Neighbourhood School campaign urges parents to act NOW!

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  In reply to some of the points made here:
  
  1. We have visited a number of our borough schools inc Chestnut Grove and BPS, where we met the heads and have had useful discussions about why we started the campaign and how we can work together moving forwards.
  2. We were not on the Free School list last week because that related to 2011 openings. We will be in 2012.
  3. Exc the faith schools, all other schools bar two are over subscribed in the borough (only Elliot and Southfields have surplus places). For example, Chestnut Grove receives 750 applications for 150 places and there are a number of closer state primaries to CG than our own local schools. Chestnut Grove makes no attempt to build relationships with our community primary schools.
  4. There are just not '1000s' of surplus places in the borough - exc the faith schools there are in fact 173 across the whole borough.
  4. Our campaign is very much about a socially inclusive intake, and will be secular and non-selective. We are choosing to stay in the state system and want a genuine comprehensive intake that will include kids from Highview for example, which has excellant academic results at KS2. So we reject the idea of a 2 tier system - in fact we are creating the opposite, an inclusive school where the kids from the estates can mix with middle class kids and the like.
  5. The support that the council is giving us may mean that additional monies are secured from the DfE to help other borough schools - so again the perception that we are denying extg schools capital exependiture is not true (again the opposite may happen).
  
  I do not exepect anyone who objects on ideological grounds to begin to take note of the above. But what matters for us is what works, we are non political and seek only to open a school in a part of the borough that has no such school for the benefit of all our local children.

  By JonatNSC at 19:35 on 13/09/10

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  I agree with much of what local humanist has to say. I find it bizarre that Wandsworth have been spending so much money on faith schools, when church attendance is apparently at an all time low. Churchgoers can send their children to any school of their choice. However, as an agnostic, my choices are very limited, but I still have to fund faith schools via my taxes.
  If memory serves, the last secondary school that was built in the borough was Saint Cecilias, yet another school my child is barred from attending.
  I have to say that I am rather perplexed as to the motivation behind the NSC campaign. They claim that they are unable to apply to local schools because they are outside of the catchment areas. My understanding is that the schools nearest to the NSC campaign are Battersea Park and Chestnut Grove, neither of which appear to have catchment areas, so where are the NSC getting their erroneous information from?
  It is rather telling that when repeatedly questioned by a commenter on The Guardian online, the founder of the NSC was unable to explain why Chestnut Grove had many pupils from the Battersea area, albeit not Nappy Valley, which is somewhat at odds with his claims about catchment areas.
  It is also rather telling that despite "having the strongest case in the country", the NSC does not appear on the list of 16 free schools that have been approved today.
  Unfortunately, the NSC campaign would appear to be motivated by parents who have whipped themselves up into a state of middle class paranoia about schools they know nothing about and have probably never visited.
  Therefore they are demanding a state funded private school to keep their children away from what they perceive to be "riff raff".
  Perhaps the good folk of Nappy Valley might actually deign to support their local state schools and realise that they live in a diverse community of many, not a enclave of a privileged few.

  By JoanHolloway at 14:19 on 07/09/10

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  I suspect that it is about more than faith. Battersea Park is not a faith school and the argument that it is too far away is spurious. Could it be that Battersea Park takes in children from the housing estates?
  
  Certainly some of the parents of children at Honeywell school thought this was the case. Not all the parents at Honeywell agree with the "free" school campaign and research into Sweden and the US tends to demonstrate that it would be a divisive route to follow.
  
  If you want private education, pay for it, why should I fund other people's elitism.

  By exteacher at 12:44 on 07/09/10

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  The demand for another secondary school in the Battersea area arises because of the existence of a religious school - a Catholic School. The continuing existence of "faith" schools is ridiculous and makes a complete mockery of the whole notion of education. The existence and demand for schools on the basis of parents supernatural beliefs is shameful. So is the lying, deceit and hypocrisy of those parents and the religious leaders who are well aware of the shenanigans and artifical church attendence in order to get children into these selective "faith" schools. Shame on those parents, priests/vicars and Councillors who maintain this travesty. Religious schools are selective, divisive and judge education by examination results only. Things are hardly any better here than the awful situation in northern Ireland which is a religiously divided colonial enclave. Unless all schools become secular we will have a proliferation of "faith" schools Catholic, C of E Jehovah's Witnesses, Jewish, Muslim, etc. - children being labelled and segregated according to the parents crazy beliefs. Speak out against this lunacy now.
  A local Humanist.

  By localhumanist at 00:21 on 07/09/10

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  The demand for another secondary school in the Battersea area arises because of the existence of a religious school - a Catholic School. The continuing existence of "faith" schools is ridiculous and makes a complete mockery of the whole notion of education. The existence and demand for schools on the basis of parents supernatural beliefs is shameful. So is the lying, deceit and hypocrisy of those parents and the religious leaders who are well aware of the shenanigans and artifical church attendence in order to get children into these selective "faith" schools. Shame on those parents, priests/vicars and Councillors who maintain this travesty. Religious schools are selective, divisive and judge education by examination results only. Things are hardly any better here than the awful situation in northern Ireland which is a religiously divided colonial enclave. Unless all schools become secular we will have a proliferation of "faith" schools Catholic, C of E Jehovah's Witnesses, Jewish, Muslim, etc. - children being labelled and segregated according to the parents crazy beliefs. Speak out against this lunacy now.
  A local Humanist.

  By localhumanist at 00:20 on 07/09/10

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