The Daily Mirror article on 14/1/11 ‘Class War / Your kids are wrong for our Classes’ contained numerous inaccuracies. While the newspaper might sympathise with the campaigners against a new community school in south Battersea it nonetheless has a duty to present the facts at least accurately and to represent fairly the response of those who are grossly misrepresented in the article (as do all media channels).
If anyone has any queries about the recent and wholly biased press coverage, then please let us know at school@thensc.net.
To make clear the facts:
Is Bolingbroke Academy being ‘set up by fat cat bankers’?
• No. More than 2,500 people have signed up to support the campaign for a new school in the former Bolingbroke Hospital. The GMB has identified around 25 (out of hundreds who objected to the site’s planning application for residential development) who work in the finance sector (including banks) – less than 1% of our community support. They did not tot up the many other teachers, doctors, health service workers, local government workers, legal workers, full time mothers and people who work for charities who are as or more prevalent in the campaign. In short, there is no employment group that dominates the neighbourhood or the campaign.
• Of the parents in south Battersea who have been at the heart of the Neighbourhood School Campaign (NSC) since its start:
- Jon De Maria works in the construction industry
- Another runs a local cafe
- Three others are full-time mothers (none of whom have husbands or partners who work in banking or anything related to it)
Will Bolingbroke Academy ‘refuse to take poor children’?
• No, the opposite is true. The feeder system would make the school more inclusive not less and widen the geographic and demographic group that would get access to places at the new school. Straight line distance (which is used at other Wandsworth schools along with banding and the like) would have excluded all but those in the streets around the school which everyone acknowledges is a middle class area. Feeder schools (as well as being fair and transparent) extend the geographic area that gets access to the school and the demographic mix – given that two of the schools have free school meal entitlement well above the national and London average. Without the feeder school policy most if not ALL of the pupils could come from Honeywell and Belleville or indeed from adjacent private schools. Contrary to being a barrier to working class children the inclusion of Highview and Wix schools gives these children access to pupil places at the new school.
• There are natural boundaries in every community. The feeder schools are part of the south Battersea community, ie. the area where secondary places are scarce and which the new school is expected to serve. Belleville and Honeywell are just 428 and 783 metres from the school site, while Highview is 879m. Falconbrook School (which is 1,642m by shortest walking route) is in north Battersea and already close to a good secondary school (Battersea Park, which is one of the most improved in London). Wix is closer to the Bolingbroke site than it is to Battersea Park school. It is a shame that Falconbrook has now been portrayed as some sort of ‘sink school’ in the national media as a result of the GMB press release. This does a great disservice to the head, staff and governors at Falconbrook who are all working incredibly hard.
• Contrary to the claims in the Daily Mirror, Highview and Wix primary schools have 41% and 31% of their pupils respectively entitled to free school meals – well in excess of the national and the London average – suggesting a far broader demographic and income mix than the Mirror article implies. Many of their pupils come from the Peabody Estate and the Winstanley Estate, hardly the leafy homes of ‘well heeled bankers’.
• There was a wide consultation on the admissions policy and all local primaries (including Falconbrook) were sent leaflets and letters and encouraged to respond. We had meetings with a number of primary schools to discuss the policy and invited Falconbrook to meet us. The consultation closed on 31 December. Of 159 respondents, 118 (75%) agreed with the policy and 41 opposed - although most of these did so on the basis that their children went to private schools and would not be in feeder primaries. Arguably this suggests that the “rich bankers’ children†are likely to be those excluded by the policy, in favour of children in local state primaries. At its heart, our school campaign is about a local school for local children. We are not a political group and it is a great shame that some have chosen to make ‘political capital’ out of our children’s education.
• The academy's admissions arrangements will be managed by Wandsworth Council and are subject to the same admissions legislation as other maintained schools. All schools require oversubscription criteria to determine how places will be allocated if there are more applications than places available. If there are fewer applications from feeder schools than places available all other places will be allocated by Wandsworth Council admissions department.
• Lastly it is worth noting that the campaign for the new school was supported by all three political parties at the last general election, all of whom acknowledged the shortage of secondary places in the Northcote area (where birth rates are increasing at one of the fastest rates in the borough).
Best,
Jon De Maria
for the NSC team
Menu
)
