Secondary School Petition Submitted To Hounslow Council

Concerned Local Parents Want Action Regarding Lack Of Local Secondary School Places

Brentford Parents were recently galvanised into action when they realised they had a long weekend to draft a petition and get it signed by as many local people as possible before presenting it to Hounslow Council's last executive meeting before the election.

Petitions were circulated round the local primary schools and publicised here on TW8 with an online petition as well. If you haven't signed it please do so to show support on online petition as it's not over yet.

Councillor Peter Thompson receiving the petition from Sara Ward, with Colin Woodley (Strand on the Green parent), Bee Mitchell (Lionel Road parent), Kath Richardson (St Paul's parent) and Monique Alfondi (Green Dragon Parent)

The Leader of the Council, Councillor Peter Thompson introduced the submission of the petition to the executive, stressing how important this issue of secondary places is for those of us in TW8 and then read the petition into the minutes. Sara Ward, who has two children at St Paul's School, where she is also a governor, then formally presented the petition with 322 signatures to the Executive of the Council, along with parents from local primary schools.

Sara Ward commented "We have been really pleased to see this campaign continue to gain momentum and thank you to all that have supported it. However, we haven’t finished by simply handing it over to the Council Executive.

"We have been told that the petition will be passed to the Department of Children's Services and Lifelong Learning for officers to respond to the points that we’ve raised. We don’t really want just a response from Judith Pettersen; we want secondary school places for our children.

"Don’t forget the opportunity that we have at next week's Hustings to ask the candidates what they think about our school situation and how they would plan to change things for our children"

The petition will now be passed to the Department of Children's Services and Lifelong Learning for officers to respond to the points raised. It reads in full as follows:

We, the undersigned, as parents, carers and members of the Brentford community, petition the London Borough of Hounslow Schools Admissions Executive to amend their secondary schools admissions policy to cease the discrimination against children from Brentford and its surrounding areas.

As there are no mixed secondary schools in the Brentford district and because of the strict application of the distance criteria used to determine admissions, any applicant from Brentford is disadvantaged by their geographical location. We therefore request the Executive to rectify this situation by recommending that:

1. A special case be made for children in Brentford applying to mixed community schools so that they are admitted into the local school of their choice on appeal
for intake September 2010.

2. For future years, the admissions policy be amended in terms of distance criteria. These must be revised so that all applicants from the Brentford area are no longer excluded from their nearest local mixed community school because of distance.

3. Thereafter a new mixed community school is built or existing schools extended so that Brentford children can be educated in or very near to Brentford.

Those parents who drafted the petition would like to say thank you to all those people who signed it, and for the comments made and would also like to thank all three Brentford councillors for their support.

April 16, 2010