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Pupils from Frank Barnes’ school protesting in Camden |
Signed, sealed and delivered
After months of heated debate, UCL’s sponsorship of academy is approved
IT should have been a milestone moment for Camden’s pride of senior councillors, the moment where they clinched a deal with University College London to open a new city academy in Swiss Cottage.
After all, as a press release faxed out with such haste that cynics could be forgiven for thinking it had been prepared in advance of last Wednesday’s final vote, Camden has hauled in a world-class university as sponsors for the new school.
But as councillors congratulated themselves at the prospect of an academy which could produce a new generation of talented scientists and maths students and be the envy of other London boroughs due to its high-profile sponsor, there must have been one or two council chiefs who left the Town Hall with alarm sirens ringing in their heads.
If the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition’s plans go wrong, nobody can say it wasn’t warned.
Not since the debate on the redevelopment of the King’s Cross railwaylands have so many different groups come together to condemn council policy.
Firstly, the cabinet of senior Lib Dems and Tories listened as children, parents, teachers and governors from Frank Barnes School for the Deaf children argued against its eviction from the chosen site on the corner of Harley Road and Adelaide Road – while its future still remains uncertain.
While the actress Sadie Frost, whose nephew Sean is a pupil at Frank Barnes, brought some showbiz glamour to the protest, councillors could not have ignored the march and demonstrations through the streets of Camden Town and King’s Cross which climaxed in the chamber.
Offers of tacking a new Frank Barnes unit onto an existing Camden primary school or sending pupils to Blanche Nevile in Haringey, where lessons are not all taught in sign language, have been met with little or no enthusiasm.
Instead, Frank Barnes, campaigners argue, should have its own new site.
Then came protesters who are staunchly against the whole philosophy of outside sponsorship, members from the National Union of Teachers and the Camden branch of the Campaign for State Education, including journalist Fiona Millar and Camden’s former education supremo Lucy Anderson.
Undoubtedly, the school may help a batch of pupils reach previously uncharted success in unpopular subjects, but critics are asking how it will help students that don’t fit into the elite bracket which UCL will surely target first.
As the protests piled up, there was no sign of Malcolm Grant, provost at UCL – although he had managed to make a press statement celebrating the new decision before the evening was out
Instead, UCL were more visibly represented by union staff who want their leaders to pull out of the scheme on the grounds that the university would be of more use helping all of Camden’s schools rather than just one.
Finally, there was a further deputation from parents living in southern wards who have campaigned for a new school in their area.
With Camden using £200 million of government funding, families who each year struggle to find a place for their children asked when their difficulties would ever be addressed. A sore point among these campaigners is that the chosen site is just moments from Quintin Kynaston in St John’s Wood and a short walk to Haverstock School in Chalk Farm – whereas there is no secondary school at all south of the Euston Road.
The besieged cabinet could, at least, point to a letter pulled together by a group of parents at Emmanuel Primary School in West Hampstead. They claimed that the opposition was just a minority of “activists”, perhaps writing without sight of the army of protesters that have turned up to each council debate on the subject and were there again on Wednesday night.
The arguments have been rehearsed in the same room on several occasions. The coalition has never looked remotely like changing its strategy. The councillors who voted ‘yes’ must have left the three-hour debate nursing a headache from the demonstrations.
They must know by now that they will suffer more than a migraine if the grim predictions become a reality. |
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