Lib Dems push school offers back until after election as shortage unresolved

Lib Dems push school offers back until after election as Dulwich shortage unresolved

Dulwich schools Lib Dem-run Southwark council has pushed back next year’s primary school admissions offer date until after the council elections. The decision to send offer letters to parents over two weeks later next year, on 10^th May four days after the council elections, follows serious problems with this year’s admissions process in Dulwich. This year the council sent out the offer letters on Friday 24^th April.

Dozens of parents in Dulwich were offered inappropriate primary school places for their children this year, with some two bus journeys and almost two miles away from their home. Their campaign for more local offers earlier this year was a major embarrassment for the Lib Dem administration. But when asked earlier this month at an Overview and Scrutiny and Committee meeting (14/09/2009) Lib Dem Leader of the Council Nick Stanton, who has taken on personal responsibility for school admissions, still couldn’t say how he intends to sort the places shortage out before next year.

The decision to move the offer date back has stoked local fears that Cllr Stanton won’t resolve the shortage and that the decision may be motivated by a desire to minimise the electoral fallout. One commenter on the local discussion website East Dulwich Forum wrote of the decision to push the offer date back: “Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

Southwark Labour councillor for Peckham Rye Robert Smeath said:

“Lib Dem Leader Cllr Stanton is able to offer no answers at the moment of how he’s going to sort out the terrible shortage of primary school places in my ward and across Dulwich. There are only eight months left until the offers for next year’s new pupils go out, what’s needed now is a degree of urgency.

“The fact that the only decision that Cllr Stanton appears to have taken on this matter is to push the offer date back until after the next council elections does not fill me with confidence. It appears that he’s focused on minimising the electoral recriminations of the school places shortage when he should be focusing on sorting it out. I’m very concerned.”