New Schools Crisis for St. Margarets

12.30.29pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 4th May 2004

The annual crisis over the lack of primary school places for children in St. Margaret's surfaced again this week but in an extreme form. This year 39 local children have been refused admission to Orleans Infants, some living as close as 200 yards from the school, and have been allocated places miles away - as far as Hampton Wick or Heathfield - involving several changes of buses in some cases.

MP Vincent Cable has taken the issue up with the council and said "parents are baffled that this problem has occurred yet again when the opening of the new and expanded St Mary's on the Orleans site was supposed to signal an end to the pressure on places. The underlying problem is that the council made a very bad misjudgement in not taking the opportunity of the redevelopment on the Octagon site to insist on a new school as part of the planning agreement. Now that that site is being developed there is no prospect of parents in the north of St Margaret's having a local school for the foreseeable future. A case is being made by the excluded parents for a bulge class to replace the one which comes to an end this year; but I know from experience that this is a seriously unpopular option for the school".