Consultation into secondary school shake up about to end
Time is running out for parents who object to Hurlingham and Chelsea school being run as a bi-lingual language academy.
Since April, Hammersmith and Fulham Council has been consulting parents in the borough over a number of plans to change the way education is delivered.
The consultation will finish on Monday (June 2), when plans will be submitted to Whitehall.
The council is consulting on two options.
Option one is to turn Hurlingham and Chelsea into a language academy or trust providing education from age 3 to 19, with the long-term option of offering bi-lingual education in partnership with the French government.
This would mean bringing the secondary schools Henry Compton and Fulham Cross into one school spread across two sites.
The second option involves bringing together Fulham Cross,
Henry Compton and Hurlingham and Chelsea into one large
collegiate school. Hurlingham and Chelsea would still offer bi-lingual education under this model.
The council hopes to attract up to £120million through the government's Building Schools for the Future programme - and say that they will only get
this money if they are 'bold and ambitious.'
However, the plans have attracted criticism from some quarters.
Parents living locally have formed a group called The Parental Alliance for Secondary Schools (PASS) and say they would prefer to have more of a say in the running of the schools.
They are also concerned that once Hurlingham and Chelsea comes under the joint control of the already over-subscribed Lycee Francais, local children will miss out on places at a school which has been described by Ofsted as the second most improved school in the country.
In a statement on their website www.passfulham.co.uk, the parents write:
“The Academy debate is complex and would take hours to unpick, but essentially we see no benefit in it. As an example, the only academy Hammersmith and Fulham has, Burlington Danes, is the worst performing school in the borough by a mile and is failing badly.
“There is no automatic benefit to becoming an Academy especially as no-one knows who will be the sponsor governing body.
"Hurlingham and Chelsea school is the second most improved school in the country. There seems to us no need to meddle with the amazing work being done there and that to support it would be a better option.”
May 28, 2008