Bite-size education morsels

Published: September 8, 2011

IT’S with sadness I see free schools take their first steps into our education system.

I’ve no desire to criticise specific schools but I am concerned about the trend that these schools create.

Education is not the first public service in this country that we’ve seen broken up into bite-size pieces, ready for private companies to devour. That process has generally seen services delivered at a lower quality and a higher cost with democratic accountability lost.

We are being assured that free schools are not a step towards for-profit education (mainly by people who went to private schools) yet the Swedish model (upon which free schools are based) saw a massive expansion of the private sector and the evidence shows no improvement in standards. The market has no place in our schools yet those at the high table seem determined to make sure that nothing can happen in this country without someone skimming profits off the top.

While greater autonomy and flexibility sound very appealing we can give parents, teachers and (heaven forbid!) children more control over their schools without having to push them out of the state sector.
Jim Jepps
Walker House, NW1

Possible win-win

I WRITE to support the campaign for the use of the two hostels as a free school for Belsize Park children.
We have an excess of schools in this area, but, with the exception of Fitzjohn’s, none that can dependably serve our community. These two buildings represent, now and for the foreseeable future, the only opportunity for an accessible community school.

We all appreciate the severe pressures and conflicting demands that Councillor Theo Blackwell faces, but to take a decision before all the facts and opportunities are known is perverse. Only after the outcome of the free school application is known can a reasonable and defendable decision be taken. If then it is decided to sell, so be it. But it is also possible that a win-win outcome can be found. It is only a delay of a month.

To do otherwise deprives our families of the only chance that they have for a local community school, but risks seeming partisan. 
Malcolm Grove
Belsize Lane, NW3

In progress

OVER the summer the first work started on Camden’s schools, funding reinvested in the community by our policy of disposing of redundant or dilapidated properties.

Builders have been busy with a wide range of improvements, some of which will continue through the winter.

These works were chosen because they represented the highest priority across the entire school estate, starved of funds since the new government withdrew £200million plus of school modernisation funding that so many other councils received. 

Examples of primary schools benefiting from building works include: Beckford: new toilets, new lift (in progress) for children who attend the resource base, and new boiler; Brecknock: new windows (final phase) and external repairs; Brookfield: window repairs and renewals, roof repairs and other external repairs; Gospel Oak: new windows throughout the school; Hampstead: kitchen and dining hall improvements, roof repairs and insulation, and (in progress) boiler house renewal and safety works; Kingsgate: roof renewal to dining hall and kitchen, complete rewiring of the school and new energy saving lighting; Rhyl: kitchen refurbishment, modernisation of heating system and new power supply to prevent the heating and electrical breakdowns the school has faced over recent years; Torriano Infants: replacement of rotten fascias and works to reduce overheating and improve air quality.

Kitchen renewals or improvements took place at a further three schools. Minor asbestos safety works were also carried out at 16 schools and children’s centres. Major works are nearing completion at Primrose Hill Primary and the expansion of Emmanuel school has started.

In November we will be promoting a major green initiative by helping schools to reduce their carbon emissions (saving money in heating bills).

All of this community investment comes from sometimes difficult decisions to sell old publicly-owned buildings.

It is the first tranche of a five-year programme to invest Camden money in local schools and improve classrooms. It will also save schools and the taxpayer money in further repairs down the road.

In a time of cuts elsewhere, we believe our “Plan B” for schools is the right thing to do.  
Cllr Theo Blackwell
Cabinet Member for Finance

Think again

THE ex-Camden hostel in Fitzjohns Avenue is an excellent location for a free school in Belsize Park to which my grandchildren would be able to walk to school from their home.

Reconsider the decision to sell this building. Might I suggest that Cllr Theo Blackwell looks at the site, which Camden owns, and rents to a private school, The Phoenix, to see if that is suitable for the free school if he cannot wait for a few weeks to hear the decision of the education department.

A bit rich is it not?
Colin Briggs,
NW2

Fast money

REASONABLE people can take different views on the issue of the new “free schools”.

In your September 1 Comment, you assessed the various motives of the Coalition and Labour in relation to this, given the present issue in Belsize Park. You refer to the “recent” revelation of a grant by the Department of Education to the New Schools Network as a reason for Labour concern. The D of E announced the grant on November 23 last year.
R Dilnott-Cooper
Belsize Park, NW3

The Editor writes: The grant was indeed announced in November, but the recent revelation I referred to was that the handover of the money had been “fast-tracked”. This was shown in emails leaked a couple of weeks ago. I do apologise, however, that a printing error turned the sum of the grant into £500million, when it was in fact £500,000.

Not for free!

SADLY, like most things, the proposed Belsize free school doesn’t come for free.

As a father of young children I have enormous sympathy with parents who want their children to go to a local school.

So why is the council selling the two properties the school proposers want, rather than giving them to the free school to use? Because – in a supreme twist of irony – the government cut most of the money we were meant to get to repair our existing schools to give a better education to thousands of children across the borough.

This, and other factors, leaves us £400million in the red on capital investment, a situation we are having to sort out without any help from Whitehall.

If education secretary Michael Gove would give parents and the council assurances that he would foot the bill, assurances the council have asked for, that would be great. But he won’t, which leaves everyone disappointed.

While there’s clearly demand for primary places in Belsize there is actually greater need in the corridor between Finchley Road and Kilburn Hugh Road. The council is addressing this by proposing a new two-form entry primary in West Hampstead.
Cllr Mike Katz
Labour, Kilburn ward