Capital Summertime Ball 2024

[DC]

knobs.

they don't hardly know the area i live in and they are allowed to make these decisions. my old primary school that has stood since around 1930 has been knocked down and this makes me very sad. when i left in the summer in 1999 there was nothing wrong with it, infact i recall them starting to replace the old windows and building new toilets. they all left in the summer of last year, it was sectioned off around the winter when construction started. and to my horror i drove by it the other night and it was gone! just a massive dirt patch with the old black railings around it. destruction and devastation.

they have taken out three schools in all (two others including my old one), and 'merged' them into one, cutting jobs and costs. this new school looks like a prison and will be falling down in 30 years. plus they have built it right over the road from a busy industrial estate, when the lorries load and unload around the time of the kids coming out of school. sure there have been demonstrations against it over the last 3 or 4 years, but do they listen? accident waiting to happen here, my auntie even refused to put my cousin in that place, instead moving him to another primary school. and yet apart from all of this, it's like a part of my life gone. well it's been over for 9 years, but now there is nothing to remember it by.

[Lucinda]

Yeah, they are doing that with primary schools. The school across the road from my house in Nottingham is being closed this summer, it's an old Victorian building which seems to have lasted fine for well over 100 years but they are closing the better school and making all the kids go to a worse school which looks to me like a load of Portakabins and gets worse results. They're closing the post office as well which is just next to the school so there will be a row of derelict old buildings which isn't good for the area at all. The Government and local Councils rarely think about the implications, other than cost savings, of their policies and actions.

[DC]

it's a part of history that will never come back though isn't it? i mean it's like i said, what will their 'new' buildings be in 30-40 years? nothing, they'll be pulling them down and looking upon this stupid scheme like the flats being built in the 60's.

[Nikki]

I think it is really sad when they get rid of old buildings, places begin to lose their character. However a couple of years ago they demolished my old primary school, they built a shiny new one within the grounds. The old one was in a state of disrepair but it didn't do too badly considering it was built during the war as a temporary building. So all in all on that occasion it was a good thing.

[Kelly]

My old primary school has been knocked down too. I walked past it when I was last over in Sheffield and was shocked. It's just gone! There wasn't even anything wrong with it - in fact, they were in the middle of refurbishing it when I left!

[SEANN]

They're knocking down secondary schools in our town and 'merging' all of them as well. There is currently five, soon there will only be two

[Guest]

knobs.

they don't hardly know the area i live in and they are allowed to make these decisions.

It appears to be an emotive issue for people.

I don't know the particular circumstances of your local primary, but it appears that in a lot of cases schools are closed due to small class sizes or generally a substantial lack of attendees and if a school can't reasonably justify a budget with fewer pupils than a nearby school it seems logical to those who make these decisions to close or merge them. It isn't nice, but unfilled spaces in schools continue to be paid for, which is money that could go elsewhere.

[DC]

the fact is, that when my cousins started there only a few years ago, there were turning some away. the school had a great reputation locally for the last 30-40 years, there are definitely enough childeren around and still being born to keep that running. there isn't any justification for what they did, becuase the other 2 were doing ok as far as i know as well. as for health and saftey, the school was in a much better state than my secondary school and that's still up. if it had to stop being a school, it had many more uses. all thats there now is nothing and they probably won't build on it like they haven't built on the factory they knocked down in 2001 not so far away.