Sir – John Thorne, Oxfordshire’s chief education officer in the late 1970s, claimed that falling pupil numbers threatened the closure of one of Wantage’s schools and that amalgamation was the only viable option.
His research turned out to be faulty. You’ll not be surprised to hear that many of us teachers thought a three-site amalgamation a terrible idea.
Now, after all this time it is being publicly stated that running three sites is fraught with difficulties and there is a push to reduce it to two.
As our junior schools are now bursting at the seams and thousands of new houses are starting to be built in Wantage, why not alternatively, de-amalgamise the schools to cope with the influx of secondary numbers? Icknield (now East Site) produced some impressive teaching when it first became a comprehensive school and before amalgamation. I suspect it could do so again given the chance.
Terry Randall
Grove Street
Wantage
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