The past couple of weeks have seen a series of meetings to discuss the future of schools in Harefield, Bitterne Park and Townhill areas of Southampton. David Goodall, the Parliamentary spokesman for Southampton Itchen, attended all the public to hear to concerns of the parents.
David is very interested in these matters because he is also the local councillor for West End parents whose children attend at Moorlands Infants, Townhill Infants and Townhill Junior School, as well as, a Local Education Authority governor at Townhill Infants and a parent at Townhill Juniors.
The concerns of the parents where as follows :-
In all the schools parents were concerned that they might not be able to send their children to the local school. All the parents wanted the local school to be maintained and for a good standard of teaching. In fact the longest discussions were over the reduction of 12 places at Townhill Juniors because the teacher pupil ratio would increase from one teacher per 25½ pupils to one teacher per 30 pupils and this could affect the quality of the education.
This really highlights the folly of school competition; parents want a good quality local school they can walk to with their infant and junior school children. They do not want to have a choice between their local school and even good one a mile further away.
David Goodall said :-
“The key thing at the end of that review process is that all school sites are retained. In the future the birth rate will probably rise and increased development will also increase the pressure on infrastructure resources, like schools. The long term structure plan to 2026 for the South East of England shows large amount of development in south Hampshire i.e. Southampton and Portsmouth, therefore it is essential that all school sites are retained as schools so that future demand can be met.”
And finally the meeting did produce a couple of strange statistics :-
These facts would be funny except this is basis that the government use to determine whether school should be reduced in size or even closed !!