| THE Revd Gillean Craig, chairman of governors of St Mary Abbots C of E Primary School, Kensington, in London, which has offered a place to the four-year-old daughter of the Opposition leader, David Cameron, said that the application fully met the school’s admissions criteria.
These criteria give first priority to children with a medical and social need, including “looked-after” children, the term for those in local-authority care. A second pick of places goes to families who are active members of St Mary Abbots, where Mr Craig is Vicar.
The Camerons had attended the church for the last three years, Mr Craig said this week. “I wish all our families with young children were as committed, and took as full a part in our activities as they do.”
St Mary Abbots is a diverse school, Mr Craig said, and includes pupils from African, Afro-Caribbean, and Chinese families. Almost 40 of the 205 pupils do not speak English when they arrive, and seven per cent receive free school meals. These figures do not reflect the average for Anglican primary schools in Kensington and Chelsea, where English is an additional language for 46 per cent of pupils, and more than a quarter receive free school meals.
Gordon Brown and his wife accepted a place at Millbank community Primary School for their four-year-old son, John.
The nearest Church of England school to Downing Street is St Matthew’s, Rochester Row, but St Peter’s, Eaton Square, and St Clement Danes, near Aldwych, are also near.
Sian Davies, the executive head of two Anglican primaries in Hackney, is to oversee Grazebrook Primary School, which is attended by the children of the Secretary of State for Education, Ed Balls, it emerged this week. The community school has been put in special measures after a critical OFSTED report. A spokesman for the Learning Trust, which runs Hackney schools, said Ms Davies, who is executive head of St John and St James, and Holy Trinity schools, had an excellent track record of “turning schools around”. |
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