North Swindon parents' hopes for new secondary school dashed

North Swindon parents who attended the Schools Organisation Committee on 17 May to lobby for a 2006 opening of the S1 school

As Swindon's largest ever education project is announced, the hopes of North Swindon parents to send their children to their new, local secondary school have been crushed.

Seven new schools are to be built in North Swindon by Easter 2006, involving nearly £100 million worth of Government backed Private Funding Initiative (PFI) credits and Council funding over the next 25 years.

The project will see:

• a new Hreod Parkway School built on a single site, adjacent to the present upper school;
  
  
• a new primary school to replace Moredon Infants and Juniors;
  
  
• a new primary school in Priory Vale, on the Haydon End sector of Priory Vale;
  
  
• an education campus in Priory Vale, comprising of a secondary school, known as S1, alongside a primary school and two special schools, replacing the existing Brimble Hill and Uplands special school.

Swindon Council launched a consultation process in July 2000 with a view to opening schools in September 2003. But the first PFI bid failed before a better prepared submission was accepted by Government.

People living in North Swindon will be very relieved to hear that work is about to start. The new facilities will be completed by Easter 2006, to open in September of that year. However a decision not to open S1 until September 2007 has upset parents of about 120 children presently in Year 4 who will not have the chance to go there.

Last September, director of education Hilary Pitts came under pressure from parents at a public meeting in Abbey Meads to open S1 in September 2006 rather than 2007. She explained that lack of children moving into North Swindon and fewer than expected babies being born in the area were two reasons for a proposed delay in the opening date.

In May parents discovered that the education department had published a statutory notice in the Saturday edition of the evening paper in March and had not sent information to primary schools. By the time the opening date was to be discussed at the independent Schools Organisation Committee, it was too late to lodge formal objections.

Nevertheless the committee heard submissions from Blunsdon and Haydon Wick parish councils, from the temporary governing body and also parents calling for a 2006 opening.

However it unanimously backed the education department's case that to stay within the available budget and to utilise all secondary places across the town, S1 should open in 2007. The department says it would be £400,000 short if the school started operating a year earlier and on the assumption that 40 children attend schools outside the borough, mainly those who travel to Fairford, there will still be twenty surplus places available in schools in other parts of Swindon for North Swindon children.

Joanne Wood from Abbey Meads said parents of children in Year 4 were dismayed. "My husband and I are very unhappy about this decision. We moved to the area in 1998 because we were told that a new, local secondary school would be ready. Now we don't know where my daughter will go."

The new Hreod Parkway School is due to open in January 2006. It is hoped that the community facilities to be included at S1 will be available from September 2006.


Seven new schools about to start - click here for details