The tale of two new secondary schools for Wandsworth

The BBC is reporting this evening that MPs have voted and comfortably won legislation to radically reorganise the education system.  This includes the advent of Academies, which will see opted in schools move away from Local Authority 'control' thus enabling Heads to have more say in how to run their school. The legislation also allows for the introduction of a new kind of school labeled 'free schools'.  

The Conservative Government are keen to push through their ethos of giving power to the people and in the case of schools, giving parents and teachers the chance to open up their own schools, in areas where the current provision may be lacking and again beyond the jurisdiction of Local Authorities.

Jon De Maria, who is the Facebook spokesperson for one such free school campaign in Battersea posted recently that 'we .. are awaiting an 'in principle' decision from Michael Grove as to the level of funding available for our much needed secondary school.  We are assured that he is still personally committed to our school, which is great news, but he has difficult choices to make with the limited funding made available to him from the Treasury'.

David Cameron was in Battersea to launch the Conservative Party Manifesto prior to the General Election and the media were all across this local story.  The 'Neighbourhood School Campaign, if approved, will be sited in the old Bolingbroke Hospital, Battersea, and will clearly become a beacon of Conservative education policy.

Yet a little further down the road, also in Battersea, a brand new school due to be opened in 2012 which saw the amalgamation of two Wandsworth boys school and had received funding from the Building Schools for the Future investment programme, had appointed a new Head and Building Contractor and was in an advanced stage of development has seemingly had all it's funding pulled.  St John Bosco was on that list of schools who's funding has now been axed and Wandsworth Council are hoping to persuade the Department of Education that funding to make this school happen should still go ahead. But there are no guarantees.

Jon De Maria for the new 'free school' writes on facebook on 8 July. 'Our sense is that our much needed school will go ahead because the DfE will green light projects that have a real need for places, and our case is very strong ... perhaps the strongest case in the country'.

It's all quite on the other hand from St John Bosco.  Not quite as much hope there, I suspect.  Especially in the light of today's news .