Russell meets Minister over School closure

10.25.56am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 11th Sep 2007

Colchester MP Bob Russell has taken the campaign to save the town's Alderman Blaxill School straight into the heart of Government - with a meeting last evening in London with the Education Minister who has direct responsibility for looking at proposals by Essex County Council who want to shut the secondary school at Shrub End and merge it with the Thomas Lord Audley School at Monkwick.

This morning Mr Russell said that the meeting with Lord Adonis, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and four senior officials in his Department had enabled him to forcibly challenge the reasons given by Tory-controlled Essex County Council to close Alderman Blaxill School.

"I let him know precisely what I thought, and how much the proposed closure was opposed by the community in Shrub End - not just those directly involved with the School, but just about everybody in the area.

"I told Lord Adonis that the current Head and Board of Governors acknowledged that work had to be done to put right the problems identified by a damaging Ofsted Report - but I said that, in my opinion, Essex County Council had to be held accountable for allowing this state of affairs to develop and worsen."

Mr Russell added that he had told the Minister that, in his opinion, Alderman Blaxill School was, to use a nautical example, "like a ship which had gone off course but is now heading in the right direction with a skipper and crew determined to reach port - which they will do, given a fair wind, by which I mean given the support and encouragement which in recent years has been somewhat lacking."

He said that he had also stressed the importance of the School to the children of soldiers based at the Colchester Garrison. Almost a quarter of the pupils have at least one parent who is a member of HM Armed Forces.

"I told Lord Adonis that Alderman Blaxill School had a proud record of pastoral and educational expertise in respect of the special characteristics associated with the children of military personnel, something which I believe would be lost - to the detriment of such children - if they were absorbed into a considerably larger school.

"I also pointed out that requiring children from Shrub End to travel to Monkwick, along the dangerous Berechurch Hall Road, was contrary to the Government's own policies on Sustainable Communities and Safe Routes to School. The two housing estates are separated by the largest new Super Garrison in Britain. There is no bus route linking Shrub End and Monkwick."

The Minister promised to consider all the points made to him by Mr Russell, and also written objections from the Governors of Alderman Blaxill School to an immediate request by Essex Education Authority that the current Board of Governors should be replaced.

The plight of Alderman Blaxill School has already been raised in the House of Commons during a debate and through Parliamentary Questions tabled by Mr Russell.

Following the meeting, the town's Liberal Democrat MP said that he was grateful to the Education Minister for agreeing to meet him. He felt that the 40-minute meeting at the Department's head office in Westminster went well.

Mr Russell added: "I did not expect Lord Adonis to say that he would scrap the closure plan just like that, but I have to believe that he will take seriously the many points which I raised which I consider are so strong that the closure and merger plan should be stopped - and all energies directed to making both Alderman Blaxill and Thomas Lord Audley two schools of which we can all be proud."