A mosque has shown its support for an inclusive school which is facing closure.
The imam at Al-Muntada Al-Islamic Trust, in Parsons Green, Wasim Kempson, presented a letter to Hammersmith and Fulham Council urging it to keep Sulivan Primary School open.
The authority is consulting parents on plans to merge it with New King’s Primary to free up the site for Fulham Boys School, a new Christian free school due to open next year.
Mr Kempson said: “A number of parents came to me with concerns about changes at Sulivan. They said the school itself served their needs and by closing it would cause great disruption to them.
“The location is good for them and it provides a good level of education for their children. And plans for the new school to become an academy is very unclear to them.”
A Muslim parent at Sulivan said: “I looked at lots of schools for my children and Sulivan was the best, not only for good education but for the way it treated children from all faiths, including my children who I want to grow up as Muslim, but as part of their wider community.”
The move comes after the Department for Education said it could not allow Sulivan to become an academy while the reorganisation plans were incomplete.
Governors at the school hoped it could be saved by becoming a community academy open to children of all faiths and none with the London Diocesan Board for Schools.
Former chairman of governors at Sulivan Caroline Langton said: “We are going to fight on. We would love to become an academy with the London Diocese.
“We want to highlight the huge waste of tax payers’ money in this consultation. The amount of money to make Sulivan suitable as the site to merge both schools would cost £700,000, but the council say they want to spend £2million on New King’s, which intends to become an academy with the Thomas’s London Day School.
“That money should be coming from the government.”
