Choice doesn’t come into it – where is our school?

Published: 18th March 2010

An open letter to Camden’s political leaders:
• WHERE is our school?
We are parents of the Year 6 class at Christopher Hatton Primary School.
Last week we received secondary transfer offers for our children.
For one or two of us it was like winning a lottery, for those of us who were offered none of their preferences it was a deeply distressing kick in the teeth, and for many of the rest of us it was a mixture of relief and disappointment to receive an answer to the question we have all been asking for years: “Where will my child end up?” Choice does not come into it. 
Among those who did get offers, 24 children from our class are going to 13 different secondary schools in several different boroughs. Each year around 180 local children are facing this desperate situation.
We want to ask you: “Why?”
In spite of a vigorous four-and-a-half-year campaign (and campaigns dating back for 30 years), fought by local parents; in spite of identifying a suitable council-owned site on which to build, we still have no local secondary school for our children to apply to.  
The latest excuse from our (Lib Dem/Tory coalition) council is that they cannot prove that we “need” a school. They tell us that central government defines “need” by comparing the number of school places in the whole borough with the number of residents. They say the extra places Camden plans to provide in other parts of the borough, funded by Building Schools for the Future, will meet “need” in the whole borough until 2017. They say projections suggest we might “need” a school in 2025. 
We are not a “percentage of a borough population”.
We are a central London community. Though our children come from different backgrounds and faiths, they are neighbours who walk to school together, eat together, and play together.
Our children’s bonds unite us as parents. We believe that the key to sustaining this cohesion is to build a neighbourhood secondary school in which community members are active stakeholders.
We cannot wait another 15 years for this to happen. 
We are asking you for a commitment to redefine our “need” for a secondary school, based on the actual needs of our community, and to provide targeted finance for sustainable local provision. Why should our children stop walking to school together and instead get on 13 different buses and tubes?
Our primary teachers, who deal with the fall-out from this injustice year on year, understand the true meaning of need. As parents we apparently have a legal right to express a preference for a particular secondary school for our children. As a community we need a local school to choose. 
MS BEGUM, MS BENEY, ANNE BERESFORD, PENNY DRAPER, MISS GARDENER, ANDREW GILLMAN, TAHIMA ISMAEL, EMMA & MARTIN JONES, TESSA & ALAN LARNER, JOLIKA & SUFIAN MIAH, EMMA MORGAN, MR REID, LORETTA SEALY, MR & MRS SZCZEPANSALI, MRS & MRS TOLGA
with the support of
GEWN LEE (Headteacher)
c/o Christopher Hatton Primary School