Education

LRA takes particular interest in the standard of schools and the availability of places for Loughton’s children. Essex County Council is the Local Education Authority (LEA) for Loughton, and Chris Pond, LRA County Councillor for Loughton Central Division, oversees local education matters, including monitoring the number of school places available.

LRA school governors
LRA councillors and members of the committee keep informed of issues and activities in local education by serving on governing bodies of most of Loughton’s schools, including: Roding Valley High School, Alderton Infants, Staples Road Infants and Junior Schools, White Bridge Infants and Junior Schools, Debden Park High School, and Oak View School. The order of priority for new Local Education Authority appointments is now: nomination by the Local Member for the school; nomination by any other Member or arising from an ECC Area Forum; nomination by the governing body for the school; self-nomination. If anyone would like to serve as an LRA school governor, please contact us.

Education and the community
LRA governors strongly encourage their schools to be local centres of community life. LRA governors initiated the walking bus. Local schools contributed to our Soundscape project. Students’ views and ideas have been exhibited at the Farmers market. LRA invited Roding Valley High School students to participate in the Loughton Brook project. LRA has contributed to the development of a youth website at Debden Park High School.

Epping Forest College
In recent years, LRA has been very concerned about the College's finances, and about their poor performance, leading to their recent poor Ofsted report. LRA Cllr Chris Pond and Vice-Chairman David Linnell have had discussions at the College. The Interim Principal will stay till the end of 2011, and has appointed new vice-principals. The A level courses on offer have been reviewed, in discussion with the four local schools which do not have 6th forms. Although A level courses get most of the publicity, they relate to only a very small proportion of the 2,000 students on-site, most of whom are on vocational courses.
The College would like to install an all-weather pitch on Lucton's Field (across Borders Lane), fenced off for security but without levelling the land and without any sports hall (space would be provided for dog-walkers)
LRA and local residents were very concerned that travellers might gain access through the open gateway on Borders Lane, and LRA successfully asked for a barrier and ditch to be installed.
Adults who have benefited from developing skills and interests at the college have been disappointed by the closure of many classes or by more-than-doubled fees. Government policy, redirecting funding towards the 16-19 age group, is blamed. LRA councillors have raised this with the Minister responsible for 'Lifelong Learning', and have pressed Essex County Council to support some general interest classes in the Loughton area, as they do in Epping and Ongar.
Loughton Hall has now been sold. The Sports Hall is being sold off by the College to raise money.

For more about Education

Draft Essex School Organisation Plan 2010 - 2015
This sets out the County’s plans for schools. Note that the link to the draft Plan (top right-hand corner of the page) takes you to a page giving the chapter headings – to get to the text you need to click on one of the icons at the top-left of this page, and then on one of the icons on the next page.

Queries about Education
If you have queries about education, please contact the following:

For general issues concerning Loughton schools or the LEA
Councillor Chris Pond .

For Ofsted reports see http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Inspection-reports

For information about a particular school, contact the school itself or Essex County Council Education Department.