Editor's choice April 2006

City Scheme to Close St. Paul’s School

For over a year the City’s Local Education Authority (LEA) Officers have been threatening to close the St. Paul’s Community Foundation School. This has left parents, pupils and staff shocked and confused. The two reasons given so far for the threatened closure revolve around pupils’ results and the cost of teaching each pupil.
For many of the pupils and their parents the school acts as a lifeline to continuing their education, with many of the pupils joining after having problems in mainstream schools. With the alternative being no education without St. Paul’s School, for some of the pupils the ability to walk away from School with qualifications at all can be seen as a success.

For such pupils larger Schools can in some instances prove too much. It is for this reason that St. Paul’s, through its size, has been able to achieve so much. While larger schools have the capacity to help the majority it can be the minority with their various problems who end up being excluded. For some pupils the whole idea of mainstream education leaves them cold and they simply refuse to go.

Brilliant

“Considering all this”, said one parent, “the results are brilliant. Not to mention that if they didn’t get in to St. Paul’s they would get no qualifications because they wouldn’t be in school”. While the big schools benefit from economies of scale the City’s own limited educational services in this field cost even more than St. Paul’s School. This situation has been further exacerbated by LEA Officers failing to provide a true picture to the City’s Cabinet who would have then have the ability to make a fair decision. All of this has left parents angry about the future their children face with no guarantees they will have places in other schools.

Crunch

A decision about the School’s future is to be made at the end of April. It is hoped that the independent committee which is giving the final decision will make an informed choice following the handing over of a large petition and letters of support from parents and community leaders.
Meanwhile, the LEA has said it plans to reopen the School as another form of provision. It is believed that their plan is to reduce the cost of educating each child and to increase the number of pupils attending the new facility. However this approach, would, it is believed, limit the effectiveness of any education delivered.
It is the belief of some of the School Governors that there is a rush by the LEA to close the School even though there has been no chance to put forward any suggestions or alternatives. One of them said, “It feels as though we are being put in a ‘take it or leave it position’ when it comes to anything the City offers. We can’t just lie down and take it. We have to oppose it as hard as we can. The pupils need the best we can give and that’s what we are trying to achieve”.