DAVID and Samantha Cameron missed out on their first choice school for daughter Nancy, joining tens of thousands of other parents who did not get the secondary school of their choice.
Cameron will become the first Conservative prime minister to send a child to a state secondary school after the family learnt last week that they had won a place at Grey Coat Hospital, a Church of England academy a short walk from Downing Street. It is rated “outstanding” by Ofsted.
But friends say their first choice was Lady Margaret, another Anglican school in Parsons Green, west London. As recently as last weekend friends expected Nancy to go to Lady Margaret, which is nearer to the Camerons’ London home in Notting Hill. The property is rented out.
But the prime minister and his wife found out from their local authority on Monday that Nancy did not have a place at Lady Margaret.
Instead she will follow Beatrice Gove, daughter of Michael Gove, the Conservative chief whip, who started at Grey Coat last year.
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Across London about a third of families missed out on their first choice. The news the Camerons secured a place at one of the hardest state schools in London to get into, without putting it first on their list, will raise eyebrows among parents who did not get a place there. It would be usual for such a school to offer places only to those who put the school first.
Nancy’s chances would not have been hurt by a trip to Downing Street last July by pupils and teachers at the school, who met Cameron as part of an event to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.
Grey Coat, the school’s newsletter had a picture of the group posing outside Downing Street on its front page in October last year.
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The prime minister yesterday spoke of his “agony” at waiting to hear the news and his “joy” that Nancy had got into Grey Coat.
“It’s a wonderful moment when you’ve had that agony of waiting and then the joy of finding out that you have got a good school place for your child, their friends are going there, they are happy,” he said. “I want that for every parent in our country, and that’s what we are going to build in the next parliament.”