Annual panic leads to call for a new school to be built

PARENTS and pupils across Camden are facing a scramble for school places at the borough’s top-rated secondaries.
The panic has led to renewed calls for a new school to be built.
With the waiting lists for places more than 100-strong once again at each of the borough’s nine secondary schools, pupils living more than a mile from the front gates have found it all but impossible to make it into their first choice school.
Precise figures for the number of children searching for a last-minute place are being kept under wraps by officials until a full council meeting on Monday.
But a handful of 11-year-olds are believed to be sitting at home this week while their friends begin a new life in year seven.
Many more have been forced outside the borough into Westminster, Islington, Brent and Barnet, where schools often fail to live up to Camden’s high standards.