We’ve been very clear in our opposition to the expansion of Dundonald Primary onto parts of Dundonald Rec, but we think there are wider issues to be drawn out – and also the question of the alternatives. We hope to give you an idea to our thinking below.
Our view
- Merton Council has chosen to trade off one asset (public open space on the Rec) for another (30 extra school places at a particular school). We don’t believe this is a sensible way of resolving the issue of the primary school places shortage.
- Even if you ignore the loss of public open space, the expanded Dundonald Primary school would be much more cramped – the number of children would have doubled, but the floor space only increased by 35%. A more cramped school does not make for a good learning environment, and in due course, we might expect Merton to want to take more of the Rec to make the school less cramped.
- We would seek to put public open space into Trust, so that the community and users would have control of the land, and the Council would have to negotiate, it can’t just take.
- Our solution would be to build a new school in the area (or satellite site for an existing school) – but at the moment, the Council lacks the ‘political will’ to make that happen. See, for example, the contradictions expressed by the Council cabinet as reported on our website here.
But it must be too difficult to build a new school, otherwise they’d have done it already?
We think it’s about political choice. The reason that Labour-run Merton Council hasn’t made any real progress on building any new primary schools is because Labour councillors don’t want to. This means that the Council’s education and planning experts, and all the other resources of the Council, have not been engaged in putting together proper plans for building a new school. The direction from the top at the moment is just to concentrate on expanding existing schools. So quite simply, a Council run by another group, with different priorities, would have made a lot more progress.
A sign of this lack of will is the example of the Wimbledon House site on Kingston Road. Merton Council owned this land, and yet as soon as anyone suggested using it for school places, it was sold off (although we were relieved to see this become a nursery – and so stay within the ‘education’ sector).
So how would you pay for a new school then?
Merton’s capital budget (the money spent on infrastructure) is around £70million per year; we recently highlighted that Merton has problems spending more than around £40m per year (and
Lib Dem councillors have successfully lobbied for an investigation into why this is). This means that millions of pounds of investment are being delayed each year. But that’s an aside . . .
Firstly, Merton Council has already budgeted around £4million to cover the costs of the expansion of Dundonald Primary. So that money could be used in a different way, for a start.
But quite simply, to build a new school we’d also seek support from central Government. For example,
in March 2013 a Government scheme was introduced to give councils the cash to cope with lack of school places. This comes back to political choice again, if you don’t apply for the money from Government to build a new school, then you won’t get it (we note that Merton was awarded money under this scheme to help pay for the expansion of Dundonald Primary).
And how much would a new school cost?
This article is of interest – it sets out
a model of how much money a Council might need to build a new primary. It’s worth noting that “The featured school is a typical example of the new ‘low cost’ family of schools, and is loosely based on the Education Funding Agency’s baseline design for a 630 place primary school with nursery spaces over 4000m2 gross floor area.” This would be a much bigger school than is planned for the expanded Dundonald Primary.
This shows that a large primary school could be built for around £5million – although the cost of the land is not included.
But where would it go?
This is not necessarily an easy one. There is a Council report
assessing the potential for alternative sites here. None of the sites in that report are entirely ideal, but – back to political choice again – if you’ve got your experts working on it and all the resources of the Council, you can find imaginative ways round the problems.
Looking at the roads
covered by local school’s catchment areas, it’s clear that even if the catchment area of Dundonald Primary doubled (this this not guaranteed by doubling the number of places available), a number of local roads would still fall ‘outside’ the catchment areas of nearby schools.
It is the case that increasing the number of places generally in the Wimbledon part of the borough would reduce demand on other schools, which in turn would lead to increased catchment areas for our local schools – and that is probably the best option if a site can’t be found right in the local area.
Well, thanks for addressing the issues.
I really wish it were that simple! If it were then of course I’d support your proposal. But there are major problems which wishful thinking won’t solve.
Financial: Half your budget is missing. The land (in central Wimbledon) would cost at least as much as the building – probably more.
Legal: The council no longer has the ability to open new schools; central government took away that power from local authorities. The council can invite applications for new Free Schools, but it can’t control the content of those applications. Free School proposals which use existing public sector land/buildings are more likely to succeed.
Location: The report you already have is the expert report. It’s not realistic to think that a different set of experts would be able to find a large plot of empty land in central Wimbledon which the first set of experts happened to miss.
The ‘Manor House’ site at the corner of Kingston Rd and Dorset Rd was assessed for a Free School and found to be too small (I’m unsure who does the assessment but it’s not Merton Council – the DfE maybe?).
Re “imaginative ways round the problem”: I agree. I think that making the pavilion 2-storey (so as to expand the school while avoiding cutting into the Rec) is a very imaginative solution.
Any imaginative solution is going to involve an element of compromise – the “not one blade of grass, over my dead body” approach is unproductive. It’s hard to imagine an “imaginative solution” that could come up with a perfect outcome – we can’t create land where there isn’t any.
Just because the proposed expansion is not a perfect solution, that’s not a reason to oppose it, in the absence of better alternatives. No solution is going to be perfect; we need to choose the ‘least worst’.
Re putting the Rec into some kind of quango – I think that’s a really poor idea, because it takes away all democratic accountability. You seem to be assuming that the trustees/directors would agree with you and prevent school expansion at all costs – but what if they didn’t? Unlike the current situation, you’d have no way of appealing their decision – no local government ombudsman, no judicial review, no appeals process at all. They’d just be a private landowner – that really would be ‘giving away’ the Rec.
The land belongs to the public, it should be owned and managed by a democratically elected public body with proper accountability and routes for appeal.
Anyway, thanks for engaging with the issues. I’m glad to see a new Free School proposal and hope it’s successful – frankly, anything to get the necessary school places!
Oh, you still haven’t addressed the question of what, in the absence of central Wimbledon school places, you expect parents to actually do … ?
Just on the point about what parents in central Wimbledon should do, very quickly, the London Schools Atlas is very interesting; it shows the number of children in a given area, and the numbers which attend particular schools (and how far away those shools are). We can see that the children in the area around Dundonald primary attend local schools, the furthest to travel being a small number who attend Joseph Hood Primary School, about 1km away http://www.london.gov.uk/webmaps/lsa/.
Thanks – obviously the financial side of things would be reliant on an application to Central Govt for funding (and yes, land would be expensive).
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the lack of political will point. I do think if there was the will there would be a way. But you are very definitely right that any proposal would essentially require some form of compromise – and we do think that another solution would be ‘least worst’ to creating a school with much less space per pupil, and making more land on the Rec ‘education’ land as opposed to public open space (whether it has buildings on it or not).
You’re right that any such Trusts would have to be set up properly, with a clear role and responsibility and democratic accountability. The Council and ward councillors should play a formal role as part of those groups, as should Friends groups and other users. And yes, they should then be free to make their own decisions.
In answer to your latter point, the Council told us last week that they’ve currently revised down the need for further school places and that they see Dundonald expansion as the last lot of places needed. They plan on continuing a bulge year, iirc, in Garfield Primary. It does occur to me that even with the expansion of Dundonald a number of the roads you highlight would still be outside the catchment area of a school – based on the maps you provided.