Baker green light for London college

by Peter Stanford EDUCATION secretary Kenneth Baker this week gave the green-light to a Catholic Sixth Form College in west London on a site once earmarked by Cardinal Newman for a Catholic university. But he has yet to rule on the future status of Holland Park's Cardinal Vaughan School, an issue that has blighted plans for educational reorganisation in the area for four years.
Mr Baker's ruling in the longrunning battle over Catholic secondary education in the central and west London area means that a Catholic Sixth Form College will open its doors in September 1990 on the site in St Charles Square, Ladbroke Grove, of the present Cardinal Manning Boys School. Four of the current 11-18 schools in the area will lose their sixth forms t h e Sacred Heart, Hammersmith; St Thomas More, Chelsea; Sion Manning, Ladbroke Grove; and St George's, Maida Vale — while the Cardinal Manning and St Edmund's School, Brook Green, will close altogether with their pupils relocated either at the sixth form college, or in the remaining reconstituted 11-16 schools.
However, Mr Baker has yet to make a decision on the future of the Cardinal Vaughan School which is regularly near the top of the Inner London Education Authority league for academic results. After a long dispute culminating in a court battle Cardinal Hume persuaded the governors of the Vaughan to agree to take part in the sixth form plan — a move that would leave the school without a sixth form. Parents are now in the process of organising a ballot on "opting out" procedures which they hope will preserve their school as it is now.
Leading Article, page 4 Mr Baker has made it clear that no !Mal decision on the role of the Vaughan in the Sixth Form College will be reached until the opting out question has been cleared up.