Well done to the Shoreham parents who organised such an excellent well-attended meeting at the Shoreham Centre last Thursday to discuss the problem over secondary school place allocation for Shoreham pupils. Well done also to the excellent heads of our local schools Jim Coupe from Shoreham Academy, Kieron Scanlon from Sir Robert Woodard Academy and Mia Lowney from St Andrews who gave great presentations on behalf of their schools. No thanks however to the officials from the West Sussex County Council Education Department who did not attend and left it to me and the local county councillors to pick up the tricky questions from frustrated local families.
We have offered to work with local parents who are going through the appeals process but would also urge parents to visit St Andrews to see what exactly is on offer there under the very impressive leadership of Mia Lowney who is turning things round very rapidly. It is in everyone’s interests that she succeeds just as Kieron Scanlon did 5 years ago when Sir Robert Woodard Academy was out of sorts with a lot of vacancies yet now parents report how pleased they were that they trusted his pitch and how well it had worked out for their children and the school.
We are also working with the Leader of the County Council to come up with a longer-term solution to the shortage of secondary school places in Adur, which was not the case 5 years ago, but which is certainly going to get worse as all the new build now brings new families to Shoreham and Lancing. There were tentative plans to expand SWRA and/or Shoreham Academy perhaps on their other site in Middle Road which housed the Kings Manor Middle School until the 1990’s, and these need to be dusted down and revisited.
I am only too aware of the renewed chaos in Shoreham at the weekend with the second bout of closures on the A27 westbound but driving along the route this week they certainly seemed to have made good progress with one half of the new roundabout. The situation was made worse by temporary lights on the A259 apparently due to emergency works on a gas leak and so out of the hands of the council highways department, but I have asked SGN for details. I have also just heard from the contractors that they will now be using the next 2 ‘contingency’ weekends for further closures. This is apparently because they made good progress on the previous 2 weekends but now think they can shorten the whole works by completing the roundabout now. I will post more information as I receive it.
