Proposed City Academy at Swiss Cottage
A summary of some key educational considerations
UCL and the LibDem-Conservative Alliance on Camden Council are proposing to build a City
Academy under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme at the corner of Adelaide
Road and Avenue Road in Swiss Cottage. The proposed Academy is the wrong project in the
wrong place. It will solve no existing problems, and create serious new ones.
1. The educational damage caused by building the proposed Academy in Swiss Cottage
There is absolutely no shortage of school places in the part of the borough in which it is proposed
to site the Academy. The Swiss Cottage site is within the catchment area of two existing
secondary schools:
• less than a quarter of a mile from Quintin Kynaston;
• less than a mile from Haverstock School.
Quintin Kynaston has for a long time been an excellent school. Haverstock by contrast was for
years a highly challenged school with poor Ofsted reports. It has recently had a total rebuild with
PFI, but local competition from an Academy nearby would effectively undermine it. It is not a
responsible approach for UCL or Camden Council to engage in a project that would destabilise
either of these existing local secondary schools.
The proposed Swiss Cottage site is not actually ‘available’ in any sense other than that
Camden owns the freehold of the site, where two Special Schools are currently based. To
oust the existing users would have major and arguably totally unacceptable moral costs.
These two Special Schools both achieved Beacon status as leaders in their fields and have
outstanding inspection reports.
• Frank Barnes School is a sign-bilingual primary school for deaf children from all over
Greater London offering 60 places with 7 classes across the Foundation Stage and Key
Stages 1 and 2.
• Swiss Cottage School has places for 138 children aged from 2 to 16 with multiple
mental, physical and behavioural learning difficulties.
So far, the proposals on the possible futures of those schools (ranging through relocation,
downsizing, merging with mainstream schools, providing special units in other schools) go
nowhere near providing any guarantee for safeguarding the education and welfare of these
children, who are among the most vulnerable in London.
It is not right to risk destroying two currently excellent Special Schools and destabilising two
existing secondary schools, in order to build a new school in an area where the places are not
needed.
2. The need in the south of the borough for a Community School
Malcolm Grant has said that the principal reason for supporting an Academy was for UCL to
assist a ‘deprived neighbourhood’. But on no analysis can Avenue Road in Swiss Cottage be
considered an area of deprivation, whereas all around UCL south of the Euston Road there are
serious challenges for local children. Camden’s Public Health Report shows that the areas south
of the Euston Road are in the most deprived 20 per cent in England, whereas Swiss Cottage
is in the 20 per cent least deprived areas category.
The desperate need for additional school places is south of the Euston Road, where there is
currently no secondary school at all. Children from the four primary schools in this area
(including a relatively new primary school, Christopher Hatton, opened in 1997 to cope with the
rising population of families with young children in the area) find it extremely difficult to get into
any Camden secondary school, the catchment areas of which are all in the northern part of the
borough. They currently have to scatter to around forty different secondary schools with long
journeys on public transport across London.
Pressures will increase further once the Kings Cross redevelopment scheme has provided
additional affordable housing for families. Increasing school places by an additional form of
entry at nearby South Camden Community School will barely mop up even a fraction of the
current demand.
These facts are generally agreed. But the argument has been made that there is no appropriate site
where a school is needed, south of the Euston Road. Insofar as the BSF deadline imposes shortterm time restrictions, this may be true. But siting a new secondary school is a major strategic
decision and the rush to Swiss Cottage is ill-judged and short-sighted.
In two to three years time the Eastman Dental Hospital site owned by UCLH is likely to become
available. A preliminary feasibility study has revealed that this site would very comfortably
accommodate a full secondary school of around 1200 students (the number agreed for the Swiss
Cottage site), and has use of extensive local open space at Coram’s Fields for sports activities. It
would also allow possibilities for rebuilding at the rear with new accommodation, such as student
residences, and office provision on the site.
The possibility of acquiring use of the Eastman site for a new Community School where it is
most needed is at serious risk if a new secondary school project has been embarked on elsewhere
in the borough, where, far from being needed, it will actively destroy or undermine current
provision.
3. UCL and relations with the local community
The short-termism of UCL and the current LibDem-Conservative Alliance, far from ‘keeping
UCL out of Camden politics’, as Malcolm Grant has always desired, has instead served to create
massive local hostility against UCL. This move is now seen as UCL seeking not to benefit needy
people in the local area but rather, through what appears to be a bullying and highly partisan
approach, merely seeking to aggrandise itself. This proposal is an own goal, a PR disaster for
UCL, and one with horrendous practical consequences for thousands of children and their
families now and over many years to come.
As a leading educational institution committed to liberal principles of justice and equality of
opportunity, UCL should not be involved in this project as currently conceived. There is still time
for a major re-think.