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| 31,000 people deserve one secondary
school |
Has the Town Hall realised how urgently another
school is needed? Campaigner Emma Jones thinks not
A protest in St George’s Gardens, Holborn, last month |
I AM very glad that Lucy Anderson, Camden Council’s new
executive for schools, has written that she is considering “the
possibility of a new secondary school for our community” (What
parents want and kids deserve, November 3) and we greatly appreciate
her showing her support for the Holborn and St Pancras Secondary
School Campaign by attending our protest in St George’s Gardens
on October 22.
Whilst we have no argument with her statement that “all pupils
in Camden primaries who applied were offered a place in a Camden
secondary for this year”, it might be useful for readers to
be made aware of a slightly bigger picture.
The number of Year 6 children currently living in Camden (derived
from the 2001 census) is approximately 2,046. This breaks down to
1,039 males and 1,007 females.
According to the Camden secondary school admissions brochure, there
are 1,505 secondary school places on offer in the borough this year.
This breaks down to: girls 628; boys 123 and mixed 754.
This adds up to a shortfall of more than 500 places across the board,
and highlights a particular lack of provision for boys. If we remove
from the calculation those attending private prep schools up to
age 13, the shortfall is still about 400 and that is without counting
all the children from bordering boroughs who have an entitlement
to places (based on proximity), thus reducing the number of places
available to Camden children.
Where do our Camden children go? The answer, in the case of the
school my children attend, is that they are spread to secondary
schools far and wide, away from families, peers and neighbours.
We would all do well to start looking at what this is doing to our
communities. Furthermore, a crucial group left out of the equation
are the Camden children who are having to go to primary schools
outside the borough because of a shortage of primary school places.
This is particularly clear in our area south of the Euston Road
where we have five primary schools (approx 180 places) for 270 children
a year (again based on 2001 census), so about 90 children travel
to primaries over the borders, mostly in Islington and Westminster.
These children are not being included in Camden Council’s calculations
as they are not able to attend Camden primaries.
Other children unaccounted for are those who didn’t apply to
Camden secondaries. Some of these are pupils at Camden primaries
whose parents discover (as I did recently, to my dismay) that all
the Camden schools I thought were right for my daughter were too
far away from our home for us to come into their catchment area.
Apart from my strongly held belief that children should go to school
within their local community, I won’t apply to schools where
my daughter has no chance of an offer.
Since we have no secondary school south of the Euston Road (for
a population of more than 31,000) we, along with many others, will
have to take our chances outside Camden until such a school can
be built. We will all suffer from the uncertainty and disappointment
this situation creates, and those who suffer most will be our children.
Lucy Anderson states that all applicants were offered a place, but
it would be useful to know when these offers were made and whether
the places were at a suitable school for each child.
A situation where a child goes on to a waiting list and only gets
an offer once the term has started is not acceptable to any parent,
particularly if the school was not even on their list of choices.
As demographics shift and needs change, we need to change our schools
provision in response, and we are heartened to see that Cllr Anderson
is working with parents to fully research this matter.
In our opinion a formal public consultation process would be the
safest way of ensuring that all families are heard and that no one
is left out of our calculations. But, whatever the process, we all
have a responsibility to respond quickly to this urgent need.
• Emma Jones, of Millman Street, WC1, is a member of the
Holborn and St Pancras Secondary School Campaign. |
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