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Campus a silly name
• THE Golden Lane Campus name for Islington’s new Finsbury school is a duff title.
It sounds like a sales pitch for the 2,564 flats on the wealthy Golden Lane estate and the Barbican estate of the City of London opposite.
Golden Lane is a boundary street with the City. Only 80 Islington residents live in it, but parents from City flats have a right to apply to have their children educated in the “campus” as boroughs cannot confine schools to their own residents.
The thousands of much-less-well-off voters in nearby Islington could be forgiven for suspecting that social selection could be quietly in the offing to get higher positions in league tables. That, of course, would be denied.
It is some “campus” – two-thirds of a hectare or one-and-three-quarter acres.
The main open spaces are a bus park and small recreation areas. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “campus”, an Americanism, as the grounds of a university and all examples given are US.
Perhaps the children aged three to 11 are to be kitted out with mortar boards and gowns. The four councillors involved, though, should turn up at the opening wearing dunces’ caps.
These Lib Dems, who must OK the name, have allowed the school to be called after an estate, the Golden Lane estate, that used to return the only Conservative majority ballot box when it was part of Islington.
It opted for the City when boundaries were redrawn in 1993.
The councillors are Ursula Woolley, executive member for children, and the three Bunhill (Finsbury) councillors, Donna Boffa, Ruth Polling and Jyoti Vaja.
The main street entrance appears to be in Golden Lane. The Whitecross Street side is twice as long but is a 30- foot-high, prison-like wall, relieved with some coloured panels.
Whitecross Street is a busy market street and the school is opposite the main local shopping centre, including the Waitrose supermarket. Golden Lane is a quiet street opposite the City Police barracks.
The Whitecross Street side is a disappointing outcome. The previous wall was prison-like. This was pointed out in the consultation. The new wall is three times as high.
Perhaps the coloured panels there are a sop – quite an architectural triumph.
LEO CHAPMAN
Dufferin Street
EC1
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