About the Action Group

The WD3 School Action Group was established in 2009 by a group of local parents seeking more local secondary school places for local children.

It is only after a public campaign that the education decision-makers have really started to listen to local parents about the poor situation in South West Hertfordshire.

Although there are plenty of good local selective schools, school selection processes are such that children living in the less socially mobile parts of Maple Cross, Mill End and Rickmansworth children find it almost impossible to get into them. If they do not get in because of a specific academic, creative or sporting aptitude, they cannot get in on distance because they live too far away. Instead, because of the priority they give to aptitudes, these schools give precedence to children from as far away as Harrow. Given the Local Education authority’s past decision to close down local schools and sell the land to developers, local children have to attend the 3 Local Education Authority (LEA) schools in South West Hertfordshire, the worst 3 performing schools in Hertfordshire.

Our campaign is seeking 2 goals:

1) New LEA secondary schools serving the increased South West Hertfordshire children population.

2) An increase in the number of school preferences (from a paltry 3) that secondary applicants can list to match the application process offered to applicants by neighbouring LEAs.

New Schools:

When the Local Education Authority, Hertfordshire County Council, published figures in 2010 about future demand for school places, it admitted a significant shortfall in primary and secondary school places for local residents. It is now forecasting that children in Reception in 2011/12 (age 5) face a shortage of 320 places when they transfer to secondary school in 2018!

The LEA has publically stated that South West Hertfordshire will require 2 new secondary schools to serve anticipated local demand. However, the LEA is planning to deliver these schools in 2016 and 2020 – too late for a whole generation of secondary school children.

The path to getting these schools is dependent upon so many factors – local planning authority permission from Three Rivers District Council, successful application for funds, etc. Thus, we in the WD3 SAG are monitoring the progress of these projects very carefully. But this will not be enough…

Because we cannot afford to wait until 2016, we are pressing ahead with the provision of our own “Free School”. Under the present government, all new schools will be Free Schools (for more information about Free Schools, click here) – even the LEA schools planned for 2016 and 2020. We are working with Reach Learning, a group of successful teachers, to apply to the Department for Education to open a new local non-selective Free School in September 2013.

To find out more about Reach Learning and to register your child (without later obligation) to the Reach Learning Free School, please click here.

More application places:

LEAs neighbouring east of Hertfordshire offer children the chance to apply to 4 secondary schools. LEAs neighbouring South West Hertfordshire offer 6 preferences. Hertfordshire’s LEA offers only 3.

By the time children have listed a couple of selective schools and a reserve non-selective school, they do not have the chance to look at schools in other neighbouring LEAs.

However, children applying in neighbouring LEAs can afford to list schools in their own LEA and in Hertfordshire too. This is especially attractive to children neighbouring South West Hertfordshire since their own LEA expects each child to apply on their own merits and does not operate a sibling rule like Hertfordshire (i.e. Hertfordshire allows all siblings automatic access to the same school once one elder sibling has successfully applied).