Jade Pavlou outside the Copenhagen school gates with son Frankie and her mother Mitzy, along with school governor Martin Knight and his son Marcus

PARENTS have described feeling devastated after learning that their children’s “almost perfect” school could be lost in a merger plan.

Families speaking at the gates at Copenhagen Primary School, in Treaty Street, Angel, said this week they saw a proposed arrangement with nearby Vittoria Primary School as a “takeover” after being told at a meeting last Thursday that their school could cease to exist.

Instead, it would be renamed Vittoria and children would switch to Vittoria uniforms. Opponents to the scheme – drawn up due to falling numbers of pupils – fear Copenhagen’s 150-year-plus identity could be lost under plans to join children from the bungalow school in Half Moon Crescent to their three-storey Victorian building, and have called for a rethink on the name.

Parent Jade Pavlou, who has had two children attending Copenhagen, said: “I think everyone’s worried about everything changing because at Copenhagen, when you go into the school it’s a good vibe. The teachers care a lot – they put their heart and soul into their children here and it’s a big change.”

She added: “What’s it gonna be like for the kids? Or is it going to be a disaster in a sense where these kids come here and there’s problems between the two schools?

“I think there are a lot of people that are worried about the name change – it feels like they’ve just come to our school in a sense and they’re just taking it over.”

Another parent, with five children at Copenhagen, said the school had worked “so hard” to rebuild its identity in the face of a series of poor Ofsted reports that began 10 years ago.

She argued that the community – parents and teachers side by side – had pulled together to make the school “almost perfect”. In 2017 it was once again graded as “good”.

Copenhagen Primary School

The “devastated” parent, who did not want to be named, said: “It’s not a failing school. It has so much history – it was built in 1860 and at the time of World War II, there are some pictures of when the Germans came to bomb and everything else was bombed and the only thing left standing was our school. Parents will leave and go to other schools if they don’t keep the name and the whole point is to keep our identity.

“The teachers are amazing. It’s taken Copenhagen a while to be where it is now. We’ve come so far to be where we are now – it’s almost perfect.”

Meanwhile, over at Vittoria, parents shared concerns about the change but said they recognised the need.

Another mother, Sian Paine, said: “I think some of the children are a bit anxious, but some of them are quite happy about it as well. My son struggles with change, so for me, as a parent, as long as they show them small progress in integrating them into this change then I think it is OK.

“I do think it has got to be done – and if it doesn’t then the school will have more problems than anything, [although] with us parents it was a bit of a shock. They’ve obviously been thinking about it a long time, as it does need to be done.”

Islington Council has made no comment on possible staff redundancies, although the National Education Union (NEU) are in talks with the Town Hall to ensure no forced redundancies are made.

Vittoria Primary School

Due to a shortage of pupils, both schools currently have ratios of just under 17 children to one teacher – the kind of numbers normally associated with private schools and a figure the NEU are calling on local authorities to welcome rather than see as a problem.

Schools, however, rely on a funding model ordered by the government based on the number of enrolments.

The merger plan comes against a backdrop of budget problems for Islington’s primary schools with more than three in four schools expected to be in the red by next April.

Extra-curricular activities could also be slashed under emergency plans to recoup missing cash.

An Islington Council spokesperson said: “Islington Council is at the early stages of exploring a proposal to merge Vittoria and Copenhagen Primary Schools onto one site. This would bring together the identities and strengths of both schools under one roof, and secure the financial future of the merged school.

The consultation was launched last week to seek people’s views, and we encourage all parents of children at both schools to let us know their thoughts, including the name of the school if the merger goes ahead. All stakeholders, including staff, have been invited to sessions at the schools to understand the rationale underpinning the proposal, and the process for the potential merger.

The council will listen carefully to the views of parents, carers, staff, and the local community. To be clear, no decision has been taken.

The consultation lasts for six weeks. Once the feedback has been analysed, a decision will be taken in February on whether to progress the proposal further. If that happens, there will be a further four-week period of consultation with all staff affected, as required by law.”