Parents’ free school hopes hit by council relocation project

The Birkenshaw Birstall and Gomersal Parents’ Alliance (BBGPA) wants to open a secondary school on the site of Birkenshaw Middle when it closes in 2013.

The parent group’s business case has already received Ministerial backing.

However in a report to Kirklees Council’s Cabinet the authority has indicated that it intends to use the same site to relocate Birkenshaw First School to when it converts to become a primary school. The plans form part of the council’s reorganisation of a three-tier school system in north Kirklees to two tiers with just primaries and secondaries, rather than first, middle and high schools.

The council is pushing ahead with plans to close Birkenshaw Middle School and extend Birkenshaw First School into a primary school in two years time, although it has having to restart the process because conditions surrounding the closure have changed.

The closure of Birkenshaw Middle was originally linked to the creation of a new co-educational academy at Howden Clough but this plan was stopped when Kirklees Council had its Building Schools for the Future funding scrapped meaning the new school would not be built. Kirklees Council’s Cabinet will be asked at its meeting tomorrow to revoke the original plan to close Birkenshaw Middle and start the process again.

Campaigners at the BBGPA opposed the closure of Birkenshaw Middle as they claim it would leave pupils without a local school to attend. Under the council’s plan secondary school age pupils at Birkenshaw Middle would be placed at Whitcliffe Mount school in Cleckheaton. The BBGPA say this would mean some children facing a 45-minute commute to school.

The BBGPA had developed plans to start its own school on Birkenshaw Middle’s site once it closed under the Government’s free school policy which is encouraging parents to set up their own primary or secondaries wherever they are unhappy with the choice on offer locally.

Kirklees Council had originally planned to vacate this site and extend Birkenshaw First school into a primary. However the report to Cabinet warns that extending the first school would cost between £4.56m and £7.12m while moving the school to Birkenshaw Middle and converting those schools into a primary would cost between £2.87m and £4.94m.

It says: “Consideration should be given to the proposal than Birkenshaw First School would offer a two class entry, all-through primary school for better value in the use of capital resources if the school were to be relocated to the building which is currently occupied by Birkenshaw Middle School.”

When this proposal was first revealed earlier this year BBGPA accused the council of deliberately attempting to block the free school plan by taking away its first choice site. The report to tomorrow’s meeting notes the free school plan but says that there are enough existing secondary school places in the system to cater for all Birkenshaw Middle school pupils once it closes. The BBGPA has been at the forefront of the free school movement since before the General Election.

Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Education Secretary Michael Gove attended a rally to support the opening of the parent-led school during the election campaign. Mr Gove even hailed one of the parents involved, Nicki Woods, as his heroine.

During the election trail he said: “She wants her children to go to a good local school. She wants a school her children can walk to, a school where the head teacher knows every child’s name, a school built on a human scale with good discipline, traditional teaching and high aspirations. But the bureaucrats won’t let her.”