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Claims of ‘consultation’ on Pimlico misleading
• STEVE Farnsworth, director of schools for Westminster and also chairman of Pimlico School Interim Executive Board, tells us that 55,000 leaflets were issued seeking local views on the school’s “closure and reopening as an academy” (Letters, December 14).
The leaflet was also available for anybody to respond to via the council website.
However, only a tiny minority of recipients have had an opportunity to attend meetings for further clarification and discussion, which is unfortunate given some of the confusing and misleading statements made in the leaflet and elsewhere.
One properly advertised meeting with Steve Farnsworth and representatives of Future (the proposed sponsor), was held on November 15 for current Pimlico families and parents of Year 6 children.
Reporters from your paper were excluded. There was also a meeting for Pimlico Special Music parents, though this relied on parent emails to spread the word.
The leaflet states: “other meetings for the local community and general public will be announced shortly, and held later in November.” I have seen no announcements. In papers presented to councillors, meetings about the rebuild of the school have been claimed as consultation meetings, although the rebuild is a separate issue, and a meeting with the Pimlico School Association (“likely to be late November”) still hasn’t happened.
The consultation leaflet states “because the future status of the school has now been decided and a sponsor identified…” This suggests that academy status with Future as sponsor is definite. Another letter to parents from Councillor Sarah Richardson reinforced that impression, so the point of the consultation is not clear.
The consultation leaflet says: “Visual and performing arts, already very important in Pimlico, will be maintained and areas of excellence such as the ‘Special Music’ course will be built upon.”
A letter to West End Extra, published on July 9, from Cllr Richardson, said: “Not only will academy status mean Pimlico gets significant extra funding, it also offers the potential of allowing the popular specialist music facility at the school to remain.”
The WCC website, referring to the plans for the new building, refers to “facilities to support the school’s specialism as a performing and visual arts college... and bringing on site purpose-built accommodation for Pimlico Special Music Scheme”.
There’s not a word in all this that suggests that the future of PSM as a nationally renowned centre of excellence is threatened, not only by funding issues (which parents have been trying to address by looking for alternative funding) but also by Westminster’s decision that the school will no longer be permitted to select any students on aptitude once it becomes an academy, whatever the sponsor’s view on this might be.
So tens of thousands of people have been invited to partake in the consultation without being given proper access to information.
Responses to the earlier consultation were ignored or reinterpreted to suit the council’s agenda. As the Reverend Nicholas Holtam said in your paper last week, the consultation has been a “charade”.
ELENA HENSON
Gray’s Inn Road, WC1
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