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Research this plan for school properly
• THANK you for your coverage of the Council’s Building Schools for the Future programme. Your leader piece is spot on: the consultation process cannot be ‘fit for purpose’ if the decisions are made first, then shared with the ‘stakeholders’ after the event (Choice? What does it mean, Oct 12).
Parents in the south of the borough are being assured that there is no alternative to the decision to build a new school in Swiss Cottage, where its catchment area will be almost exactly the same as that of Westminster’s Quintin Kynaston school, a quarter of a mile away.
But we know that the council hasn’t done its research. It is happy to use the worrying statistic that only 47 per cent of Camden secondary-aged children attend Camden schools to back up its decision.
Did this data come from the council’s research team? No – members of our campaign did that piece of research. Absolutely no analysis into which wards in the borough suffer most from the lack of secondary school places has been carried out, nor into patterns of school place take-up or parental ‘preference’, nor into whether the catchment for a new school at Swiss Cottage will actually reach those children living outside the catchment area of other Camden schools.
Can we really be comfortable with the idea that our elected council is about to spend an enormous amount of our money on a set of proposals which they simply ‘hope’ will increase the number of Camden children able to go to a Camden secondary school? Most of us would do more research when buying a new computer!
In the south of the borough, 180+ children every year (equivalent to a sixth form of entry school) go through the secondary admissions process knowing that they live outside the catchment area of a single secondary school, Camden or otherwise.
The situation is getting worse as the population of this area increases. The BSF money will not come round again in our lifetimes. It is vital that the council reconsiders these ill-thought through proposals and does its research properly. Then perhaps the children living south of the Euston Road will finally get a fair deal in their education.
POLLY SHIELDS
Holborn and St Pancras Secondary School Campaign
www.whereismyschool.org.uk
Millman Street
WC1
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