to think there is a direct relationship between people not getting school places and the insistence on building houses in the south East?

[ShouldIworryornothelp]

Everywhere you go in the south East flats and tin shacks homes are being thrown up on every single available scrap of land. But no schools.

Aibu to not be surprised by the lack of school spaces in the south East and think they need to stop building homes at such a rate until school building takes place?

It's not a problem exclusive to the South East...

In Kent, new academy schools means that more people have got places, not less.

It can be a long process to open a new school and short-term, existing schools are sometimes asked to create additional classes for extra children until such time as there is enough demand for an entire new school.
It happens across the country but parents may perceive it as the local authority not creating enough places.
Local authorities have to forecast population and ensure there will be adequate school places years ahead and that includes taking new housing developments into account.

The birth rate has been rising since 2001. Local councils have not been allowed to build new schools under the coalition so that free schools and academies can take over.

There is going to be a massive crisis when this bulge reaches secondary school age.

Local Authorities have been prevented from building new schools under this govt. Gove wanted free schools to pour in to fill the gap.
My dD's school is supposed to be expanding to cope with a huge development of houses but the changes are apparently delayed by over a year and there will be massive oversubscription problems this year.
So new homes aren't necessarily solely to blame because central govt's policies and a lack of ability at local government level to force developers to prioritise the non profit conditions contribute to it too.
Make new schools etc a condition of planning permission and require progress checks on that work at every stage of profitable development and shut builds down if they aren't keeping pace.

Aibu to not be surprised by the lack of school spaces in the south East and think they need to stop building homes at such a rate until school building takes place?

people have to live somewhere? I don't actually get the point. the problem isn't the housing, it's the lack of school building.

Exactly the problem is actually the Tory policy of not allowing local decisions to be made here. The local authority is not allowed to open a new school, and for a variety of reasons free schools are not filling the gap. In fact, contrary to stated policy, some free schools have opened where there is a surplus of places! Local authorities need to be able to create new schools as well.

The real question is why don't people want to live elsewhere in the same numbers, and what should be done about that. Why is there such a massive discrepancy between the SE and other regions?
Yes, I know why. But turning one area into dense, extremely expensive housing isn't the answer.

Agree, to much reliance is in one area. i think jobs need to be moved out off London. I am a former northerner who moved south, most of the people I know in se are from elsewhere and moved here for work....

This problem isn't exclusive to the south east.

I don't live in the south east and my local school is oversubscribed, which is at least partly because the school haven't been allowed to expand as new housing developments have been built nearby. The council approach appears to be a reactive one of waiting until the school is oversubscribed and local children are being bussed out before agreeing to the school's request to expand.

But yes. I do agree that school places should be considered when new houses are built, and that new schools should be built where there is a need for it.

Unfortunately, as a pp pointed out, current government policy prevents local councils from building new schools themselves, which doesn't help matters. The notion that free schools would appear wherever there's a need for a new school is overly optimistic IMO.

I am ashamed to admit that I didn't twig that LAs aren't allowed to open new schools. That's dreadful.

Free schools are complete rubbish IMO. There's a free primary school opened here - about 250 metres away from another primary school. The free school is in an old office block that's due to be knocked down. They're not sure where they will be when it does get demolished but the likely site is about 10/15 minutes in the car from where they currently are. Useless.

I'm in Yorkshire and we have the same problem. New houses going up, including HA houses but they closed a local primary a few years ago which meant creating a bulge class in the remaining primary schools. Since the, admittedly very much needed, new houses being built there are more children needing school places. There's likely to be a shortage of places when my youngest is due to start school in two years and I'm dreading it.

The local high schools are already full to bursting and that's before the bulge classes that started when dd1 started reception are ready to move up. I'm dreading trying to get her into a decent, or any, highschool. The council have roughly four years to create more highschool places but I've got no idea how they'll do this as the existing schools are already as big as they can get on their existing sites.

It's no good blindly building new houses, no matter how desperately they're needed, without also building new infrastructure to support them. Local schools, dentists and gps are already struggling to meet demand and it will only get worse. If it's this bad here it must be awful in the SE where houses are going up at an even faster rate of knotts.

The only small school that serves our area of 14,000 people which was built 1980-2000 is inadequate in size to serve the area, so the majority of children have to be driven out to various neighbourhoods and villages. There's a proposal to build another 250 homes on the green.wedge on the edge, and aside from the environmental concerns about it affecting the nearby ancient woodland, no educational provision will be added to an area that is already struggling. Not to mention all the other services a community requires.

YANBU

Not here. I'm in London but the housing around me is mostly victorian houses, with council estates. Neither of them are new. There appears to be lots of excess school places too, just at the schools that no one wants. The popular schools are very oversubscribed.

The Tory government, which claims to hate the nanny state, has done just that and prevented local control of schools. So local councils can make changes to existing local council schools but cannot build anything new.

