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Kensington and Chelsea LBC is one of the very few local authorities to sponsor an academy, which opened this autumn. Leader, Cllr Merrick Cockell wonders why the process took so long. In September, I attended the very first assembly of the Chelsea Academy, the first new secondary school to open in Kensington and Chelsea in more than 50 years. It was wonderful to meet the first generation of pupils at the school, and to see the building, which will be the school's home, take shape. But it was frustrating that it had taken 15 years to reach this point. Every year, 660 resident pupils in the borough transfer to secondary school. We have only 300 school places within the borough. This is a legacy of the centralised planning of the Inner London Education Authority which, despite protests from this borough, closed down Chelsea Boy's School and Sloane Grammar. These schools had successfully educated generations of children in the south of the borough, from home secretary Alan Johnson to football legend Malcolm McDonald. It has been an ambition of mine for a long time to provide local children with an excellent secondary education in the borough, and for more of our parents to know that their children will be able to attend the school they choose. The launch of the Government's academies programme seemed like a step towards achieving my ambition. We thought we would have our school open in just a few years. Why not? We could demonstrate the need for a new school in the south of our borough. We could offer an excellent site for a new school building. And we had a great track record, as an authority, of educating children to high standard within our schools. But the Government had decided that although academies should encourage local involvement in education, local authorities could not act as sponsors. It took a change of minister to get us accepted as one of the first local authorities to be able to sponsor an academy, together with our co-sponsor, the Church of England. There has been a lot of interest recently in the Swedish education system. The scheme was introduced in the 1990s, and parents were given a sum of money which they could use to send their child to the school of their choice. This allowed parents to set up their own schools outside the state system, and for other providers to establish schools. This led to incredible flexibility. Nine hundred new schools were established in a decade, a real contrast to the time it took for us to open one academy here in London. I still feel pupils in my borough are under-served in terms of secondary school places, and recently made the commitment to open a new secondary school in the north of the borough. My hope is that it does not take a further 15 years before I attend another assembly, marking the opening of the school.

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Is 15 years too long to plan a school?

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