With the questionable intervention of the chief executive of Essex County Council, it is time for those involved in the future of Colchester’s secondary schools to consider their moral and ethical stances, as well as that on bullying.
The Colchester cabinet is divided.
The Liberal Democrats have their well-known support for the residents of Irving Road and others nearby for their precious open space owned by Philip Morant, plus, I suspect, in some cases a strong philosophical objection to the concept of large schools.
The Labour and Independent members have equally well-known desires to do what they can to improve the lot of Sir Charles Lucas School. The prospect of academy status and all the investment that goes with it is, therefore, of understandable attraction.
They should, however, perhaps ponder whether such a significant enhancement is morally justified at the expense of the clear harm being done to secondary school provision on the other side of town.
Lord Hanningfield is well aware of these two conflicting pressures on the Colchester cabinet.
His whole objective has been, and is, to utilise this dichotomy to influence the local elections in May.
To say the plan he has come up with is the only viable one is nonsense, as the near universal public rejection of it shows.
What is Lord Hanningfield now saying? That the whole £130million will be withdrawn and Colchester will also lose both of its existing schools which have been issued with closure notices?
This saga started with Lord Hanningfield being asked by the Department for Children, Schools and Families why he was presiding over one of the worst secondary education records in the country.
Hence the hurried, botched job that he has come up with.
The department will scarcely be impressed by a plan that involves pupils sharing desks!
That the county’s chief executive has become involved in a shabby party political exercise is shameful.
I have previously suggested going to judicial review, perhaps a public inquiry is what is required.
Peter Thompson
Stanway Green
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