Primary-school places shortfall: what's happening where you live?

RugBug, isn't the Government planning to drop section 106, or at least change its use?

I think all our local primaries do a 2-class intake & there's a lot of competition for places, even at the not-so-good schools. They opened a reception class on the site of a secondary school last year & I've heard rumours that they're hoping to build a new primary in the area. No idea where they're going to squeeze it in though!

Personally, I wonder if the solution could be for the government to encourage homeschooling. Perhaps by providing parents/homeschooling groups with small financial incentives they could make it easier & more affordable for parents to educate their children themselves & then they wouldn't need to worry about finding places or finances to build so many schools.

My first thought, lovely, dd2 is starting reception in 2014.

mumofthemonsters808 I still know people in the Hollingworth/Mottram area who have been saying for years there is no point in building houses if there's nowhere for the kids to go to school.

AlsoMottramAndHollingworthNeedAByPassTiggaxx

DontmindifIdo, that's interesting, thanks, (to be honest I had not taken much interest in this aspect of education until DD came along but it doesn't surprise me it's a typical British fudge!), however, if the state is funding these schools (which surely it must be? Or does the CofE pay all salaries etc, too?) then it could require them to drop the religious aspect from the admissions. Alternatively, as another poster suggested, give non-religious parents priority for the secular schools. I don't object to schools having a religious ethos as such, as long as the children are allowed to ask questions -- but I don't see why they should get to both accept state funding and discriminate against a large chunk of the population.

coincidentally an article from our local paper just popped up on my twitter timeline about this - according to that, there will be a deficit of 36 places for five to eleven-year-olds this September, which will rise to 83 by next year, and 163 in 2015. The council's Education Director puts this down to more people in flats having children (I guess he means they previously expected flats to be couples only but people can't afford to move up the housing ladder into houses now).

Children from our road have been going to the local primary since 1936. Last year DD didn't get in because most of the places were taken by siblings. This year they have a bulge class, so she would have got in :( . Several schools have had to add bulge classes this year. There is a new school opening this September on the new housing estate that has just been built, so that's a good start, but it's only going to get worse. There are 2 other huge housing estates under construction locally :(

The current Y6 is the last of the low-birth years. DD was born in 2007 which was a really high birth year. As others have said I worry what will happen at secondary level because nobody seems to be heeding the warning from the primary problem.

Our local paper keeps insisting that there are places, just not where people live . Perhaps they need to do a full census of children to find out exactly how many there are of what age, and where they live, and then plan the schooling around the facts.

We're in a large Hertfordshire town within the M25 (lots of commuters). At DS1's school, this year is their 'turn' for the bulge - it seems that every couple of years various primaries have to take up the surplus because there simply aren't enough places. DS1 is yr 1 but the extra reception class is in a portakabin on what was playground. I know that a number of local kids didn't get a place until the very last minute. A large development of town houses & flats was under construction next to the school and completed about a year ago and I think we were very lucky that no one had moved in there before we applied for DS1's place as based on proximity, you can't get much closer (we're only about half a mile away).

I'm reasonably confident that DS2 - due to start reception Sep 2014 - will get a place on the sibling rule. However our council in their infinite wisdom are trying to push through a development of about 600 new homes just up the road and when you point out the lack of school places (and dentist / GP - our local surgery isn't taking new patients) their attitude is pretty much to shrug and say 'well we aren't allowed to base planning decisions on things like infrastructure'. madness gone mad.

Dd's school is currently being extended so two more classes are being built on to the existing school.
Numbers at dd's school have increased by 40% since it opened 4 years ago and it's now over its numbers so the two classrooms won't really account for the increase it will just meet the need this year. No idea what will happen next year though I assume it will just become overcrowded again.

Richmond borough, the shortage of school places isn't new. Dd1 started school 5 years ago and even then many local kids didn't get offered anything! Eventually they got places in neighbouring boroughs crap, the ones everyone else turned down.

DDs school is 90 intake per year. 700 in total. It isn't too much if well managed though parking a nightmare.

The Government needs to permit Local Authorities to open new schools according to need.
Free schools can be opened.
And Academy sponsors can take over existing schools.
But LEAs cannot open new schools where they are needed.

DAFT

Not a problem for me right now as DD won't be starting school until September 2015, but I find the whole situation very worrying as we're planning to move if necessary to get a school place for her. What EXACTLY is being done about this problem?

If anyone here has experience of how bad the situation is in Cheltenham, can they PM me?

We live in one of the largest towns in the N.W. (Lancashire)/ Manchester.
There are no problems here.
We have lots of small schools with small classes. When dd left y3 last year the class had 25, since then 3 more have left and gone to other schools in the town.

