| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Bijou School set for White City location....... | |
| Posted by: | Toby Young | |
| Date/Time: | 23/01/11 23:51:00 |
| I admire your loyalty, Iain, but the NUT's links to the Socialist Workers' Party are well documented. Nick Grant, the NUT's shop steward in Ealing, is a member of the SWP. Christine Blower may not be, but in 2000 she stood as a candidate for the London Socialist Alliance, an affiliation of far left political groups, including the Communist Party of Great Britain, broadly controlled by the SWP. The LSA's most prominent candidate in that election was Paul Foot, perhaps the SWP's best-known member. Blower was described by Jack McAvoy, a former General Secretary of the NUT, as "controlled and supported by a group of extreme Left organisations including Militant, the Socialist Workers' Party, the Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union and the Socialist Teachers' Alliance." I haven't met Dennis Charman, but the way in which he's tried to exploit people's concern for children with special needs to try and discredit the West London Free School suggests he is not as nice a guy as you claim. As an employee of the Cambridge School, he knows perfectly well that the plan to relocate that school to the Bryony Centre site was put on hold indefinitely when the BSF programme was cancelled. (The plan was to demolish the Bryony Centre and build a new special needs school on the site at a cost of tens of millions of pounds.) For him to now claim, as he's been doing, that this scheme has been delayed because the Bryony Centre may be used as a temporary site by the WLFS is absolutely disgraceful. I doubt that even as committed an opponent of our school as you would stoop so low. I have no issue with the fact that he and Christine chose to educate their children out of the borough. As you say, they're perfectly within their rights to exercise such a choice. My issue is with them trying to deny the right to choose to other parents who aren't as able as them to secure places for their children at out-of-borough schools. Can you name a single Acton resident who managed to secure a place for their child at Holland Park Comprehensive in the past year? We haven't settled on a Sixth Form site yet. We're considering a number of options. Our plan is to open our Sixth Form in 2014 so we have a bit of time. We hope to make an announcement about our sports facilities shortly. |