A CHAFFORD MUM at the heart of the highly publicised campaign for primary school places in Chafford Hundred has claimed that “immigrants” have been given all the school places in Chafford Hundred.
Mum, Lea Agambar was one of the parents who was taken by Thurrock MP, Jackie Doyle-Price to 10 Downing Street and the Houses of Commons to help plead her case.
Recently, Mrs Agambar failed in her appeal to gain a place at Chafford Hundred primary, Tudor Court primary and Warren primary.
Mrs Agambar said: “There are 3 schools in chafford hundred and we have not been offered any of them instead all the immigrants have been given places!
The comment was made on social media site, Facebook.
Thurrock Council has responded by illustrating in detail what their admissions policy is:
A spokesperson said: “There are no special arrangements designed to give priority to any group or groups within the community. As all applications are treated confidentially we are not, therefore, able to discuss the details of Mrs Agambar’s application.”
YT sent a series of questions to the councillors and MP who have helped publicise the campaign including demonstrations at Thurrock Council meetings and petition gatherings at church events.
We asked councillors Tunde Ojetola and Charles Key:
1. Would you take this opportunity to distance yourselves from these remarks?
2. Is the issue of “immigrants getting places in Chafford schools” something you have all discussed.
3. Did this issue arise in discussion in Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament?
4. What advice would you give Mrs Agambar?
5. Do you feel that whatever school Mrs Agambar’s children go to, that she may have to build some bridges?
Both councillors failed to respond.
YT also sent a series of questions to Thurrock MP, Jackie Doyle-Price.
1.Was the assertion “we have not been offered any of them instead all the immigrants have been given places!” something discussed with yourself.
2.Is it a concern that you share?
3.Was it one of the reasons that you took Mrs Agambar to 10 Downing Street?
4.Was it a matter that was discussed with the prime minister?
5.Was it a matter that was discussed with Mr Gove?
In her response, Jackie Doyle Price failed to answer any of the questions save indicating that the meeting at Downing Street was a private matter.
Mrs Agambar has removed her facebook page.
I really don’t see what the big deal is here. If that’s what she feels then she cannot be attacked because of it.
I think Labour councils ruin areas, turn many places into slums and have a knack for electoral gerrymandering. I also think they seek to keep their own voters happy and to hell with the rest of us. Chafford being a Tory mountain on a Labour plain will always suffer under a Labour council. Thats my opinion and I shouldn’t be attacked because of it.
I have often commented that we need to go back to a system where schools only take local children unless there are severe issues elsewhere. Schools add to a sense of community and keeping local children in local schools should be a priority.
This highlights that the government really need to get a grip with immigration. They need to actually talk about it, listen to peoples worries rather than throwing out token quotes here are there. The problem with most in government is that immigration rarely affects them so they don’t realise how much of a problem it is. Having grown up in 2 areas which has changed beyond recognition and now resemble something out of the third world, I have often said that Thurrock is slowly heading in the same direction, especially considering our council loves the word ‘diversity’ and the phrase ‘many communities’.
Surely it is irrelevant whether you are an immigrant or if you were born and bred in this country, the law sees all people as equal, so to single out immigrants as the soul reason why there are no places left for your child is just plain racists. To put it in its simplest form, there are too many children or too few schools or a combination of the two. As it would be insensitive to tell couples not to have children, (much as I would love to), it really comes down to building enough schools in the area to accommodate all of them.
Unfortunately the problem with Chafford Hundred was the lack of future planning by TBC, the area has grown since it was first developed and it was seen as a “yuppie” area where professional couples were living, this has now changed to a community of families and more properties have been built, the schools that were originally built were not future proof.
there are now more children than places in the community and the infrastructure has not moved with the developments, the balms should lay squarely at TBC’s doorstep.
This type of problem will continue within Thurrock until such time that the planners start looking to the future and increasing the infrastructure around the new dwellings.
This lady has every right to her own opinion. She has been taking on a huge fight for the future of her child. Unfortantly yet again some poor perents plight has been hood winked by political games. All children no matter what their parents political preferences are, should have the god given right to a school place where they live.
As for the questions put forward to the cllrs.well let’s face it who’s benefit were they working for in the first place?
The questions to JDP perhaps would of been better put to her political advisor .
