Admissions ‘unsustainable’ for Harington School - Rutland’s only sixth form

Rutland’s only state school is at risk of becoming a ‘honeypot’ with admissions becoming unsustainable, its executive head teacher has said.

Stuart Williams, who is in charge of the Rutland and District Schools Federation, which includes Oakham’s Harington College, said the school’s original purpose was to educate Rutland children, but it is ‘at risk of becoming a honey pot rather than a local sixth form provider’.

He told the Rutland school’s forum last week: “Harington admissions are becoming unsustainable and we don’t ever get post-16 data to support any decisions about post-16.

“Harington was built for 300 students and this year we had 192 admissions into Year 12.

“If we change anything it would be a disadvantage to sixth form children.”

He said the local education authority did not provide any data about where Rutland’s post 16 students were going after their Year 11 studies ended.

Harington College is the only state sixth form in Rutland and the county does not have a vocational post 16 college. Harington, which opened in 2017, is rated as outstanding and is purely academic with pupils having to achieve a grade 6 or 7 to study A-levels there.

Rutland pupils who do not get the grades to study at Harington or who do not wish to study there, have to go out of county to other sixth forms at places such as Melton, Corby and Stamford. This September the local authority cut the funding support for post 16 school transport, which means many families had a bill of £1,000 for transport, £400 more than they had expected.

A decade ago Casterton College in the east of the county had plans to open a sixth form but these were dropped in 2017 after headteacher Carl Smith said numbers of applications could not be guaranteed.

Rutland County Council's education officer Gill Curtis said from now on the council would share the destinations of Rutland’s post-16 pupilss with the school's forum.

She said there is sufficient capacity in the primary schools in Rutland, but currently there is not much capacity in Rutland’s secondary schools. Many of the applications, particularly at Uppingham Community College are from out of county pupils.