A borough head teacher has come out against the building of a new super-size six form entry Secondary school on the site of a major new development in Mortlake.

The powerful intervention comes as this evening - Monday – councillors are due to discuss the controversial proposal for the school, which would be built alongside more than 1,000 homes on the Stag Brewery site.

Local residents in an around Mortlake are fighting the school plan amid claims it is not needed and that, instead, existing secondary schools in the east of the borough should be expanded.

They argue that the school, which would eventually take 1,100 pupils. will generate a massive increase in traffic on roads that are already choked with cars and lorries.

Official reports from Council officials insist the new school is needed to cope with increase in demand created by a series of major new housing schemes that are going through the planning process.

These schemes include the Mortlake Brewery site itself, another scheme on the site of the Homebase store, in north Sheen, Barnes Hospital and Kew Retail Park.

The headteacher of Richmond Park Academy, Nabila Jiwa, which is in Park Avenue, North Sheen, would lose out if the new school, which covers part of the same catchment area, is built.

The headteacher of Richmond Park Academy, Nabila Jiwa. Credit: Richmond Park Academy.

In a letter to a councillors, she said: "I am writing to draw your attention to our serious concerns about proposals for a large new secondary school with 6th Form, within our catchment, on the Former Stag Brewery site, as the new proposed school is only one mile from our school.

"We are strongly opposed to the new secondary school being built because we have serious concerns about its impact on the viability of Richmond Park Academy and other neighbouring schools, especially at sixth form."

She argued that official Council's projections overstate the need for Secondary School age children in the borough.

"We therefore do not believe a new school is required and by building a new school there will be over-capacity in the east of the borough from 2023, which will be at the detriment to the existing schools."

Miss Jiwa said a falling birthrate in the borough seen in recent years means that, despite the new housing developments, there is no need for another secondary school.

She said: "My school presently has capacity for 180 students in each year and 200 in sixth form. We are not full across the school, despite the work we are doing to try and increase capacity.

"The projections that the Council has used to justify the new school do not take into account the reduction in pupil numbers in each year between Reception and Year 6 and in particular in this borough, the transient movement of students into the independent sector."

The Mortlake Brewery Community Group (MBCG) has campaigned against the new school. It claims there will not be enough students to fill all the available places should a new school be built.

The schemes include the Mortlake Brewery site itself, another scheme on the site of the Homebase store, in north Sheen, Barnes Hospital and Kew Retail Park Credit: https://stag-brewery.co.uk/

It argues that a better option would be to move the existing Thomson House Primate School into a new building on the brewery site.

Miss Jiwa concluded: "There will absolutely be an oversupply of secondary places in Richmond created by the building of the new school.

"Richmond Park Academy is therefore strongly opposed to the new free school and would encourage the committee to take the secondary school out of the development, thus ensuring that the existing supply in secondary schools are used to their capacity which we believe to be a far more cost effective solution."

Co-chair of the MBCG, Francine Bates, said the group is not against development of the site, but rather they want a scheme that better fits the sensitive riverside location.

She said: "It seems to us that the developers, and indeed the council, want to put too much on to a 22 acre site. That is primarily because of the council's desire to put a large purpose built secondary school on the site.

"That creates less space for affordable housing, but creates more density, along with extra traffic and harming air quality."

The group is particularly keen to protect a green area sports field, which would largely be swallowed up by the proposed school.

"There are not enough kids to go to a secondary school from the local community," she said.

"Our own community plans suggests there should not be a secondary school, but rather we can see the sense of a primary school.

"We are not anti-development, we are anti-overdevelopment."