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Parents from south of Euston Road campaigning outside the Town Hall in january for a new school. |
Borough’s pupils deserve better
Geethika Jayatilaka argues that plans for a new school will fail some of the most vulnerable students.
THE Building Schools for the Future Programme is an ambitious Labour agenda to rebuild or renew every secondary school in England.
It is the biggest single government investment in improving school buildings for over half a century.
For Camden (despite the historically high levels of local investment in our schools) it offers a once-in-a- lifetime chance to transform education in the borough, to make every school in Camden a place where students will be inspired to learn and a chance to solve the long running shortage of school places.
However, far from using this money to create an ambitious vision and lasting educational legacy, the Tory/Lib Dem proposals are sadly lacking.
This is perhaps not surprising given that they have been conjured up without input from the people who really know what is going on and neither parents nor the educational community have had a chance to help shape these important decisions.
Instead of a genuine dialogue we are presented with a fait accompli, a chance to comment on the proposals after they have been agreed - with the worry being that the main driver is political expedience rather than what is right for students and parents in the borough.
Education should be our weapon of choice in the fight against social inequality.
Getting five GCSEs increases earning power by a quarter. A university degree adds more than £100,000 to lifetime earnings.
Here in Camden where we have huge disparities of income and opportunity we should be using investment in education to tackle this inequality and to raise achievement in some of our most deprived communities.
It is incredibly disappointing that there is nothing about this in the Liberal Democrat and Tory plans for a new school in Swiss Cottage.
Particularly worrying is the lack of detail about the special schools that educate some of Camden's most vulnerable pupils.
A recent committee meeting heard the concerns of the Frank Barnes school for profoundly deaf children - worried about plans to bulldoze their building without knowing if they were to be rehoused.
Despite the huge sums of money at stake, there is little in the way of evidence to back up the choices which have been made by the Tories and Lib Dem's.
The choice of site for a new school has proved particularly divisive for Camden as a community. Despite the Tories and Lib Dem's claim that this is not a competition between the north and the south of the borough, many parents living south of Euston Road feel that it is a battle that they have fought and lost without ever having a chance to make their case.
These parents continue to hope for a chance of a second new school. However, now the BSF money has already spent, a new hurdle is created of finding finance to build the school - leaving parents south of Euston Road one step further away from a new school than they were before these proposals were agreed.
Having held the children's portfolio under the previous administration, I do have some sympathy for the difficult choices which need to be made in deciding how this money will be spent.
What I have very little sympathy for is the decision to find the easiest solutions rather than the right ones. Families across the borough deserve better than this.
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