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Working hard to find school places for all of our children
• LAST week the young people in Year 6 who had applied for a secondary school place were sent details of the place they have been allocated.
The Press saw a big debate over the apparent randomness of secondary school admissions and inevitably there will be a number of disappointed families in Camden, including some still without a place.
Officers will be working hard to find places for those without a confirmed secondary school place.
For the medium term, the council is also proceeding apace with our plans to build a new secondary school at Adelaide Road and to expand South Camden Community School as part of our Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. We have also had confirmation from the government that it would be willing to grant BSF funding for a secondary south of the Euston Road, which might be possible on the Wren Street site from 2016.
Turning to primary education, we have plans under way to expand Emmanuel School in West Hampstead and the King’s Cross redevelopment will provide a new primary school. However, the money available to councils under the government’s Primary Capital Programme is much less than that available under BSF, and we are also faced with the dilemma of how we can find, let alone afford, sites for new schools in areas where we would all like to have them.
There have been reports of a number of private schools struggling financially. Should any of these be based here, I will be happy to work with them to explore the possibility of them becoming academies or maintained schools. It would be foolish were any private school here to go to the wall without us first exploring the potential of moving it into the rather diverse family of schools which now enhabit the maintained sector.
CLLR ANDREW MENNEAR
Executive member for schools
Frognal & Fitzjohns Ward (Conservative)
NW6
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