Greenwich councillors have rubber-stamped the closure of a primary school in Plumstead, with the borough’s education chief apologising for mistakes made in communicating with teachers and parents.
Florence Kroll, the director of children’s services, said that pupil numbers were expected to fall for at least the next five years with the drop in birth rates – despite the thousands of new homes being built in the borough.
Plans to shut Gallions Mount school in Purrett Road were announced in November last year. Greenwich Council said that pupil numbers had fallen from 295 in January 2021 to 169 at the time of the closure announcement, and was expected to run up a £1.6 million deficit by April next year.
Gallions Mount will be the second school in Greenwich borough to close after Holy Family in Kidbrooke shut last year. A number of schools across the capital have closed since the pandemic with families leaving London to escape soaring housing costs and a declining birth rate among those that remain.
Of 90 responses to a consultation on the issue, 87 opposed the closure, but Greenwich Council’s cabinet voted on Wednesday for the school to close at the end of July.
But one of Gallions Mount’s teachers, Charles Burt, criticised the way the council had communicated the closure to families and staff.
“It’s been quite emotional for everyone involved,” he said. “Especially as we’ve seen friendship groups fracture, people who’ve been at the school since nursery are now going off to other places.
“Hopefully it’s all going to be great but it’s not just numbers, kids are involved. The focus has got to be on the kids and the families, who in a lot of cases are disadvantaged, especially when they’re going to be having to go to schools which may be quite a distance away.”
Burt said that “all throughout the communication hasn’t been working”, and that had affected a “really lovely” offer from a neighbouring school, South Rise, to take on an entire year group so the children could stay together as it was not clear whether the school would close or not.
“Because the decision hadn’t been made, no communication could go forward to the parents. I’ve gone from a class of 31 when we started the year to 15 now, and I know that the other children in that class would have wanted to go [to South Rise] as a group, but that time has passed.”
Burt also said that the “narrative had changed” during the process, with suggestions that Gallions become a special needs school dropped and replaced by a closure because of low pupil numbers.
Kroll said Burt was “absolutely right” about the communication. “It didn’t get off to the best of starts and I apologise for that personally. There’s some learning from the consultation and learning from the communication that we absolutely will take on board.”
Kroll, who was given a CBE in the new year’s honours list, said that council staff had worked to ensure that pupils in year 5 could take up the offer from South Rise.
Questioned by Rachel Taggart-Ryan, the cabinet member for community safety and the environment, Kroll said that the council used modelling from City Hall and also its own data on new housing.
She added: “Families are no longer having as many children. So from traditionally having two children, it’s often now just one child. So there are families that are coming into Greenwich, but there’s just not as many children. That projection has been done for the next five years. We certainly don’t see any growth at all. We see a decline.”
Adel Khaireh, the cabinet member for children and young people, also apologised for the poor communication around the school’s closure, admitting there were “learnings to be had”.
He added: “I want to make sure that if we ever go down this road again – touch wood, we won’t — that we have everything in place and make sure that children’s needs are at the beginning.”
The number of primary school pupils across London is expected to fall by another 52,000 by 2028, according to research carried out last year.
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