Parents in school battle scent success

By Joanna Moorhead
PARENTS battling to defend their right to send their children to a Catholic school believe they are on the. verge of success.
A delegation representing the parents and teachers of St Joseph's Catholic Primary School in Kings Norton, Birmingham, will travel to London on Monday to meet Education Minister Michael Fallon. They believe he will tell them he has at last given in to pleas from church leaders, MPs, and parents and staff at the school, who have been fighting for months to secure a replacement for St Joseph's, which is being demolished after it was found to be structurally unsafe.
Catholic church officials and the local education authority agreed to proposals to build a new school on a site 200 yards away, but the Education Department has blocked the scheme, claiming that there were surplus places in other local schools, including nonCatholic county colleges, and that pupils would have to seek admission there.
The dispute led to a huge outcry from, among others, Bishop David Konstant of Leeds, the chairman of the bishops' department for Catholic Education and Formation, and local Birmingham MPs Anthony Beaumont Dark, Andrew Hargreaves and Roger King. Now parents hope their latest summons to the Education Department could mean they have Won in their campaign to keep St Joseph's open.
"All along we have argued that the issue at the centre of this dispute has been that Catholic parents have a right to send their children to Catholic schools," said Jim Foley, who chairs the school's parents' action group.
"But the government line has been that there were surplus places in schools in Birmingham, and that our children would have to transfer there. What's happened now is that Birmingham has reorganised its schools so that the surplus places have been taken out, which we hope may mean the government will back down.
"We've mustered enormous support for this campaign, and 1 really don't think that in an election year the government is going to be able to dismiss such overwhelming public opinion," he said.
More than 50 parishes, and staff and head teachers at 50 schools, have been asked to take part in a letter-writing campaign to Mr Fallon in the nin-up to next week's meeting.
Meanwhile a parish priest has written to Education Secretary Kenneth Clarke to plead on behalf of two Catholic schools in his area which are being refused the right to expand.
Fr Edgar Dunn, of St Bend's in Greenwich, says in his letter he is "very concerned" for the future of St Paul's Secondary School in Abbey Wood and St Thomas More's School in Eltham.
Both schools want to go up from three form to four form entry, but have been told they cannot.
The Education Department's stance, which is also based on the argument that there are surplus places in other, non-Catholic, schools in the area, represented "a grave threat to the future of both schools," Fr Dunn writes.
• MORE than 900 teachers, parents, education chiefs and clerics will attend the first ever national conference to discuss Catholic education in July.
The conference is entitled The Mission of the Church in Education.