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Failure over new school
An open letter to Camden Council
• YOUR Building Schools for the Future proposals should never have been agreed last week. Here are seven reasons why.
1. The proposed new school is in the wrong place.
The whole purpose of BSF is to raise standards and close the achievement gap between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers. By building a school in one of the wealthiest parts of the borough, you are failing to tackle the significant disadvantage faced by many children in other, less affluent, parts of Camden. A resident of the Adelaide Road area is quoted in your own report as saying: “Like many parents in the immediate area of the school, we had rather assumed that we would be sending our children to fee paying secondary schools.”
Swiss Cottage can in no way be described as an area of disadvantage. It is the wrong place to build the school this borough so desperately needs.
2. There is little evidence to support the ‘need’ for a school at Adelaide Road.
At no stage have you presented any statistically-valid research into the need for places in the area surrounding Adelaide Road, despite this being required by the Schools Organisation Committee in March 2006. Figures showing “unplaced” children do not represent a need in themselves. Your own report has justified the numbers of extra school places needed by including what you call “reduction in loss to the private sector”.
You know that the south of the borough has Camden’s highest proportion of disadvantaged children. You cannot fail to know that there is also a particular shortage of places in the south of the borough. Our primary school population has doubled in a generation, and the population is growing. Can you really justify spending £25 million plus on a school for children who might otherwise go to private schools, when the south of the borough’s children, the vast majority of whom do not have this choice, are left with so little?
3. Expanding South Camden Community School is irresponsible.
Much recent research evidence points to the fact that large schools are bad for children.
SCCS is already coping with the most disadvantaged cohort by far of any Camden secondary school. If any school in Camden needs some stability in order to consolidate its gains, it is SCCS. Parents and teachers at that school are extremely worried about the prospect of expansion. It is not in these children’s best interests.
Nor will it solve the shortage of places for children living south of the Euston Road. More housing and a new two-form entry primary school on the King’s Cross development will ensure that any extra places are absorbed by children living closer to the school than anyone in Holborn, Covent Garden or Bloomsbury. You claim to be building schools for the future, and yet your plan has not taken this into account at all.
4. The Adelaide Road area already has a school.
The proposed new school is to be built within 500 yards of Quintin Kynaston School, whose headteacher is on record stating her aim that her successful state school should serve its immediate community, a community which includes the Adelaide Road area. Not only will there be a duplication of provision in this area; the existence of a new school at Adelaide Road will threaten the stability of QK.
5. Haverstock School will be damaged.
Building a new, ‘high standards’ and partially-selective UCL-sponsored academy just half a mile from Haverstock, the school in Camden which serves the second-most disadvantaged cohort of children in Camden, will destabilise that school’s recent progress. Staff and governors at Haverstock have spoken publicly of their concerns about the effect the proposed new school will have.
6. Frank Barnes School will be destroyed.
You are planning to close a renowned school for deaf young children, surely one of the most disadvantaged groups in our whole community. You should be proud of the achievements of this school and should be anxious to ensure it stays in the borough. As it is, its future is still in jeopardy.
7. You do not have the support of people in Camden.
Your report states that “BSF is a high-risk programme for the council”, and that “building stakeholder support will be important in the successful development and delivery of the programme and the possibility of failing to do so presents a risk”.
Judging from the comments in the report on the consultation process, you are a long way from having stakeholder support.
Again and again, people have come back to the key issues of location, open competition and the future of the special schools. Your consultation has demonstrated that you do not have a popular mandate on this issue. We urge you to reconsider, and to build a school south of the Euston Road.
POLLY SHIELDS
and 14 other supporters of Holborn and St Pancras Secondary School Campaign
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