Severe school shortage of places-what we think?

[mam29]

www.channel4.com/news/education-schools-baby-boom-gove-classrooms-teachers

its all over other news guardian, bbc too .

no surprise?

dident think could get any worse?

media scare mongoring or problem for many.

dd2 starts 2014 and dd3 2015.

was already not feeling confient now a bit less so.

[BlackMogul]

I would go and visit local schools and see what the situation is. Some areas will not have problems at all. I heard Gove on radio 5 today say it was all Labour's fault which makes me wonder what the Government Has been doing for the last 3 years. Predicting school numbers can be notoriously difficult, but thinking the creation of free schools in the wrong places will help is clutching at straws. Education Authorities are so short of money now, it is difficult to see how they can carry out their tasks effectively, and this is just another crack that is appearing.

[christinarossetti]

There will be large disparities between areas so, depending on where you live, it could be a dream or a nightmare.

Governments have known about the drastically increasing need for school places for years now, as the birth rate has been rising. Rather than increase local capacity to enable LAs to plan and build better, LAs have had their funding hammered and there are no requirements that free schools actually meet a local shortage of places.

It's is and will continue to be a serious problem for many that will in no way be resolved by Gove's supply side revolution.

[alwaysonmymind]

It's already an issue in areas of Manchester. Younger siblings can't be placed in the same school as older children and schools being asked to up intakes in Reception. I can see how it is hard to predict exact numbers due to population movement and immigration but to this extent? Someone has messed up somewhere

[Crumbledwalnuts]

Labour's fault - migration and resultant baby bulge. Plus they knew it was coming and didn't prepare.

[Crumbledwalnuts]

Middle schools, going to primary and secondary instead.

[3birthdaybunnies]

Wondering when they will realise that all the children who have found it hard to get places in primary schools over the past few years are growing up and will eventually need secondary school places too. Hard enough to get a place at the moment, will be worse in five years time.

[Crumbledwalnuts]

The Tories have allocated 5 billion. At least they're planning for it. It didn't even occur to the last government.

[prh47bridge]

As Crumbledwalnuts says the schools in Suffolk are being reorganised from a three tier system to a two tier system. The reorganisation is by Suffolk County Council, not the government.

From 2010-15 £5 billion is being spent creating new school places. The figure for 2005-10 was only half of that. I don't know if £5 billion is enough without spending more time analysing the figures in detail.

According to DfE figures 75% of new mainstream free schools are opening in areas where there is a particular need for additional places. Of course, that means 25% of them are in area where there is little or no need for additional places.

Of course the Conservatives will blame Labour and vice versa. In my view a lot of the blame attaches to local authorities. Some planned properly and made sure they had plenty of places, some buried their heads in the sand and hoped the problem would just go away. Most, of course, were somewhere in between. And the political colour of the LA seems to have little or no bearing on how effectively they planned.

[mam29]

I just wondered if this was new news or recycled news.

anyone know if they have complete breakdown of each council thats short.

I I asked my lea would they admit it?

I do know in bristol case its been series of rubbish councils, increased in housing and migration as good place for jobs lots of welsh people and lots of people I know are not native bristolians either went uni stayed here or moved here for work.

Definatly right about seniors and dont see any new build seniors here yes few changed to acdemies but dont think that would offer huge increased intake.

lots super schools appering 1 primary had extra 12 classrooms built so capcity nearly 900 kids.

I know lots of split siblings

I cant see how free schools will help

bristol only has 2free schools and big city.

it relies on people having get up and go to do it.

my lea seems to have goven go ahead sor silly amount of new houses which reckon could create a strain as already taking slack from neighbouring county.

[noramum]

I am officially a migrant but please don't see us all as school place snatcher. I worked full time, paid high taxes, for 6 years before I fell pregnant and continued working since. My taxes are equally part of all fiuding like the British are.

DD was lucky, she started in 2011 and I have seen the issue in our little Infant school.

I think it is very bad planning. In our area new housing areas were build without any thought that in 3 bedroom terraces people with children may move into. There was no single primary school built since we moved here 12 years ago.

I dread what will happen with secondary schools as the Conservaties closed down all programmes to rebuild old ones.

The Daily Mail had a hair rising article this morning about prospects of part-time school with a 8-6day for 3 days a week. That's more than most adult work. I just hope it is scaring and not based on real facts.

The government has to release urgent more money into the
Education system. What good is it to built extra classes when you loose all the outside space?

