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Greens challenge Oasis Academy's takeover bid

10th January 2007

For immediate release

 
Bristol Green Party has condemned controversial proposals to scrap a newly refurbished primary school so that Hengrove's 'Oasis' Academy can expand into the primary education sector

The City Council is now consulting on a plan put forward by Whitehall and backed by the new Academy's sponsors to build a new primary within the Academy, into which the children of New Oak Primary school would be transferred. New Oak would then be demolished and the land declared surplus to requirements.

Green Party spokesman Glenn Vowles said:

"Whatever is done at Hengrove, it should first provide a good all-round education, but this is clearly being driven by other agendas. The government has ideological goals to wrest schooling from local authority control; the sponsors are buying into influencing local childrens upbringing the way they want; and this latest bid to extend into primary schooling offers the city council an opportunity to sell off some land for development to meet government housebuilding targets."

"The claims that it will be to the children's advantage appear to have been cobbled together by these three stakeholders as an afterthought, to sell the idea to the people who really matter, the parents and children"

"In practice the Oasis Trust has no experience of providing primary education, so this will make young local children the guinea pigs in an ideological experiment."

Notes:

1. Glenn Vowles will be the Green Party's candidate in the May elections, standing in his home ward, Knowle, where a number of the childen concerned also live.
2. The Oasis Trust is a Christian charity founded by prominent Baptist Steve Chalke

Contact:

Glenn Vowles, Tel 0117 971 7023

Links:

Background briefing (City Council)
Press Release 4/12/2006 (Oasis Community Learning)
Green Party Policy summary (pdf) (national)