Parents demand public consultation on ‘merging’ primary schools facing shutdown

Pupils staged an open-top bus protest last month. Photograph: Josef Steen / free for use by LDRS partners

Islington Council is facing calls to launch a formal consultation over parents’ and stakeholders plans to merge two primary schools earmarked for closure.

The Town Hall has formally suggested shutting down St Jude and St Paul’s and Highbury Quadrant schools, due to both seeing a falling number of pupils on the register and mounting financial deficits.

In the face of much opposition and campaigning from families and staff, the local authority has maintained that the move is the “last resort” and is set to vote on the plans next week.

But families have put forward alternative ideas to combine or ‘merge’ the two schools, which were sent to the council during the formal consultation period.

This option was previously used by the council in a similar situation affecting Duncombe and Montem primary schools last year.

Other councils like Hackney, who are also proposing to close some schools due to falling pupil rolls and creaking finances, are planning to merge four schools together.

But a report published this week by Islington’s executive member for children, young people and families, stated: “[A] merger will not sufficiently increase pupil numbers to materially improve the school’s prospects of a financially viable future.”

Drawing on the previous process of ‘amalgamating’ Duncombe and Montem, Cllr Michelline Safi-Ngongo reasoned that “in an environment of significant local surplus capacity parents and carers cannot be safely predicted to take up their guaranteed place at the receiving school”.

Her report added: “A common theme of feedback in Highbury Quadrant Primary School parent and carer meetings during the representation period was that a large number of parents and carers specifically did not wish their children to attend a school with a religious character.”

The council also stated that neither school appears to have been consulted in the development of the proposal.

However, parents from both schools dispute these arguments.

Speaking to the Citizen, one parent, Alicia, said: “In the hypothetical scenario that one school can remain open and the other closes, the council will have to go to each school and ask this question in reverse to each of our parents.

“We obviously want each community to save their own school, but there was no consultation being carried out to assume St Jude and St Paul’s pupils won’t come to us, and vice-versa,” she said.

Alicia also provided proof that school leaders and governors had given their support for the “impressive” plans.

In their letter to the local authority, parents argued that despite its secular status, Highbury Quadrant had a disproportionately high number of Muslim children on roll compared to the population of the local area.

“Merging a community school that is majority Muslim with a Christian faith school would undoubtedly be difficult, and a formal merger would be impossible,” they argued.

“However, we believe that because over 80 per cent of the school is, in reality, made up of secular families, it is a possibility.”

On 27 March, St Jude and St Paul’s parochial church council (PCC) submitted its proposal to bring Highbury Quadrant pupils over to the former school’s site.

One parent, Andri Andreou, said the council had been presented with a “risk-free, cost-free alternative to closing a school, which is apparently their last resort”.

“Why aren’t they willing to explore that?” she said.

“What we’re arguing is just for them to put out a consultation. It’s a four-week process, and they already did it with Duncombe and Montem schools.

“If [the council] can evidence what they’re saying by gauging the actual views of the parents – and it so happens at the end of that consultation that Highbury Quadrant parents say they won’t move across – then they will have done their due diligence.”

A Town Hall spokesperson told the Citizen: “The council has thoroughly and transparently assessed all proposals put forward, including two separate proposals to amalgamate Highbury Quadrant and St Jude and St Paul’s primary schools.

“A parent from Highbury Quadrant has proposed the closure of St Jude and St Paul’s and amalgamation onto the Highbury Quadrant site, while the PCC of St Jude and St Paul has proposed closure of Highbury Quadrant and amalgamation onto the St Jude and St Paul’s site.

“The assessments are published in the reports to be considered by the Executive Committee on April 24.”