AnyParent, Bishop Gilpin is a church school. Legally, it cannot be forced to expand. I would say it's not very Christian for them to say "we're ok, screw everybody else", but that's - legally - rather beside the point.
I'd have been quite happy with the Tory school-building plan - I thought it was a pretty decent plan, I said so in the consultation. It was a shame when the Labour council cancelled it. I was also absolutely fine with the idea of a school on the former Manor House site (corner of Dorset Rd) - it was a shame that was found to be too small.
Equally, I think the current school expansion plan is fairly decent. It does no harm to the Rec (in fact it improves the pavilion facilities). No loss of open space, over 99% of the Rec still covered by the restrictive covenant, larger children's playground. The bowling green goes, but that's going anyway.
Most of the alternative sites you mention are not in the Dundonald area. If you look upthread you'll see a parent living 235m from Dundonald school whose child has just not got in to the school.
The problem is not, as you suggest above, that there has been extra house-building elsewhere in the borough, and that that's putting pressure on schools in the Dundonald area; the problem is that:
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there's a baby boom, and
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under normal economic conditions, a proportion of people move house further out of London just before their children start primary school - that's not happening at the moment because of the recession, and
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under normal economic conditions, more people elect to send their children to fee-paying schools - again, the recession has reduced that proportion.
You seem to suggest that the NIMBY's views should not be criticised because they're sincerely held; I have two problems with that:
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If they're sincerely held but they're harmful to part of our society - children, who do need to be educated - then I see no reason they should be above criticism, and
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I don't think that the "Save Our Rec" clique are being honest when they say (for example) that the Council plans to close the Rec and build flats on the site. They know that there is no such plan. So that's not a 'view' so much as a 'lie'.
Ultimately, a solution to the school-places crisis which involves us travelling back in time and making a different decision three years ago is not a very practical solution. Neither is punishing children (by depriving them of an education) for the mistakes of politicians. I'm annoyed with both parties for using this issue as a political football - but children need school places.
Blame away, but it's not a good argument against creating school places.
There are certainly some old people in the area who've been frightened by the NIMBYs' scare-mongering into believing that the Council plans to close the Rec and build on the whole site - them I feel sorry for. But that's an argument for publicising the facts about the expansion scheme, not for withholding criticism of the NIMBYs.