THE difficult and desperate plight of those parents caught in the Marston secondary places ‘black hole’ is directly attributable to the abandonment by Michael Gove in 2010 of Gordon Brown’s building improvement and expansion programmes in England’s existing primary and secondary schools and to the subsequent rolling put of academies, free schools, UTCs, and studio schools.

This history doesn’t, of course, help the present.

Parents could, though, remind Paul James, CEO of the River Learning Trust, that he was, as headteacher of the Cherwell School, the prime mover for the acadamisation of Cherwell and the (continuing) evolution of the River Learning Trust.

A highly-paid public servant with a concomitant sense of responsibility towards the families the Cherwell should serve, it would be perfectly possible for Mr James to argue that the Educational Funding Agency’s (taxpayers’s) £25million+ to be spent on the Swan Free School would be better spent on expansion across Oxford city’s existing schools, not least the Cherwell.

True that a plan for expansion on the Cherwell’s sites was turned down by the Dfe, but this is no reason why this couldn’t be revived.

To meet the needs of those children who didn’t achieve a place at The Cherwell for this September, it would be feasible and realisable for temporary classrooms to be installed at the school, with new staff where needed: this, with the blessing of Oxford City Council’s planners, could be done without delay, and parents who have missed out could reapply and be granted places.

The money for the Swan from the EFA should be transferred to the county council and could then ensure the Cherwell expansion could, over time, become permanent while also ensuring that school expansion takes place where needed across the city and in the county.

Public money is public money is public money, stakeholders are stakeholders, and children in Marston and beyond must not have their educations and development compromised. Go for it, Mr James, you have nothing to lose: Marston children need you now!

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH

Bowness Avenue, Headington