As if it needed demonstrating any more clearly the 250 plus Shoreham parents and children who converged on the farmer’s market last Saturday clearly demonstrated the strength of feeling over the secondary school places issue. The march organised by parents from Swiss Gardens School where most of the 50 or so Shoreham children denied a place at any of their 3 secondary school choices come from follows the packed public meeting in March.
Since that meeting where we heard from local heads, parents and local County Councillor Kevin Boram, but no education officers, Kevin and I have been working with the parents to find solutions to this year’s shortfall of places in Adur and a longer term answer. The Worthing schools offered as alternatives have been unfairly panned and are certainly on the way up, but the problem is that no Shoreham parents were alerted to the fact that their children might have to go beyond Adur for a school pace. Having been steered towards the Sir Robert Woodard Academy a few years ago when the popular Shoreham Academy became oversubscribed, now SRWA has become a victim of its own success and cannot accommodate the demand from Shoreham.
With the amount of development going on in and around Shoreham the demand in future years, notwithstanding the County Council’s flawed projections, can only go up and we really need to prepare for that and make sure local families have more choices closer to Adur.
The Leader of the Council Councillor Paul Marshall has taken a close personal interest and attended 2 of the meetings and is due to visit Swiss Gardens School as well soon and I will continue to keep constituents posted through my social media and the FAST website.
