Parents consulted on failing schools' future

4:56pm Wednesday 11th February 2004

The largest ever Church of England schools consultation has been sent out across the borough to decide the future of two ailing secondary schools.

St Mary's C of E High School in Downage, Hendon, and Christ Church C of E School in Hilton Avenue, North Finchley, are both officially failing and have been put in Special Measures by Ofsted. As local education authority, Barnet Council is proposing to close Christ Church in July 2005 and St Mary's in July 2006 and rebuild them both before reopening as new schools.

A consultation document has been sent out to parents and staff at all of Barnet's C of E primary schools as well as to all other primaries.

Rachel Grant's daughters Laura, nine, and Ellie, seven, attend All Saints C of E Primary School in Oakleigh Road North, Whetstone, a feeder school for Christ Church. Laura will be the right age to go to a newly-reopened Christ Church and Mrs Grant wants it to be a girls' school.

"We would love it as long as we knew there were lots of other church schools being fed into it," said Ms Grant. "It would work well. We feel very strongly about it. We would not send them to Christ Church as it stands."

Reverend Adrian Benjamin, chairman of governors at Christ Church, said: "The key thing is if you have a girls' school in Finchley and a boys' school in Hendon, you will have to have a wide catchment area and it is difficult to build community. But at a mixed split-site school, there will be a traffic problem with parents shifting sons and daughters between them."

There are three options up for consideration when the schools reopen in September 2006. The first is for a separate lower and an upper school, the second is for two separate but federated schools under one governing body and the third is for two parallel single-sex schools with one site housing a co-educational sixth form.