Still not enough school places, so our children suffer

WHAT price a primary school place in Camden?

Parents in Hampstead and Belsize Park would give their eye teeth for one. 

It is no wonder a movement to create a so-called free school has found support.

Volunteers are offering to help out in the classroom to make the system work because they know there has been a long-running places problem that the council has failed to solve.

Free schools are criticised for taking money away from existing schools and increasing segregation. They may threaten established union rights and are not democratically accountable.

The arguments surrounding the creation of free schools have been well rehearsed.

In favour – they satisfy local parents and give them a sense of control often missing at a conventional school.

Against – they open an irreparable rift in the established education system, leaving a school still dependent on public money, albeit supplied direct from Whitehall.

But would we be having this debate at all if Camden had satisfied a real demand for more places?

Local authorities are notoriously slow to act but the demand for a school in Belsize Park and south of Euston Road has produced a clamour from parents for more than 10 years. Their protests have been chronicled in our columns for years.

Politicians have hidden behind all sorts of excuses.  Financial ones.  Planning difficulties. And all the time, parents have had to put up with them. 

Labour may not like it but the Toby Young free school campaign – too easily scoffed at as a Tory ploy – gained ground because Labour created a policy vacuum that allowed it to grow. Privately, they probably recognise this.

Meanwhile, it is amazing that in the Belsize ward there is not one single non-denominational primary school. And in Hampstead, there is just one.

Camden’s latest planning figures indicate that this September there will be a  shortfall of 90 reception class places. The majority of the population are non religious.

Three years ago parents raised this as a matter of urgency. But despite much talk the council has failed to come up with an permanent solution.

This year we learn that a child whose home overlooks a playground of a primary school can only be found a place in Kentish Town. 

Instead, his parents must make arrangements to meet him almost one and a half miles away. Two buses. A long walk, every day. How many more will be punished for the council’s historic failure to get to grips with this problem?  

Published: 14 July, 2011