A member of Dales Academies Trust Your views are important to us and we are happy to try and answer any questions you have about our new school. You are welcome to email us any time at newschool@dalesmat.org.
Here are some questions we’ve recently answered:
Free Schools are academies, which means they are centrally funded and independent from the local authority. Academies are allowed more freedom than maintained schools over how they are run and what they teach, although they are still inspected by Ofsted. Most academies have converted from maintained schools, but Free Schools are all newly set up schools.
Yes, everyone is welcome. If we are oversubscribed, NYC will allocate places considering solely disability, medical and social need, siblings at the school and distance from school.
We will be opening in September 2024 for Reception children only. The DFE discourage new schools from opening to all year groups initially – preferring gradual growth starting from reception – and this is what we have committed to. We wouldn’t want to ‘poach’ children settled in other schools and want to build our own school community from the ground up. There is an identified need for more school placements in Northallerton, but this need will develop gradually as more families move into new housing.
We plan to work with other local schools, including Trust schools to ensure that pupils have older role models in the form of buddies, then as the children enter KS2 we will work closely with secondary schools to ensure that they have experiences of being with older pupils ahead of their transition to high school.
No more than 30 children per class.
We will not be opening a nursery initially but will continually assess the need for nursery provision.
We will ensure there is wrap-around care available if parents require this, either by providing our own or working with an external provider.