London's over subscribed schools

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Tony Blair's promise to transform secondary education has a hollow ring for many parents in London, where letters currently landing on doormats are spelling out the limits to parental choice.

It isn't that there are no good secondary schools in the capital - there just aren't enough.

Parents who failed to win places for their children at popular schools - often voluntary-aided or former grant-maintained schools - are now hearing the results of appeals. For the majority, the news will not be good.

Their dilemma is stark. Staying on the waiting list for an over-subscribed school means a gamble with their child's future.

They may not know until the end of June where their child will go in September. For more than 160 children in Ealing, the answer last year was nowhere. They are still being taught in a local library, after the borough failed to find them any places.

For those without the means to pay for their children's education - in London, one in eight do so, twice the national average - the alternative is a place at one of the struggling comprehensives which make up the flip-side of the capital's polarised school system.

But across the capital, parents are increasingly refusing to accept the choice. They are demanding new local schools, inspired by the creation of the Charter School in Dulwich, which opened last year after a three-year campaign by parents.

Similar campaigns are now under way in Lambeth, Kingston, Hackney, East Dulwich and in Lewisham, where 130 parents still have no places for their children in local schools.

They have been offered places at a school more than seven miles away, only recently declared by inspectors to be no longer "failing". Many say they will keep their children at home rather than send them there.

Campaigners don't just want more schools. They are challenging an admissions system which, they say, stands parental choice on its head, enabling the most successful schools to choose children.

Pressure on the next government will mount, not just in London but in other big cities, to re-examine the system which allows church and other voluntary-aided schools and foundation schools (former grant-maintained) - all nominally comprehensive - to control their own admissions.

In London, these successful schools take children from several boroughs, usually after interviews which, critics say, are designed to select the brightest. Typical questions can include: "Do you know where your local library is?" and "Do you have somewhere private to study at home?"

The same applies to City Technology Colleges (CTCs) and specialist schools which can select a proportion of their intake after testing for "aptitude".

The result is that many parents living near the capital's most successful schools stand little or no chance of getting their children into them, while less successful schools continue a cycle of decline.

Ministers acknowledge the polarising effect of these admissions arrangements, pledging in the Green Paper on schools which fore-shadowed its manifesto, to find "better ways of avoiding concentrating the most disadvantaged pupils in the least popular schools".

Parents in Lewisham today described the human cost of this polarisation and the rejection by popular schools which is every bit as brutal as the old 11-plus.

Samantha Feuillade, whose son Alexander goes to Edmund Waller Primary in New Cross, has been refused places at Addey and Stanhope School, a successful voluntary-aided school 10 minutes' walk from her home, two CTCs, Haberdasher's Askes Hatcham College just 200 yards away and Bacon's CTC, two miles away.

Like scores of other parents living in the north of Lewisham, they have been told that places are available at Malory School, a former failing school more than seven miles away. "I will keep my son away from school rather than send him to a school I don't think is good enough," she said.

"When my son learned he had been rejected by all the schools we applied for, he sat there and apologised to me. He said, 'I'm sorry mum, is it my fault?'

"It really pulled me apart that he should even think that. Parents who miss out on the popular schools have no choice but to send their children to the rest.

"The choice isn't there. They talk about improving schools, but at the moment the best schools are picking and choosing children."

Carol Seiderer, whose son Jim goes to Edmund Waller Primary School, said: "I think it is unacceptable educationally, socially and psychologically to put children under this sort of pressure and anxiety. At the moment, the only school my son is being offered is a school which is too far from where we live and which has very poor reports. It is just not acceptable."

Maxine Smelly, whose son Aaron goes to St James's Primary School, said: "My son cried when he heard he was only being offered a place at Malory School. Children know what kind of reputation the school has. I cried as well and I'm not the only parent who did so. I will keep him away from school rather than send him there."

Lauren Frample, whose daughter Clarry goes to Lewisham's Monson Primary School, failed to get her into either Haberdasher's Askes or another local voluntary-aided school, Prendergast. "She has recently taken her SATs. Motivating her to do any work was a nightmare, she is so disappointed. She says, 'What's the point. I'm not going to school.'

"Regardless of whether Malory is a good school, it's not fair to expect a child living in New Cross to go to school in Bromley. If that is the only option, we would educate her at home. We are simply going to have to find the means to do it.

"This happens right across London. It speaks for itself. The Government isn't providing an adequate secondary education for my children."

The Lewisham campaign hopes to persuade the council to open a new school - possibly on the site of Telegraph Hill School which is closing this summer after an abortive "fresh start" attempt to raise standards.

But a spokesman for the borough said it was hard to get Government funds for new capacity while surplus places remained in local schools - even if they were in schools parents did not want. He added: "We are listening to parents and working with them and hope to be able to achieve a satisfactory solution."

 

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