Schools

Tower Hamlets has a shortage of primary school places in Tower Hamlets.  This causes significant problems for children and families living in the MERA area at Mile End.


This page covers:

1. A note of the (proposed) new primary school catchment areas covering the Mile End Area (coming soon)
2. The names of the local Primary Schools and links to their websites (coming soon)
3. The problems with a lack of spaces in Primary Schools
4. How MERA has worked and lobbied on behalf of parents
5. Links to "News about Schools: posts on this blog

1.  The Primary School Catchment Areas

to follow

2.  Local Primary Schools and links to their websites

to follow

3.  The Problem with Primary School Places


When MERA was set up in 2009, we listened to local residents at the consultation meetings.  Listening to the parents made us acutely aware of the predicament facing many of the parents living in this area.  


Parents told of us all about the acute problems they had relating to:

• difficulties in getting a primary school place locally and 
• how long it took to take their children to school elsewhere in the borough.

4.  Schools: What MERA has done 

MERA lobbied in relation to:

• the recognition of the problem in planning documents
• the situation which existed locally for parents and families living in Mile End

We pointed out the nonsense of using a former primary school (in English Street) for the PDC when children in the area where having to be bussed elsewhere in the borough to go to school

This is an extract from the representation MERA made in respect of the Inspection of the Council's proposed Core Strategy in 2010.

• SP02 fails to make any explicit links between levels of growth in specific areas and the associated schools and education provision required to create sustainable communities.
• Young children in families living in existing housing developments are already being sent to primary schools all over the borough because of the lack of capacity in local primary schools. 

• We also understand some 60 children are without any place at all. 

• This current deficit is nowhere acknowledged by the Council in any of its documents so far as we can ascertain 

• Sending children to schools away from their home areas typically creates a sense of alienation in children which can lead to troubled behaviour and certainly does not contribute to One Tower Hamets. It certainly does not promote sustainable communities and healthy and happy neighbourhoods. 

• There is no site plan for BOTH housing developments and the associated infrastructure provision which is required

At the time of our lobbying in 2010, we largely met with "stonewall" responses.  There wasn't any money.  There weren't any plans.

5. News about Schools - links to blog posts

• News about Schools #1: Southern Grove: Lines and Beatrice Tate School
• News about Schools #2: Malmesbury Primary School on Special Measures
• News about Schools #3: Bonner Primary School comes to Mile End