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Campaign for our secondary school has a long way to go
Now is the time to redouble efforts to secure a new school south of Euston Road, argues activist Emma Jones
PARENTS living south of Euston Road will welcome Camden Council’s “positive step forward” towards answering the long-standing need for a secondary school in their local area.
The council has acknowledged that its own light industrial workshops, on the corner of Wren Street and Pakenham Street (pictured), could be transformed into a four-form-entry school, with a sixth form.
The council had always stated there was no suitable site in our area. Wren Street wasn’t considered until young architectural designers Studio Weave, who were supporters of the school campaign, found it by cycling around, combing the area for council-owned land. Then, at their own expense, they drew up feasibility plans and presented them to council officers in August 2008.
The Holborn and St Pancras Secondary School Campaign is pleased that the council is now “considering how best to secure the potential use of the Wren Street site for a school in the future”. This week we received a letter from schools minister Jim Knight, confirming that the government would fund such a school “in addition to the current ‘Building Schools for the Future’ funding allocation”. We are grateful for the tireless support of local residents, of our MP Frank Dobson and of councillors in the south of the borough, and we are indebted to Studio Weave.
However, we are all too conscious that the battle we have fought so hard is far from over, because this good news comes with two important conditions.
Statistics: Camden, while pressing ahead with its plans to build a new school in Swiss Cottage and carry out its unpopular expansion of South Camden Community School, has finally agreed to undertake new research into local pupil place projections. This will happen in collaboration with neighbouring boroughs and government agency Partnerships for Schools.
We are glad that the council is at last gathering demographic evidence of a need we have all known about for years. However, we are also aware that production of this evidence is a condition of the government’s promise of additional funds, so this work needs to be done thoroughly and without delay.
Timescale: So far, Camden has no plans to open negotiations with existing leaseholders at Wren Street until the last leases run out five years from now in 2014. That means a school might not open there until 2016. Yet anyone who lives here knows that the need has already existed for more than 30 years.
The council claims that the expansion of South Camden Community School will benefit our community in the interim – yet there is no evidence of parental demand for that expansion, no evidence that expansion will benefit pupils educationally, and the plan was only instigated because officers failed to find a site for a school south of Euston Road.
After all this time and effort, and after “finding” the council a site it already owns, should local families really be rewarded with another five-year wait before the building of their new school can begin?
Think about it. Our campaign began in October 2005. If, like some of our supporters, you had a baby around that time, he or she will now be about three and a half years old.
If the council sticks to its plan, those children, now in nursery, could be the first pupils to benefit from a secondary school at Wren Street, while children who are now four or older would already have missed the boat.
In 2016 my own children will be 17 and 20.
We cannot sit back and wait seven more years.
We will energetically fulfil our commitment to work with the council for as long as it takes, but we begin by urging it to:
l ensure that its children, schools and families directorate has the staffing capacity and funds to swiftly fulfil their pledge to provide demographic evidence of our need;
l begin work with leaseholders on the Wren Street site and allocate funds to ensure that it can be made available for school use as soon as possible.
Everyone who has supported the campaign can take pride in what we have achieved so far by simply refusing to take “no” for an answer. Now we need to redouble our efforts to ensure that the council’s pledge becomes a reality.
We encourage all local residents, especially parents of nursery-aged children, to lend their support to this campaign by registering at www.whereismyschool.org.uk
Your toddlers are the secondary school pupils of the future, and together we can make sure they have what every child deserves – the chance to walk to a good secondary school in their own community.
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