The council’s proposed location for new primary is too far away say dissatisfied parents

Published: 2 December, 2010
by JOSIE HINTON

Free school plan to solve places crisis

PARENTS dissatisfied with plans for a new council-run primary school have decided to take matters into their own hands and open their own free school.

It emerged this week that the Town Hall has earmarked an industrial site in Liddell Road, West Hampstead, for a two-form entry primary.

Financed by the sale of housing on the site, it is hoped the new school would be a permanent solution to the shortage of primary school places in Camden and would replace plans to expand St Paul’s primary. 

It would open in 2015, with the council creating “bolt-on” classes to deal with the problem over the next five years.

But parents in Belsize Park, who have long-campaigned for a new community school, fear Liddell Road’s proximity to the borough boundary means it will serve Brent before it reaches their children.

They are hoping to use Free School legislation introduced by the Coalition earlier this year, which allows parents, teachers or charities to launch state-funded schools, to open a new school in a pair of vacant council-owned hostels in Fitzjohn’s Avenue and Maresfield Gardens – which they say are at the epicentre of the crisis.

Alex Maclean, of Upper Park Road, who faces problems finding a school for his four-year-old son in September, said the bid was driven by “pragmatism rather than politics”.

“There would be no experimental education or crazy ethos,” he said. “This is not a campaign against the Liddell Road school, but unfortunately the site is so far away that it might as well not exist to parents in Belsize Park. 

“We’ve been campaigning for a new school for two years but up until now we have been handcuffed by government requirements for a new site. This new legislation has allowed us to go back and look at sites that Camden had discarded.”

Last year the extra demand for places was met by the temporary Courthope Education Centre in South End Green. Leila Roy, whose son attended Courthope Road, said the Free School would be in the middle of the “black hole,” where parents cannot get their children into nearby schools.

She added: “There are a lot of people in Belsize who have now moved house to be closer to schools. People shouldn’t have to move house just to send their child to a local school.”

But Councillor Heather Johnson, the Town Hall’s cabinet member for children, schools and families, said: “It just isn’t true to say this location is not accessible to parents in Belsize as it is very well served by public transport. The need for school places is not simply contained in the NW3 area, we also have problems in NW2 and NW6 which this school will address.

“Camden’s responsibility is to provide enough places in the borough. The Free School issue is completely separate. That’s about parents saying we want a school around the corner and we want to control it.”