Kingston Council contemplates bid to overturn school places law (From Surrey Comet)

Kingston Council contemplates bid to overturn school places law

7:20am Monday 17th August 2009 in News By Mike Didymus

Kingston Council is preparing an audacious bid to ensure local schoolchildren get priority when applying for the borough’s schools, by attempting to overturn national law.

The borough has long struggled with an influx of children desperate to get into the Kingston school system, with the two Tiffin schools consistently admitting up to a third of all its pupils from outside of the borough.

Problems began following a 1989 ruling from the House of Lords called the Greenwich Judgement, which prevented council-run schools from denying places to children solely because they were from other boroughs.

North Kingston has been hit especially hard, with the need for a newly-proposed eight form secondary school a direct result of the borough’s schools system becoming overburdened.

The council has now submitted a proposal to the Local Government Association which could overturn the Greenwich Judgement if accepted by the Government’s Communities Minister.

Council leader Councillor Derek Osbourne said: “While I am worried that the complexity of the submissions process will filter out the most important, radical suggestions – such as the overhaul of the Greenwich judgement – the Sustainable Community Act is too good an opportunity to miss for bringing local concerns to national attention.”

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