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FORUM - Opinion in the CNJ
 
Why we need a new school

Frank Dobson argues that parents simply want good schools close to home

THE government’s Education Bill will fragment our education system. Schools run by unelected business sponsors will compete with one another. Locally elected education authorities will have the duty to try to look after the interests of all the children in their area but they won’t have the powers to do anything about it. Schools will have no incentive to recruit children who may be hard to teach. Quite the reverse. Instead of concentrating resources on children most in need, the new education market, like any market, will provide the best deal for the best-off and best-informed.
This policy, which has such strong Tory support, is based on the belief that every parent wants to shop around for schools for their children. I don’t think that is true for the majority. The first choice for most of us is for the nearest school to be good enough for our children and to get them into that school. Recent developments in Camden back up this view.
Camden’s primary and secondary schools are a great success. They are so successful that parents in Islington who want their children to get into Camden secondary schools went so far as to threaten court action if our council went ahead with making Camden secondary schools neighbourhood schools by linking them with Camden primaries.
The national schools adjudicator who decides these things listened to Islington parents, ignored the interests of Camden parents and forced Camden to drop the proposal.
Yet, Camden’s Labour council invests nine per cent more in Camden’s education service than the government’s minimum target while Islington’s Liberal Democrat Council actually spends six per cent less than the Government’s target. But this didn’t count with the adjudicator. He thinks it is okay for Islington parents to benefit from Camden’s council tax that helps fund the higher investment in Camden’s schools while paying less themselves.
This wouldn’t be so bad if there were a surplus of school places in Camden so all Camden children could benefit. But there isn’t. As a result, many Camden children can’t get into the Camden school of their choice. Some can’t get into Camden secondary schools at all. Nowhere is this more true than for children from Holborn, Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and King’s Cross who tend to miss out everywhere as priority is given to children living closest to the existing secondary schools. So children who have gone to their neighbourhood primary school together get split up and are often forced to travel miles in different directions to get to a secondary school with a spare place. Some families move out altogether because there isn’t a local neighbourhood secondary school. Other children go to primary schools in Westminster, partly in the hope it will improve their chances of getting a place in a Westminster secondary school because they know they won’t get into a Camden school. None of this movement promotes cohesion in local communities – quite the reverse. No help on this from the Education Bill.
That is why parents have formed the Holborn and St Pancras Secondary School Campaign to get a new school in the neighbourhood. And that is why I support their campaign.
There is no doubt that there are more children in the area. Ten years ago, the council reopened Christopher Hatton Primary School to cope with the increase in primary school pupils in the area. The children in primary schools nearby, whether from Camden or from other boroughs – mainly Islington – together with the children forced to look for places in Westminster, could fill a new neighbourhood secondary school in the south of Camden. Possible sites include post office land at Mount Pleasant or the Eastman Dental Hospital site in Gray’s Inn Road if that service is relocated by the NHS. The purpose of this new school would be to provide a better deal for children denied places at present.
But, as every child’s education is important, we would have to make sure that pupils going to other schools, such as South Camden Community School and Maria Fidelis, don’t lose out.
We don’t want a new school to be a cuckoo in the nest – gobbling up pupils and teachers. Instead, all the schools could work together, back up one another and perhaps get University College and other higher education institutions to help – but without them making a takeover.
However, one thing would have to be cleared up right from the start – the new neighbourhood school would have to be able to guarantee that Camden children could go there. If Camden tax payers pay for it, Camden councillors provide it and Camden voters vote for it, Camden children should be able to go to it. The Adjudicator should guarantee that a new school would be able to give first priority to Camden children. Fair’s fair. But the Education Bill would make matters worse.

• Frank Dobson is Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras
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