St Michael’s Primary School in Camden Town

A FOURTH primary school is closing down amid Camden’s pupil shortage crisis. Children at St Michael’s Church of England Primary School in Camden Town will not even see the academic year out after it was announced that it will finally shut down and merge with Our Lady’s School on April 30 due to falling rolls.

It follows the closure of St Aloysius School in Somers Town and Carlton School near Queen’s Crescent, and last month’s confirmation that St Dominic’s School in Gospel Oak will close.

The closures have been blamed on the changing nature of the borough, expensive housing and a sliding birth rate. At St Michael’s in Camden Street only half of the spaces in the school were filled by 2022.

Father Michael Thomas, parish priest at the nearby St Michael’s Church which established the school in the 19th century, said: “It’s sad really because in lots of ways it was set up to educate the poor for free. The church has always been at the forefront of providing where the state has been deficient. So it’s a great shame – nearly 140 years of providing free education and it’s just gone in one fell swoop.”

In March 2020, council education chiefs proposed to merge St Michael’s with Our Lady’s Primary School, a Catholic school that shares the Camden Street site. At the end of 2019, Our Lady’s also took on an influx of pupils that needed somewhere to go after St Aloysius School closed.

Andrew Dyer, branch and district secretary of Camden’s National Education Union who works at La Sainte Union, said lack of affordable housing was the “number one problem” causing the fall in roll numbers.

“Families are being priced out of the area, particularly around the central part of Camden and down by Euston Road where the HS2 developments are going on, families in social housing are being relocated,” he said. “It is a significant problem.

Not just for the families themselves, but also for teachers who can no longer afford to live in the area.” Mr Dyer said his teacher colleagues and friends have relocated out of Camden to Barnet, Hertfordshire and Luton.

The New Journal reported on how some of them have been priced out during a day of industrial action over pay earlier this month, which saw 40,000 teachers and school staff march through central London.

“In terms of church schools, I think it is another symptom of an increasingly secular society,” Mr Dyer said, adding that the lack of funding from the government of state schools is “not something that councils can fix”.

He added: “The council has always been an absolute champion of education. The government seems to not only be ignoring the teachers in terms of pay rises, but in terms of the whole funding schools properly. Whatever they say in terms of ‘record investment’, it’s not being seen on the ground.”

All pupils previously on St Michael’s register have been offered a place at Our Lady’s or have transferred to other schools in the borough. The school did not take on any new pupils in September 2022.

Fr Thomas, who was the ex officio governor of St Michael’s since 2017, praised the way staff had managed the merger: “As far as the kids are concerned, if they’ve noticed any transitional period, it would be minimal. The staff have worked wonders to do that.”

The closure follows a worrying trend of falling numbers across Camden’s state primary schools. More than 40 per cent of the borough’s children attend private schools, yet only 7 per cent of pupils in the UK as a whole are privately educated.

A spokesperson from Camden Council said: “Births in Camden have fallen by almost 20 per cent since 2012. This, coupled with the high costs of living in London, changed migration patterns, and other demographic changes  means that some of our primary schools have had relatively high numbers of unfilled places, creating significant funding challenges for our schools.”

St Michael’s had a “significant proportion of pupils with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) or additional needs” but the council said those children had been supported.

Those who wish to make a comment or object to the proposals should email nicholas.smith@­camden.gov.uk by March 9.