I’m delighted to announce that we’ve achieved sufficient support for the Harris Federation to apply for a new two form entry East Dulwich Primary School.

The application has been submitted today.

Huge thanks to the 160 local families who  lent their support for this project. We needed 80 families with children due to start reception classes in 2014 or 2015 and 94 families have stepped forward. Another 66 supporters with younger children has also come forward.

We’ve also received lots of other support from residents. Thank you.

I’d also like to publicly say thank you to the Harris people who agreed to support our request on them to create a new school. Without finding such a successful and willing provider many local children would soon be stuck for reception places.

But the shortage of reception places by 2016 will reach 75-90 in Dulwich and up to another 135 for Peckham Rye and Nunhead areas.

It looks increasingly likely that the Judith Kerr Bilingual Primary school offering 50 places will be located in East Dulwich. But it isn’t certain and both schools together would still leave a gap of 115 reception places.

So we’re still campaigning for more support – so we can try and get the new East Dulwich Harris Primary school increased to three form entry (90 pupils).

If we obtain even further support we’ll ask Harris to apply for a second primary school in January 2014 to ensure all children have great schools places near to where they live.

If you support new primary schools in our area – please email me your support ASAP.