Richard Atkins School in Brixton’s New Park Road has ambitious
plans to improve the quality of education they give to local
children. Many of the children at the school come from
families whose first language is not English, with 94% of them
coming from minority ethnic communities including recent arrivals
from countries like Somalia, Portugal and
Afghanistan. With parents who don’t speak English
and who don’t fully understand the British education system, that
can present some real challenges – but the school’s feisty head
teacher Julie Roberts finds that exciting rather than
daunting.
I met up with Julie at the school to discuss her plans for a new
Learning Centre. Using old buildings at the back of the
playground, Julie hopes to build a new centre that will teach
English as a Second Language to parents, offer a health centre, an
advice centre, a teaching kitchen, as well as a new school and
community hall. By helping parents to integrate into the
community Julie knows she’ll be helping the children get the
support they need to learn and do well at school.
Julie showed me round and introduced me to teachers and children
who all obviously love being at Richard Atkins School. But
she explained the plans for the new centre had hit the
buffers. The Clapham Park Project, which operates on the
nearby estate, was offering £1m thanks to a Government grant, but
the project was still £800,000 short of its target and the deadline
for raising the money was just one week away. I told Julie
and her team I’d do what I could back at the town hall to help.
That afternoon I contacted our education team and spoke to my
colleague Cllr Paul McGlone who is responsible for children’s
services on the council. Within days, they had worked through
the finances and found £500,000 from other projects and
programmes. That’s enough money to give the Learning Centre
the go-ahead and secure the Government funding the school so
desperately needs.
So it’s good news all round! Well done to Lambeth’s
education team for coming up with the money, big thanks to Angus
Johnson’s team at the Clapham Park Project for bringing in the
Government funding, and most of all congratulations to Julie
Roberts and her team at Richard Atkins School. This is a
great result for the school and I’m delighted I was able to play a
small part in saving a project that I believe will help to
transform these children’s futures.
Richard Atkins Primary School is in Brixton Hill where I'm
one of the three local councillors
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