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Why I fear for school’s future as comprehensive
• SO, Future, John Nash’s charitable trust, is set to become Pimlico School’s academy sponsor. For we all know, it’s a done deal with Westminster Council and a mere formality that on Monday it will be going to cabinet for approval.
There are plans to involve some of the charities that Future has helped to fund to run at Pimlico the extra-curricular activities they specialise in.
The £2 million endowment fund that Future will be expected to set up, should generate as much as £100,000 of interest annually. This would have to be ploughed back into the school for extra-curricular activities, thereby helping to fund these very same charities. This is John Nash’s charitable arm.
Future proposes to use Alpha Plus, a successful management business involved in the private education sector, to help guarantee Pimlico’s future success. The problem is, however, that the biggest investor in Alpha Plus, is Sovereign Capital, a company founded by John Nash. He is the non-executive chairman and chairs the investment committee. Does anyone spot the conflict of interest?
I fear for Pimlico’s future as a fully-comprehensive school should it be turned, against parents’ wishes, into an academy. Pimlico sits on very valuable land, and I have no reason to believe Westminster’s assurances that it will retain its current “community” ethos.
Future proposes a first specialism for the ‘academy of history, maths or science, and a second specialism of visual and performing arts. This, I believe, will be the demise of the highly-respected special music course.
The music course is being audited as I write. Excellence doesn’t come cheap. Am I therefore to deduce that excellence should only be the domain of those able to pay privately for it?
Georgina Schueller
Address supplied
Education vision of Future
THE vision of Future is rooted in its belief that city academies are excellent vehicles to transform the lives of a significant number of young people.
The charity has expressed its enthusiasm for building on the strengths and positive features of the existing school while focusing firmly on the highest expectations and by its desire to improve the lives of the children the new school serves.
Importantly, Future is strongly committed to its belief that all children can learn and be successful in their endeavours and will thus commit to always having a non-denominational and comprehensive admissions policy that serves local children of all abilities.
Future is also keen that parents and the wider community are proud to be associated with the school and will be keen to engage both in their vision from an early stage if selected as sponsor.
Steve Farnsworth Westminster Council
Director of Schools and Learning
We’ll fight
• WESTMINSTER is riding roughshod over the wishes of the parents, staff and students of Pimlico and, despite massive opposition, is still attempting to impose academy status on us.
We will, of course, fight this imposition knowing as we do that it means the end of comprehensive education at our school. And now that we know that the proposed sponsor is venture capitalist John Nash, it becomes clear just how little the council values the opinions of the diverse community it exists to serve.
Westminster are prepared to hand us over to a clearly inappropriate sponsor in order to push forward with the privatisation of state education within the borough.
The council must listen to the wishes of parents, staff and students, and keep Pimlico as a community school with a comprehensive intake, which is run by the state and which serves all of the cultures and faith groups who make up the local population.
To shut its ears to the wishes of local people would be a financially motivated betrayal of the community it serves.
Westminster Council recently voted to turn Pimlico School (where I work) into a city academy. I am morally opposed to what I see as the stealth privatisation of education and would appreciate it if you could show your support by signing our online petition to the Prime Minister which is on the Downing Street website:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Pimlico/
Bridget Chapman
Teacher
Pimlico School
Bad idea!
• WE think an academy is a bad idea for Pimlico School because it will only choose certain students and it won’t be comprehensive.
If you only choose the brightest students what will happen to the others? Where will they go? Pimlico is a very good school and should stay as it is.
Two Year 10 pupils
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