So many schools have been forced or strongly encouraged to become academies such that, even those which are not obviously academies (e.g. tied to a chain) are not. So local councils can do nothing to encourage them to expand.

It is an utter shambles.

In my borough, we have new houses being built, land being given to developers yet little in the way more schools except for the odd bulge class. Free schools open in places which are not suitable and end up under subscribed.

When these children need secondary school places, including mine, it will be another headache.

Well done Gove.

The coalition government did not prevent councils from building more schools.

They did however insist that they could only open their own under their control if a full hunt for a backer for an academy took place and could be demonstrated to have failed

So, especially people with local elections coming up too, vote in your local election. Or even stand for your council yourself.

You need to send a message that you aren't going to accept excuses, and you expect your councils to use every part of the regulations to get the end result.

And of course the expansion - on to a satellite site miles away as is happening in some areas - of existing schools remain possible. Can you get your council to use it's powers to do that?

Either of those actions results in more school places. Blaming a bogeyman doesn't.

But yes, OP they are related because higher populations require more services, and schools are one of the most noticeable (the other being doctors, but there are loads of others).

The increase in population this century has been the most rapid in the the whole history of Britain, and it's not spread evenly across the British Isles.

Are you recommending greater control of population numbers?

(Is this whole thread UKIP inspired?)

Did people not get any place at all? Or are you on about not getting first choice?

We live in a very ruralised County in the North and a couple of years ago my daughter didn't get any of her 3 choices, we had to find a nearby school with surplus places because they offered her a place in the worst school in the county.

So it's not just an SE housing issue.

The final decision for opening new schools rests with the secretary of state. So they don't have the power: www.local.gov.uk/media-releases/-/journal_content/56/10180/6111111/NEWS

I live on a housing estate that has easily doubled in size since its three schools were built. No new schools. Nor is there any improvement to the single lane road that all traffic on/off, including coming onto the estate to the high school from nearby areas, has to use (unless they want to go through country lanes)

I'm in south wales, its not exclusive to s/e england.

It is definitely an issue in my little village, although I don't profess to know about the rest of the SE.

2000 extra houses have been built on the outskirts of the village. Technically the next village is the closest schoo to that estate, however we live on a peninsula, so working parents have to drive 2 miles East, then back past their houses to the only road off - so naturally they all want to go to the village school, which is on their route to work.

This in turn has made the village school massively over subscribed, and means lots of children in the village itself, or on the Western outskirts, have been offered a place at another village to the west.

Unfortunately though, the only route to this village is through windy lanes with no pavement. No issue if you drive, but I know 3 women who don't drive (or whose husbands need the family vehicle to get to work earlier than school time) and have young babies who are absolutely stuffed.

The buses here go round every village, they come to our village, head eastwards, and come back to the western village last. It takes almost an hour, but the buses leave at 20 minutes past the hour, which means leaving at 7.20am, and hanging around outside school for half an hour.. Not so bad in summer but no fun on cold dark mornings with small babies and toddlers in tow.

I'm sure you can imagine how much resentment this has caused between people who have lived here for generations (not me) and people living in the new builds (also not me, although I do live in a new build it's not on the edge of the village)

Another horrific side effect is that were plans for a further 5000 houses, and the backlash was huge enough that it caused a by-election, and now we have a UKIP MP.

Final decision, yes it does.

But that does not mean that councils cannot open new ones. It means they must satisfy SoS that there is no prospect of a different backer.

And it definitely does not mean they cannot open a satellite site to an existing school.

If you think your current council is supine, and not acting in your local best interests because they will not use all the options, then use your vote for candidates who you think will do so.

And for councillors who will invariably add conditions to planning permission for large developments to pay for roads, buildings for schools/surgeries etc.

Actually it does create a barrier which is unnecessary. Why would the SoS know better than those who are closer to the ground? It implies that the government doesn't trust them... Nanny state, right there.

It is about forcing an academies/free school policy. Which is why you keep getting new schools in places which don't need them hence being under subscribed.

I don't get any local elections this year as in London - but I will not vote Tory because of the academies policy amongst other huge reasons.

My council has few options for expanding existing schools - not enough land.

In our area if you do not get any of your three choices of primary, as long as your catchment school was one of those choices, the LA will provide transport to the school you are allocated, if it is more than two miles away.
We are perceived to have a shortage of places, but countywide there is a surplus of 8000 places across all ages, although more in secondary than primary.
So the pressure tends to be on the 'good' schools and I wonder if some of this pressure is caused by league tables/Ofsted and parents moving into specific catchment areas. None of which is a bad thing, but it does increase competition for places in good schools.
Not saying this is true in every area but it is in ours.
Also, local authorities can still have a key role in setting up new schools, finding sponsors etc, even if they don't ultimately have control over the school.