One of the costs of change that hasn’t been explored fully is the potential environmental cost. Why are we going to pull down existing buildings rather than refurbishing and re-using them? What environmental consequences might there be with new larger schools and pupils travelling greater distances to them? How many more car journeys will there be across Bedford each day?
This isn’t a decision that will just affect children, schools and families – it will affect all of us in our daily lives.
Save Middle Schools - The Blog 
Let us also imagine a village which is the location for a larger primary school. I have indicated previously that I think that reorganisation will threaten the smaller lower schools (ones with mixed aged classes). Well, imagine the increase in traffic through that village as parents drive their children to a larger primary school. Also imagine the increase in traffic when parents begin to move their children to those larger primary schools, as they may offer single age classes. The result: environmental damage and the death of local communities, as village schools are forced to close in favour of larger primaries, in fewer villages.
A horror story for Halloween 2009.
Imagine the scenario where our wise Mayor with his wise Councillors and their wise Officers doggedly push through their proposal to change our well established and much preferred three tier school system and replace it with an evidently flawed two tier system.
Once these wise Councillors have agreed the change, you can imagine that it will be very difficult for them to withdraw from their decision without loosing face and the breaking of so many promises to their Architects, Surveyors, Builders, Developers and all of their other preferred Contractors and Consultants.
Imagine that once the tide of change is in full swing we have a new Government and our wise Councillors find that the pot of gold that they have coveted so earnestly is no longer there or at best severely depleted!
Imagine that they then decide to revert to a cunning plan B.
Our wise Councillors propose a new initiate, by using the existing infrastructure they could convert the Middle Schools (such as Lincroft and Harrold) into massive Primary Schools that will feed much much larger Secondary Schools or Academies (such as Sharnbrook or John Bunyan).
They could then sell off all our existing local Lower Schools, with their very valuable playing fields for development and with this windfall, the additional taxes that the new housing would generate and any BSF money that was left they could finance the expansion and regeneration of the existing infrastructure into their utopia and our children’s legacy.
Our wise Mayor and his wise Councillors would then make everyone that was important to them very happy indeed.
Apart that is from our poor children!
Don’t have nightmares.
The End.
2015!
and you forgot to mention that those officers who will have ruined Bedford educationally and financially have gone onto other LAs with their promotion based on their “proven” ability to manage a major change project!
Oh, and there might be a bit of cash left over to build a bit of new bypass. Sir Dave Hodgson… has a nice ring to it don’t you think!!