A Christian group's bid to open a new secondary school has passed the first stage of the approval process - but more than 260 parents have signed a petition against the plans.
 

Oasis Community Learning's application for a Free School in Walthamstow is now expected to be decided later this year following a meeting between its management and the Department of Education (DoE) in March.
 

Oasis says the new site, which would have capacity for 1,080 children, will help tackle the borough's shortage of pupil places and provide facilities for wider community use.
 

But critics from the Defend Waltham Forest State Schools group have raised doubts about the long-term demand for secondary school spaces and also fear its Christian ethos could be divisive.
 

Oasis has identified several buildings in "central Walthamstow" where the school could be located, but says it cannot reveal the details yet.
 

As a free school it would receive its funding direct from the government and be independent from council control, although it would still have to abide by the national curriculum.


Oasis, which is co-coordinating the bid in partnership with the Walthamstow Secondary School Initiative (WSSI), says it has received pledges of support from more than 500 parents.
 

But campaigners are sceptical and suspect some of those simply agreed with the idea of a new school being built.
 

Council projections show a rise in need for secondary places in the coming years. But campaigners point out that predicted demand for reception age places peaks in 2014/15 but then drops in the years afterwards.

They believe this will have a knock-on impact on demand for secondary spaces.
 

Unlike local authority schools, free schools cannot run temporary deficits so campaigners say it must continue to recruit to survive, which would take pupils and funding away from existing local authority sites.


Campaigner and dad-of-two Jonathan White, 39, who has a five-year-old daughter at Henry Maynard School in Walthamstow, said: “There's a lot of scaremongering about school places but the situation is actually a lot more complicated.”


A spokeswoman for Oasis said demand for secondary places was forecast to rise.

She said: “Further, changes to the benefits structure and relaxation of immigration mean that the population of Waltham Forest is likely, as in all London boroughs, to increase significantly over the coming years.”
 

She added that the school would be fully inclusive and added: “Oasis never seeks to impose its beliefs on anyone”.
 

Campaigners are holding a public meeting on Friday March 1 at 8pm in the Welcome Centre off Church Hill, Walthamstow.

The campaign's website is at http://defendwalthamforeststateschools.blogspot.co.uk/ while Oasis's website is http://oasisfreeschoolwalthamstow.org/