All Joking Aside

When you read the consultation documents for the proposed killing of the three schools [City of Leeds, Primrose, Parklands], you could almost conclude that they are jokes. No professional English teacher would give them above a Grade E at GCSE. I mean, would you ask the parent of a child whose school you are about to destroy, "Have you found this document useful?"

Looking at other options, in the Primrose Consultation document, Education Leeds concludes that transferring pupils to other schools, "would be unecessarily disruptive". And actually that's odd because that's exactly what they plan for City of Leeds' pupils.

Parklands seems to be being blamed for the lack of co-educational provision in East Leeds. Well, I don't think you can have a go at Parklands for the closure of Agnes Stewart and Braimwood.

But what is really sad, is not that the writers of these consultation documents seem unable to string a coherent argument together, but it is that they don't care. It's not about hearts and minds; it's about how much money they can wring out of central government. And that will be the argument that they put to the councillors who make the decisions.

So all joking aside, it's a fight, and the only way to win is to email educ.school.organisation@educationleeds.co.uk and say, no. Just say no. Just tell them, it's your family, your school, your area and your town, and you say keep these plucky schools working their proverbial socks off in the hearts of our communities, so that local children can go to local schools, accountable to local government.

And the deadline to say no is 4pm this Friday 5 March 2010.