As someone who worked within Local Authority education services (improving schools) and having previously sat in the headteacher’s chair during the closure of the primary school I led (difficult decision taken by myself and the governing board, with a request to the LA to consult on closure), I know firsthand how painful and deeply unsettling these proposals are for families, staff, and the wider community. A school is more than just brick and mortar, it is the heart of a neighbourhood.
Decisions like these are never made lightly and they are never the first option. In my case, closure was the last option of five explored over a period of 18 months, including amalgamation, federation, academisation, closure with the site taken on by another school.
We also worked tirelessly to try and build numbers, advertising, parent/toddler groups, added WRAC at 50p per session, including breakfast, running at a loss and with me in ratio to keep costs down. We rented out the school building (financial and to draw people in), offered Forest School and took part in all community events. We had part of the school building not cleaned, offices cleaned once a fortnight rather than weekly, rented rooms to a local charity for storage and activities.
However, Local Authorities (and leaders & governors) have a statutory duty to ensure that public funds are used effectively to deliver the highest possible standard of education for all children.
While many parents value the close-knit nature and mixed-age classes of a smaller school, the underlying financial and operational reality eventually becomes unsustainable. School funding is largely allocated per pupil. When numbers drop severely, the budget shrinks, but the cost of maintaining, heating, and staffing a large physical building remains the same.
Budgets become a focus. It is illegal for a governing board to set a deficit budget. To allow some wriggle room the LA financial professionals will agree to licence a deficit, but this has to be supported by a recovery plan and time scales. It becomes more and more difficult to correct the forecasted deficit, with cuts on cuts. There are only so many that can be made without detriment to the education of pupils. This licence is eventually rescinded.
Strategic school place planning teams do not operate on guesswork, they rely on sophisticated, detailed forecasting data.
The general public often expects that new housing developments will automatically flood an area with children. However, LA planning data uses precise ratios showing that the number of children yielded per new household is significantly lower than people expect. When you combine these low yield ratios with escalating housing costs that push young families out of the area, alongside historically low birth rates, the long-term projections show an irreversible decline. A school I supported had a new build estate completed beside it. The school gained two pupils!
Pupil numbers/too many school places situation has been severely compounded in many areas by the previous Conservative government’s academy programme.
Under those policies, new academy schools were frequently built in areas where they simply were not needed, artificially creating excess capacity and fracturing the local pupil population. A local academy, a brand new school, opened with a PAN of 30; the neighbouring maintained school’s intake dropped from 60 to 30!
This combination of systemic factors triggers an unavoidable chain reaction. As the budget for a large building depletes, it becomes incredibly difficult to retain and recruit staff, leading to a loss of key educators. Once a school loses its critical mass of children and staff, it can no longer offer a stable, resilient environment. Specialist provision, extracurricular options, and staff workload all suffer.
The current proposal will be a necessary, strategic plan to consolidate resources before a school reaches a point of operational crisis. It ensures children are moved to stable, well-funded environments with robust, permanent staffing and better long-term facilities.
Difficult times. My LA alone has closed eighteen schools in the last six years (discounting a number of new academy schools) and federated many more small schools with up to four schools sharing a headteacher and SENCO.
My heart goes out to everyone affected by this consultation, but be assured that these decisions are not made without very serious consideration with planning teams using rigorous data to look after the educational survival and success of the entire education of the LA’s children.