 2014 entry.There are no plans to change the data point once the school moves to its permanent location.

Map 2 – The Heights’ catchment, data point and heat map showing the Evidence of Demand results

map2

Notes

  1. The blue area represents The Heights catchment.
  2. The “D” indicator represents the data point.
  3. The coloured spots are based on the Evidence of Demand survey and represent the addresses of children whose parents said they would select The Heights for one or more of their children.
  4. Several children in close proximity are represented by heat spots with the red spots showing the greater concentration of demand.

 Conclusion

Both the evidence of demand survey and the admissions data from RBC indicate a severe shortage of school places in the Caversham Heights area. The total shortage of school places in Caversham impacts the western side (Caversham Heights) most severely due to the locational imbalance of the existing schools, which are wholly situated in the East of Caversham.

The DfE looked at their own data regarding school places and future demand in the area to satisfy themselves that they could agree with the analysis from the Trust and RBC. They instructed the EFA to find a suitable location for the school in the Caversham Heights area. The site selection process took over a year to complete and resulted in only one site matching the required criteria, being the Highridge property. We remain committed to delivering a new school to finally resolve the geographical imbalance of provision in Caversham, whether this is at Highridge, or a better alternative, if that can be identified and agreed upon.