Will your child have a school place by 2015?
This was the question was on leaflets posted through doors in the south London borough of Lambeth. Before this starts a mass panic Local councils are under a statutory obligation to provide every child with a primary school place. However some are starting to raise concerns about a potential shortfall in the number of primary school places arounds England.
In Lambeth, the demand for primary school places has increased by 40% over 2 years. This has been attributed to a rising birth rate and the recession as better off parents are opting not to go private. As a result it is estimated that schools will have run out of primary school places by 2015.
In Brixton parents believe the prospect of five-year olds having to stay at home is no exaggeration. With these figures parents are becoming increasingly worried. With the current system parents submit a form to their LEA (Local Education Authority) stating your first choice for the school you wish your child to attend, but if this shortage of places becomes a reality then it is going to be a case of children having to either go further afield to find a place. Alternatively will there be any spaces at all?
Some parents have claimed that it’s happening already, some are getting into their fifth or sixth choice and some not getting into any of the schools chosen on their application forms. Some parents are having to travel great distances to take their children to school; in some cases this is not really feasible.
The Office for National Statistics figures show it was 63.7 live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 2009, compared with 54.7 in 2001. Primary school numbers have been falling for the past decade, however they are set to rise by 14% according to The Department for Education.
Others claim that the estimated rise will vary significantly with influencing factors being:
- Movement between areas
- Economic Changes
- Migration
- The Make-up of the population.
It is expected that London, the east and south-east are expected to feel the squeeze the most. Metropolitan boroughs throughout the country are likely to face pressure too. It is thought that these areas need to find several thousand extra school places within the next four years. The new housing developments that are cropping up all over the country will place an extra burden on local facilities. Parents are saying that the Government needs to provide the finances to develop existing schools and build new schools.
The Department for Education claim that £800m has been allocated this year for local authorities to spend on precisely this problem. They argue that the issue has been ignored for too long, accusing Labour of “wasting vast sums” on bureaucracy in its Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme of secondary school rebuilds. They also point out that despite a 60% cut to education capital spending over the next four years; the coalition is still spending more per year on school building work than the previous government did in its first two terms.
A government-commissioned review of school building recommended this April that a better system be put in place to prioritise schools’ building needs and to develop standardised designs that could be built more cheaply. But Lambeth says it needs more money now. It has received £52m over the past five years, but is asking for £50m over the next two.