College consults over admissions
Holyport: Move would mean more places for local children
Holyport College is proposing to change its admissions in a way that will reduce its intake of Windsor pupils and make more places for Holyport secondary school children.
The free school for children aged 11–19 is looking to cease accepting new classes of Year 9 day school pupils, starting from September 2022.
For the last several years, the college took 26 students into Year 9 each year. Instead, the school is planning to double its intake of Year 7 students, from 26 to 52.
For Windsor pupils, this is bad news, as Windsor schools operate under a three tier system – with no Year 9 intake, teens looking to attend Holyport College could only stay in their middle school for a single year before needing to transfer.
“As a parent, are you really going to leave your child in a school for one year?” said councillor Helen Price (TBF, Clewer & Dedworth East). “It’s disruptive for the child, it’s not good
for stability,”
However, for Holyport residents, it means more places for local children.
Ben McCarey, headmaster of Holyport College since 2019, said: “At our inception, we promised to be all things to all people. As well as being a local school for local children, we also tried to be a co-educational option for the Windsor students. The reality of that is that we were failing in both of those.”
He said that in an average year, the college has only been accepting between four and eight local children. As a small school, it was also not serving ‘the overwhelming majority’ of residents from Windsor either.
Mr McCarey added that Holyport is ‘an educational black spot’ with no transport links to any of the Maidenhead schools – thus, the college needs to make itself more available to Holyport residents.
“There has been quite a
bit of correspondence about this in the past,” said councillor Leo Walters (Con, Bray). “As it’s a local school very near the town centre, I welcome these changes – it can only be a good thing for Holyport residents.”
Bray councillor David Coppinger said: “When Holyport College was conceived and built, residents assumed they would have priority and were appalled to find that they didn’t. People had bought houses on the basis they would be able to send their children to the college.
“I’m delighted by this, as it means Holyport children who go to Holyport Primary can go to the college if that’s the school they want to go.”
A formal consultation is needed before the official admission number can be changed.
Holyport College has invited residents to share their views. To respond to the consultation, visit tinyurl.com/y6jvu6sw