Only 40 pupils are left at the school in Southampton Road

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COUNCIL chiefs last night (Wednesday) confirmed the closure of a primary school in Gospel Oak – one of four to disappear from the map amid a pupil shortage faced by Camden’s state schools.

St Dominic’s, the Roman Catholic School in Southampton Road, has been on the site for 154 years but governors said that it would be running up debts it could not afford to pay back if it stayed opened any longer.

The final decision was ratified at a cabinet meeting, although its closure was considered inevitable with many of the remaining children already transferred to other schools. Camden Council leader Councillor Georgia Gould said the shortage of children was “primarily because people can’t afford to live here and raise families here”.

Margaret Harvey, the chair of governors at St Dominic’s, told councillors that “various options” were looked at but none were viable.

She said: “This will be the third school with a religious character to close in Camden within the last five years. “I challenge you as elected representatives of residents in Camden to please continue to maintain a diverse school provision that continues to offer real choice to all residents, including people of faith.”

Ms Harvey said that there were around 40 pupils left in the school and they “wanted to stay on to see the end of the school year”, but she added everybody who had already transferred had got a place at the school of their choice.

St Aloysius in Somers Town and St Michael’s in Camden Town have also been lost. Carlton, a secular school, was closed by the council, again due to a lack of enrolments.

The number of pupils at each school is crucial to the funding formula operated by the government. A series of factors have been repeatedly suggested for the trend, including a lack of affordable housing for families in Camden and more diverse faiths in some neighbourhoods.

At secondary school age, council records have shown that 55 per cent of teenagers from Camden are now educated at fee-paying private schools or somewhere outside of the borough.

Cllr Gould said that the Town Hall supported the call to ensure that a “Catholic offer” was retained in Camden and that St Dominic’s had been much loved over the decades.

She said that Camden now has the lowest birth rate in the whole country and suggested people who wanted to start a family had been hit by “a combination of house prices and the increasing expensiveness and security of the private rented sector”.

She said Camden “does not have all the levers” to change the trend but was “building new council housing” and were buying back family sized homes.

Regeneration chief Councillor Danny Beales said he wanted the diocese and the council to talk about how the building might be used for community purposes in different ways.

Ms Harvey said she was “pretty certain” it would not be used for luxury flats.

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