The problem is the Labour party introduced a policy of mass immigration and expected to be able to pay for it through borrowing hundreds of billions of pounnds and by creating hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs to accommodate the immigrants. They also subsidised the private sector jobs they say the immigrats do rather than the lazy British people to the tune of billions of pounds a year. Why should this country pay to house millions of immigrants, give them free education, free healthcare, free welfare benefits. I quite like Barbados and I’m sure millions of other white english people in this country do as well. If 8 million white english peoplpe turned up there and demanded everything for nothing what reaction do you think they’d get? Or if they turned up on the west coast of Africa, or Zimbabwe or Uganda , or Kenya, or the Indian sub continent. The woman is right. There are no school places because the moment immigrants arrive, if they don’t bring kids with them, they set about having children in the full knowledge that it is almost a cast iron guarantee that they will never be asked to leave this country. They are free loaders that have arrived from broken countries with broken economies. Unfortunately they’ve arrived here at the same time that our economy has gone down the tubes and there aren’t enough jobs or money to go round for all the goodies the Labour party wants to give out to the rest of the world. That’s why the kids suffer when they can’t get a school place and why they suffer when they can’t get a job when they leave school or afford to live their own lives in their own homes because we don’t have enough affordable houses. This isn’t a problem with planning, this is a problem with population control and we don’t have that in this country because of mass immigration. Those that scream racism at the very thought of someone being negative towards mass immigration do not have the slightest understanding of what it is doing to this country. They have been to Labour land mind re-programming camp. Mass immigration has been and is destructive in whatever country it has occurred in the past. It will be the same for this country.
Personally I blame the large influx of Huguenots into the country in the 17th. and 18th. centuries!
Much as I support mrs agambar’s schools campaign, I disagree totally with her small minded view on immigrants. Immigrants have contributed positively to the life of this country and in particular to the development of chafford hundred and the surrounding area. how dare anyone stick the boot into these hard working people! Should me ashamed of yourselves.
I wonder how Cllr Tunde Ojetola must feel having stood shoulder to shoulder with this woman in her campaign – and now he finds she blames people like him for taking all the school places!
It sounds like the lady made a misguided comment and clearly regrets it, as she has now removed it. Let’s not blow it out of all proportion and deflect attention from the real issue – people who live on Chafford can’t get their kids into any of the local schools. Clearly Thurrock Council should have ensured there was capacity when the place was built but they failed as usual and now they are not in a position to do much about it. Instead of pushing for a new free primary school in Tilbury where no-one wants one why didn’t Jackie Price-Doyle get it built here where it is needed.
The building of Chafford Hundred bengan over 2 decades ago. How were they going to know back then what the Labour party had planned for the country. This isn’t just a Chafford Hundred problem and again the woman is 100% right. She has probably had to remove her comments and Facebook page because of the backlash she would have faced from groups like the UAF or Searchlight or other factions of the far left. To say that schools aren’t needed in other areas of the borough is entirely wrong. Show us the benefits of mass immigration and the benefits to this area from it. I’m sure most local people would love to see the benefits.
I have tried to avoid commenting on this because I’m not sure it’s newsworthy. “Woman has opinion – shock” even “Woman has opinion about immigrants and is prepared to voice it – horror” aren’t headlines.
And then the bizarre attempt to link this to local Tory councillors and MP. Erm… why? Is she a spokesman for them now? Is she even a supporter? As far as I am aware the only connection with the local Tories is the fact they have tried to help her as her elected representatives. I suspect this is not the first time a councillor has taken up an issue on behalf of someone who doesn’t agree 100% with them.
It is interesting that this week we have this story, where YT are keen to try and draw parallels with the Tories regardless of how tenuous the link; and also the 13 year old vs the fire brigade story. 2 women, 2 opinions, 2 very different treatments from YT. Just an observation, not a judgement.
For what it’s worth on the substance of the issue, presumably all of the immigrant children live in houses in the catchment area etc, and there would still be insufficient places even if all the families were white? Unless there is an accusation on racial discrimination, or a suggestions that immigrants are building extra houses thus throwing all of the school place requirement models out, I don’t think race comes into it.
I agree with Ed, how must Cllr Tunde Ojeto be feeling about what Lea Agamber has said, but with a tory councillor putting on her election leaflets thats shes against immigration, he must be used to it now?
I don’t think anyone in their right mind can deny that immigration into the country has had an impact in the shortfall in housing / schools / hospital places etc, there is nothing wrong with immigration and this can have a beneficial impact on the whole economy; however, numbers need to be restricted to the amount that the infrastructure can allow, unfortunately the UK policy and the European Union Policy is to allow free movement and we are seen a a good country to settle in due to our easy benefit system.
Until something changes we will always have situations where we have a lack of available spaces for the education of the local children when councils continue to build dwellings without thought to the infrastructure.