There must be better ways to spend this £25m

Although we are parents of a Year 10 Cherwell pupil, and of three former pupils, we couldn’t attend the meeting but did send a question in writing, of which the main thrust was why can’t the River Learning Trust CEO, Paul James, insist that the Swan £25m+ from the Education Funding Agency be used at Cherwell and across the city for immediate (expansion) provision of places for those pupils who did not achieve first choices (or, in some cases, any choices) for September entry? Mr James answered immediately to say that “there is no Government policy framework” for what we were suggesting. Certainly true.

What isn’t clear because it was not disclosed by the Education Funding Agency(EFA) is whether other sites have been carefully considered, perhaps for a number of smaller schools, one to meet the demand for places for Marston and Headington, one for South and West Oxford.

South and West parents have a petition still running to request this be considered. Parents in the so-called Marston “black hole” have been vocal in their equally pressing concerns.

Why, then, a disastrously-sited 1,260-pupil school next to the 500- pupil St Nicholas Primary, Old Marston? Oxford has 64 recognised brownfield sites, one of which is Harcourt House, a “new” office complex on a site of 4.5 square acres which has been vacant for some years now.

Harcourt House lies on the southern edge of South Park, along the Marston Road.

These mint-condition buildings could very easily be converted into classrooms and access to a playing field could be arranged with one of the Oxford colleges whose sports grounds are nearby.

Access would be made safe from where the pavement ends at the bottom of Cuckoo Lane. A similar site could certainly be located for South and West and the EFA’s money much better used now, places for September entry. So over to the EFA, urgently!

SALLY MERCER and BRUCE ROSS-SMITH

Bowness Avenue, Headington