Parents fight plans for bilingual city academy

Parents are fighting plans to turn a London comprehensive into the country's first bilingual city academy.

Hammersmith and Fulham council wants to run Hurlingham and Chelsea School in Fulham jointly with the fee-paying Lycée Français.

The Lycée in South Kensington is owned by the French government and popular with diplomats and expatriate businessmen.

The new academy would be free to the children of British citizens, while French expatriate pupils would have to pay. But the move is fiercely opposed by some parents, who say they would prefer to take over the running of the school themselves.

The Parental Alliance for Secondary Schools, a group of local families, fears many children would be prevented-from securing a place at the academy if it prioritised the offspring of wealthy French nationals.

Hurlingham and Chelsea was failing so badly a few years ago that it was threatened with closure. But under current headteacher Philip Cross it is now rated "good and rapidly improving with outstanding features" by education watchdog Ofsted. Polly Woodford, a member of Pass and a governor at the school, said: "We want to work with Hammersmith and Fulham council to continue the amazing work that's being done there."

She said that if there was no way the school could stay a comprehensive, then parents would be happy for it to be a foundation school - a type of state secondary that runs its admissions and owns its land and buildings.

Pass has been inspired by a group of Lambeth parents whose fight for more secondary school places led to the opening of Elmgreen School in West Norwood - Britain's first "parent-promoted" foundation school.

Antony Lillis, the councillor in charge of education at Hammersmith and Fulham, said the council was prepared to consider a serious proposal to turn Hurlingham and Chelsea into a foundation school.

"The status quo isn't an option," he said, adding that the Government wanted "innovative" plans in return for cash from the Building Schools for the Future programme.

The council is bidding for £ 120million to revamp its schools and consultation on the plans it will submit to Whitehall ends on 2 June.

Mr Lillis said his aim was to get more local people to choose Hurlingham and Chelsea, which is undersubscribed. The academy would take three- to 18-year-olds and offer English and French curricula.

But Ms Woodford warned: "It will definitely become a two-tier system. You'll certainly have lots of wellheeled French children and we fear the focus won't be on local children."

Mr Cross could not be contacted for comment.