ePetition - Keep Our Community Together
navigation and tools
Find it
You are here - Home : Council and Democracy : Councillors and Committees : Petition
ePetition details
Keep Our Community Together
1. The proposed changes will have a serious and detrimental impact
on the wider community. They place a dividing line between the
families around Elm Grove, Lewes Road and Bear Road, splitting
children in the area from their friends, classmates and the local
families they’ve grown up with. This will not only create
unnecessary stress and anxiety for the children directly affected,
but also change the fabric of a close-knit, established and family
friendly community.
2. We believe that every child in Brighton & Hove should have
access to quality local education and not be bussed across the
city. Under these changes, the children effected would be unable to
walk to school and would be faced with up to 7-mile return trip to
school at peak hours in our already congested city. With only a
small number of children effected, their safety, their ability to
participate in activities out of school hours, and their ability to
engage with the local community around the school will be
compromised by their two hour daily commute.
3. We acknowledge that there is a need to relieve pressure on
numbers on current schools but the proposed changes set a precedent
that could have a negative impact for all parents across Brighton
and Hove. The two principles that received the greatest support in
the Council’s 2016 consultation on catchment areas were
minimising pupil’s journeys to school and allowing children
to move to secondary school with their friends. Both principles are
abandoned in this proposal; the targeted area is neither the
nearest to Longhill nor the furthest from Dorothy Stringer and
Varndean. With further population bulges predicted in the next few
years, we believe this seemingly arbitrary setting of catchment
areas sets a precedent that could open the way to even more
dramatic changes. Parents will no longer be able to argue on
grounds of distance to school if the council decrees that their
child should be sent to a school out of the city.
4. We request that catchment areas remain unchanged until a site
and opening date for the proposed Brighton & Hove Academy is
confirmed. We believe the proposed changes fail to take into
account the possibility that the proposed Academy may open later
than 2019, may not be located at the current preferred site or may
fail to open at all. We argue that children in the area must remain
in the current catchments until the situation of the new school is
confirmed. If not, families with children coming up to secondary
after this two-year period risk having their children schooled in
different schools.
5. We believe the Council’s so-called “light touch,
temporary” proposals create significant disparity in choice
and outcome for children in Brighton & Hove, which is at best
unfair, and at worst discriminatory. We contend that the proposals
are not in the best interests of the children who live in the areas
designated to move catchment.
This ePetition ran from 28/09/2017 to 13/12/2017 and has now finished.
687 people signed this ePetition.
Council response
The petition will be considered at the Children, Young People & Skills Committee meeting on the 13th November, 2017.