This Spring when the applications for the 2013 start came out it was clear that this year London was a nightmare, so doing the talk 5 month later doesn't help anybody, it just shows that the last couple of months nothing was done or thought about it.

[VivaLeBeaver]

Its not just going to be primary places is it?

This problem will follow these cohorts of kids through their early lives - secondary school, college/uni, jobs. There's going to be a lot of competition.

[catham]

The Tories have allocated 5 billion. At least they're planning for it. It didn't even occur to the last government.

hold on the labour goverment were going to re-build and re-modernise tons of schools yet the tories halted the project

which is probably where the 5 billion is from

[Crumbledwalnuts]

It's the inevitable result of free movement in a bloc where there are disparities in wealth and state (ie free) provision. There will be an osmosis effect to the wealthier countries and those with better state (free) provision until some kind of balance is reached and everywhere is as crappy as everywhere else. If that balance is never reached, the osmosis effect continues.

[pumpkinsweetie]

This government & previous government knew this was to happen but stuck their heads in the sand.
4 years ago these babies would have been born, the gov chose to ignore the populations stats and now we have a problem.
I seriously do not understand where the gov thought all these children would disappear too....

[Crumbledwalnuts]

The problem is that not only did Labour ensure the need for all these school places, not only did they not plan new school places, they also ensured that the funds for new school places when they eventually left power were not there. There was no money left. The government is doing what it can: it was left a complete pig's ear of a mess with education and funding and is trying to do the right thing.

[VivaLeBeaver]

But don't schools have a legal obligation to school kids for a set number of days per year? Which they won't do on three days a week.

[prh47bridge]

catham - You are referring to Building Schools for the Future. That was primarily to upgrade existing schools, not provide additional places. The figures I gave are accurate - the last government spent £2,5 billion on providing new school places in the five years up to 2010, the current government is spending twice that much over five years. To be fair, the pressure on school places was only really building towards the end of Labour's period in office so it is perhaps not surprising that they didn't feel the need to provide as much funding as the current government.

The government provides regular statistics for each LA showing the number of places currently available and the projected requirement for the next few years. The projections are, of course, just that. Some LAs predicted to have a shortage won't actually have one at all. Some will have a much worse shortage than predicted.

Both this government and the previous government provided funding and projections to allow councils to address the problem. I think this has in the past been more a problem with councils rather than government. Many, like Tiggytape's, have been aware of the problem but have adopted a series of sticking plaster approaches rather than attempting to solve the problem. This government's approach appears to be to deal with local authority inertia by taking the job away from them and encouraging people to set up free schools in areas where more places are needed. It remains to be seen whether this will produce the required places.

[admission]

This has been building up for a good number of years, so is not new news, it is just an inevitable consequence of a lack of thought and planning.
Labour when in government, spent lots on school buildings. Unfortunately they were doing it without having the money, but more importantly were busy building brand new swanky secondary schools whilst ignoring the figures showing that there was a birth explosion and the need was for new primary schools.
The LAs do not and have never really had the funding to build the required level of new schools, it has always been national funding that has built new schools. However, in my opinion, the funding now being put into LAs to put in additional pupil places is being wasted with a lack of planning. The planning has been poor, so there is panic mode to resolve the immediate problem. What is needed is more 2 form or 3 form entry primary schools being built not add on classrooms to existing schools. A couple of add on classrooms do not resolve the problem longer term, they create even more problems, when in a couple of years time there is no more space in the school grounds. There has to be some radical thinking and some brutal decisions made to knock down some buildings to create the space for new schools.
I sat in a planning meeting last week, where someone raised the issue about the need for planning for further secondary school places in the future. The response by many round the table was, why do we need to talk about secondary, the problem is in primary. Just illustrates how short term and short sighted too many of the responsible people are. We will be having the same conversations in 4 or 5 years about the lack of secondary school places.
Schools are also their own worst enemy. If the school is a two form entry primary school, then that is what it must remain unless appropriate new facilities are put in place. Making corridors and cloakrooms into new, very small, classrooms may be the knee jerk reaction to solving the immediate problem but actually the school is just letting the LA off the hook from putting in place proper, planned expansion of the school.
Of course ultimately we are too blame, because we have had too many kids!

[dueanamechange]

Agree old news but not scaremongering. It just coincides nicely for the start of the school year. My son started reception yesterday and I turned up to find there was a last minute bulge and the school has lost the computer room/library.