Phineyj - it's been discussed over and over, the main sticking point is faith schools are usually owned by the Church of their particular denomination, not by the state, even though they are run as state schools. If the state insisted they had to be secular, there's no reason to presume the churches would just hand over the school buildings without the state having to pay for them. (Or that the churches might just run them as private schools)

If the churches just closed the schools, that leaves an even bigger problem for state school places.

There seem to be bigger problems round where I live over the last 2-3 years because a lot of planning seems to be based on a certain percentage of families in this town using private schools. With the downturn, a lot aren't. We've got prepschools with empty spaces for this coming September, that's not normal.

I was working in the director's office of one of the London LEA's already mentioned back in 2004/05 and even back then they were well aware of the rising birth rate and the issues it was going to cause down the line.
Off the top of my head there were something like 70 primaries and the planning that went into managing surplas vs shortfall of places was staggering.

If a development is of a large enough size then the planning authority will seek to include schools etc as part of the developers section106 agreement, convoys wharf for example (totally outsself).

This is why immigration needs to be severely reduced. There is no reason to be importing low skilled dependent migrant families when the infrastructure - NHS, schools, housing etc cannot take the strain and the quality of life for those already here is getting worse and more expensive all the time.

Phineyj I think it's appalling too to have so many religious schools that has discriminatory admission practise. If there is a school which puts gay or non-white parents at the lowest priority category, there will be an outcry. So why is it ok in this day and age to discriminate based on religion?

PS. We are atheists too.

I would like to see a national discussion of whether it is sensible in this day and age to have so many religious primaries. When my DD is school age, if she doesn't get into the popular local primary, all the other nearby schools are CofE. We are atheists. It seems peculiar to me that there are so many religious schools when the seriously religious are a minority of the population (I understand the historical reasons for this but do not think a public service should be selecting children on religious grounds).

The free school point is a very good one. I just want a decent community school for my children. Not a faith school (two of my nearest six are faith schools) and not a single issue one. One of the possible free schools opening is one of the English-German bilingual ones mentioned already. I can't judge how good a school it may be of course but neither of us speaks German or has any connection to it, so if our daughter ends up there, it will be pretty ridiculous.

Surrey. Ds2 due to start sept. Am quitely confident of getting him to ds1's school, but i do know that in sw london and surrey there is a massive deficit and i think they released a huge figure of children that they already knew would not get a school place.

Leith, Edinburgh (I know this report was only about England) and the schools around here are fit to burst. One school, 5 yrs ago was ear marked for closure but last year had a 3 classes p1 (no reception in Scotland) intake. Similar stories all over Edinburgh.

What pisses me off is that 5 yrs ago the maternity hospital was struggling with women in labour being turned away at the door and travelling 50 miles to give birth. The council have had plenty of notice but chose to ignore it. Pathetic.

Our residents association and councillors spotted this about 18 months ago and it has taken until about 2 months ago for the council to agree we will be a class size short of places. Luckily the head teachers at local schools have been far more proactive pushing to expand their intakes so we should be ok.

I'm in South Bristol. Pressure on school places seems to change drastically within very short distances.

5 mins down the road, the 3 primaries locally have all added bulge years and extra firm intakes. Now one is considering becoming a 'super school' with a split site adding an extra 4 classes per year (I think).

However, I'm just up the road. We have masses of space ( huge playing fields, games courts etc) no huge problem with spaces. We have a good ofsted rating.

I don't really understand why more parents I know aren't looking ever so slightly further afield. I think most of it is 'word of mouth' about being seen to get into the 'right school'.

Talullaxx - I am sure admission will be via the LEA central form - but probably with a supplementary form direct to the school. The admissions booklet on the Lambeth wensite will tell you.

One of the problems with new provision is that it isn't made where the problem is. In Lambeth and Southwark you can't just free up new land in the place where the school shortages are. Mostly because that is exactly the land that has been developed for high density housing... where the children fighting for places are living.

So you get new schools where there is land. I live in an epicentre of schools. A real choice of 2 good secondaries - with a 3rd (unproven) opening in September all within a short walk. If i were putting a child in primary this year I could choose from 3 excellent primaries (2 proven, one with great credentials) and one as yet unproven primary. In other parts of the borough parents may receive NO offer at all. The Free School issue is adding to this. People applying to open free schools with no relationship to where the school 'balck holes' are. Or opening Free Schools with specific agendas, when what people wnat is a local co-ed community school that does a good job.

So, it isn't just the shortages of space that is a problem, but the lack of planning or strategy in the way that shortage is met.