Minister won't meet 'new grammar' team

    SCHOOLS minister Eric Forth has refused to meet a delegation from Dover hoping to persuade him to allow a merged Dover grammar school for boys and girls on a green field site at Whitfield.
    The delegation was to have been headed by MP David Shaw together with district council leader and county councillor Paul Watkins and representatives of the two grammar schools.
    Mr Forth has explained to Mr Shaw that the Department for Education's concern is over the probable capital cost of building a new school. He said Kent County Council had been told and was to withdraw its proposals before publishing alternative, less expensive, ideas.
    "The issue is entirely one for Kent therefore." said Mr Forth who added there was not much point in meeting until Kent had come to a decision about what it intended to do.
    "When Kent has and when, and if, it publishes new proposals I shall be happy to meet you and your colleagues," wrote Mr Forth to Mr Shaw who is now taking up the issue with the county council.
    This week a county council subcommittee at Maidstone was told the Catholic diocesan authority had asked for consideration to be given to the proposal that St Edmund's school should move to the now-closed Castlemount school.
    But reported KCC property manager Gordon Reid, it was being recommended that temporary accommodation at St Edmund's RC comprehensive school should be replaced as agreed in a list on which St Edmund's had highest priority.
    A further report will be made to the county council's education committee on the overall situation regarding Dover secondary schools early in the New Year," said Mr Reid. A spokesman for the KEC said this was likely to be on January 11.

... So I wouldn't hold your breath, head warns piupils

    GIRLS at Dover Grammar have been warned by their head teacher not too get too excited about moving to a new co-ed school on a green field site.
    Dr Roger Thurling said at the A level presentation evening at the school on Monday. "As far as most pupils here tonight are concerned, forget it. It seems only the most remote possibility that anything will actually happen while you are still at the school."

    He said he had been informed - sometimes by the education department and sometimes by the Dover Express that the Education Department had not said yes about the new school and it had not said no. "To summarise their response so far as I understand it, it amounts to: good idea but it costs too much. How about Kent providing the money?"

    He reminded parents that governors were now looking at a number of options for the future of the school.

Prize winners with head teacher Dr Thurling and Chris Cherry who presented the prizes.

    Prizes and certificates were presented to the girls by Chris Cherry. Master of Eliot College at the University of Kent, where Dr Thurling was once a student.
    Receiving prizes for distinction at GCSE were: Vicki Emms, Sharon Hadfield, Kale Horsfall, Natasha Jain, Michelle Law, Joanne Robertson, Philippa Sansom, Helen Stone, Suzy Wilkinson, and Emma Young.