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Parents’ concern over secondary school
• ROBIN Young’s letter (Don’t block expansion, April 3) misrepresents the council’s March 25 consultation meeting on the future of South Camden Community School.
This reflects a failure – apparently shared by many officers and elected councillors in Camden – to understand what is at stake for the children of Somers Town and King’s Cross.
Of the 14 people I counted present, most were SCCS parents or people living close to the school. Governors from neighbouring primary schools, including Edith Neville and myself from Argyle, also attended.
I went because of the deep concern expressed by Argyle parents that further expansion will damage the secondary school. Most King’s Cross parents have children in SCCS; the vast majority believe that South Camden is currently a vibrant and stable school; its achievements a credit to headteacher Rosemary Leeke, her dedicated staff and SCCS’s dynamic pupils.
All Camden’s schools will benefit from Building Schools for the Future money. New investment should further improve SCCS.
However, South Camden is the only school expected simultaneously to undertake a massive and hugely disruptive expansion.
Recent improvements in SCCS will inescapably be jeopardised if the school is obliged to squeeze in a further 300 pupils and expand its sixth form.
SCCS sits on a small site in one of the most deprived wards in Camden. Councillors need to fundamentally rethink the expansion plan; too many pupils crammed together amid years of building work is a recipe for chaos.
This is separate from the debate about the need for a new school south of the Euston Road. Paradoxically, though Robin Young ignores it, this point was made, both by the two (not 10 as he claims) Where is My School voices, as well as Frank Dobson MP, present at the consultation meeting.
David Styan
Governor,
Argyle Primary School
Tonbridge Street, WC1
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