Fantastic News on our Primary School Campaign! Ashmole Academy have announced a proposal to build a New Primary School for local children. Ashmole Academy is located in Barnet but because their school is right on the border of Enfield many of the children that gain admission will be residents of South West Enfield.

If plans go ahead Ashmole Academy may implement a priority zone to include the Fox Lane area which has become a school admission “dead zone”. Residents in the FLDRA area would not be able to get their children into any local school but this may change in 2015.

Well done Ashmole Academy for taking action and for meeting a real need of the local community.

There have been further developments on the Grovelands proposal. You may be aware that Enfield Council proposed a school on the land adjacent to Grovelands Park, and we are all waiting to hear whether the school will pass the first step in the process which will be to gain English Heritage approval. I attended a Friends of Grovelands Meeting last week and was surprised and delighted by the announcement that in general the Friends support the proposal for a school, providing it does not impinge on the current public park. Good news indeed if the proposal gets to the public consultation stage.

Both  of these intended schools, Ashmole Primary and Grovelands Primary, are needed as well as an expansion of Walker School. These initiatives will go someway to meeting a need but will not satisfy the growing problem that is facing London, and nationally to a lesser degree. I am hopeful that in our area we will soon have a choice of good schools.

I am not trying to upset Walker School by saying this, but I hope that the lack of leadership and change in governance at Walker School do not lead to the excellent standard of education declining. It appears that Walker School do not want change and have rejected expansion but have changed their core structure and have a different leadership to that was in place when they were inspected by Ofsted. I hope they have not missed an opportunity of improving the school as well as helping the community in which they reside.

We may be approaching a time where there is a real choice of schools for parents. In 2015 we may be able to put the following community schools on our Primary School Admission form:

1. Ashmole
2. Grovelands
3. Walker

Fingers crossed that we get a choice, however that will need Enfield Council to follow Ashmole’s lead and make a difference to our community.