Luton's prosperity overcrowds schools

THE large number of Catholic families moving into Luton in search of the car town's prosperity is causing a big local school problem.
The town has only one Catholic voluntary primary school, St. Joseph's, which this term has 654 children on the roll -74 more than the 580 maxiMum which the town's Cornmittee for Education has laid down.
Now the Committee has said it is perturbed by the large number on the roll.
Fr. A. T. Brewer, parish priest of St. Joseph's, and Northampton Diocesan Secretary for Schools, cited two reasons for the overcrowding: the large number of children corning into the town, particularly in the Lewsey Farm area where Luton Corporation is building 1,000 houses for "overspill" Londoners; and delays at county and Ministry level over proposed new Catholic schools.
Fr. Brower said, "The difficulty is that children are coming into Luton so fast that there are not the schools for them. Catholic parents have a right to send their chil
dren to a Catholic school, and the children should not be forced into county schools.
"There is no more overcrowding at St. Joseph's than in many other schools. We have no class which is unreasonably large. All the classes are the proper size, and we have additional acconimodation as there is at other schools.
"There won't be any oversize classes unless the Local Authority denies us the teachers. The school managers are doing their utmost to get suitable accommodation, but the situation will not be eased until the propoeed Lewsey Farm school is provided."
He alleged that there had been delays over the proposed infants' school, to be added to St. Joseph's, and over the Lewsey Farm Catholic primary school.
A second Catholic primary school is now being built at Farley Hill, on the town's biggest council housing estate, and another is planned, and work should start soon, in the Sacred Heart parish at Stopsley.
But neither of these schools are expected to relieve pressure at St. Joseph's, to which since it was built in 1956, two permanent and four temporary classrooms have been added.