Notre Dame High consultation

Further to the Notre Dame High – Amendment to Entry Criteria Consultation, we wrote as follows to Glasgow City Councillors ahead of the decision on the school’s future catchment policy.

We met on Tuesday 1st October 2019 and had a discussion on the published consultation results. We agreed to write to all Glasgow City Councillors to reiterate our position and the position of the local community of North Kelvin, where the pending decision will directly impact on people from our community including parents/carers/families with pupils from St Charles’ Primary school affected.

During the open consultation period, at our Community Council meeting on 7th May we held a wider community discussion on the topic. At this meeting the North Kelvin Community Councillors voted unanimously to support the change of entry criteria to co-educational (option 3) with two important additions:

(1) both boys and girls attending St Charles’ Primary should be included in the catchment of Notre Dame High

(2) St Charles’ Primary school learning community/secondary school catchments should be co-aligned with both Notre Dame High and John Paul Academy (with options for children to go to either secondary school).

This unanimous position was repeated at our Community Council meeting on 1st October, and we noted our view that the consultation questions were biased – that with excluding boys from St Charles as a consultation option, but including girls from St Charles as a second girls-only option, the consultation was skewed and the exclusion of St Charles’ boys as an option was unfair both to boys from St Charles but also in that the girls-only position had two consultation options, while the co-ed position only one.

We would also like to express our disappointment should this decision become a party political issue.

The North Kelvin Community Council care passionately about the education of children in our community which will be impacted by this decision. We support the inclusive change of Notre Dame to co-educational entry criteria with a local catchment that includes St Charles’ Primary (the next closest Roman Catholic Primary School after Notre Dame Primary School). Having St Charles’ Primary catchments to be aligned with both John Paul Academy and Notre Dame High School will give parents/children the options to go to schools in their communities – given that St Charles’ Primary has many children from communities local to John Paul Academy as well as children from our North Kelvin Community which is more local to Notre Dame.

We do not support the ongoing use of limited public and council funds to perpetuate an out-dated and segregated all-girls school that does not serve nor include all the children in the local community.

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