is there a body that oversees education strategy across london?

[manitz]

specifically I am interested in knowing who is in charge of whether councils plan correctly for the number of rising 5s likely to come up in any application year.

I hope that makes sense but it seems my borough isn't all that good at it...I am trying to see if they are average for London or particularly bad. So I want to find out how many bulge years were needed last year or the year before in reception. We don't appear to have enough schools and the numbers are too big for them not to have noticed. Is this how everyone is finding their area?

Are they held accountable or is finding a bulge year in a school seen as a solution? it's a very short term solution in my view...

For some reason this isn't obviously published on the council website so it's difficult to do a web trawl.

Not since ILEA was abolished by Maggie.

fuck why does it always come down to her? london councils seem to do something and are campaigning on it. or they were in 2009...

My london council plans how many reception classes will be needed based on how many children were born in their hospitals when they would have been born.

So if there has been a lot of movement into or out of the borough they will have got the required numbers wrong.

But they don't seem to have any other way to plan....

Building a new school is really expensive. So they will always try to use a bulge year if they can. Otherwise they will try to expand an existing school. And they will do everything they can to avoid building a new school.

8 bulge classes needed here this year apparently. so about 240 kids otherwise without a place. You can understand the odd one or two but that's a huge amount.

found this www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/policylobbying/children/schools/primaryschools.htm
It has a copy of a debate in parliament in 2009, shows it's not just my borough and it's not just this year. What happens if we need bulge years every year for the next 5 or six years at the same rate? My kids are already at school so I should be alright (jack) but this is really shocking and will impact on my/all kids if school resources become stretched like this. I just can't believe how littls of this I'd absorbed.

But the 8 classes will be across the borough. Even if they could build a new primary school, it'll be in the wrong place for 200 of the kids.

And what will the council do when the birth rate drops again? Birth rates vary enormously.....

Hence why the education reforms are so do lally - they are based on what goes on in central London, where there are LEAs in charge of 20 - 30 schools.
Here in Hampshire there are over 600 - so that can flex the entry around.

That and those tiny LEAs are still spending HUGE money on management salaries out of a much smaller funding pot - money which could be much better spent on front line services.

ok Indigobell so my ward doesn't have a primary. There is a clear area where children regularly dont get a place (and get offered them in a completely different part of the borough which would require driving) and they are building loads of new homes in that area - I am on the edge of it so the school we go to is in another ward but no more than 10 minute walk - seems I was lucky. We've already accepted a bulge year for 2012 but then had a panicked request for another for this year's entrance. This doesn't appear to just be a one-off but i accept your point that this might just be a blip for a few years.

Talkingpeace what are the education reforms then? are these new reforms? I feel completely uneducated about how this works so sorry if thats a dumb question.

new and not so new

Bliar's "parental choice" rather than catchments has added massively to traffic and stress in big cities

Free schools and academies are more ways of allowing the upper middle classes to think they have choice while leaving the rest behind

Catchments have their faults - but also their up sides. In the US, you go to your local school board. That's it. Don't like it, move or do something to help the school.

My local school is dire. Because the secondary is dire. And it won't get any less dire while 500 of its kids (whose parents give a stuff) are sending them to other schools.

Found this:

^There were 706,248 live births in England and Wales in 2009, compared with 708,711 in
2008, a fall of 0.3 per cent. This is the first annual decrease in births since 2001, when
there were 594,634 live births (down from 604,441 in 2000), and represents a change from
the rising numbers of births observed over the past seven years. ^

So seems like we are going through a huge population boom.

I too am very annoyed that my LEA won't build new primary schools and are instead trying to increase the existing ones.

But, like I said, it all comes down to money :(

Aaah. Found a better chart:

Year - Number of live births
1999 - 621,872
2000 - 604,441
2001 - 594,634
2002 - 596,122
2003 - 621,469
2004 - 639,721
2005 - 645,835
2006 - 669,601
2007 - 690,013
2008 - 708,711
2009 - 706,248

So birth rates vary from 594,000 - 708,000. So LEAs are going to get caught out some years....

Indigo,
London is a really tricky one because it's education is totally unrepresentative of the rest of the country

• huge numbers going to private schools (around 25% as against 2-3% elsewhere = 6% nationally)
• grammar schools dotted around randomly (164 of them and most of those outside the 3 counties are in London)
• nearly 20% of families leave London when their children reach school age (I'll find the link for that, but its of that order)

so LEA's know that if they build it, the kids may not come
so they take the path of least resistance
and parents who can, move out
and many London schools get worse
and the spiral continues!

there are no good mechanisms for London Boroughs to cooperate.

In my view what London needs, with its population - 7 million at night -12 million during the day - bigger in population than Scotland, Wales or N. Ireland, is devolution.

Then we would have a Minister for Education in the Government of London.

That was what the head of ILEA was
but was abolished as Maggie deemed it a hotbed of Trotskyism

simplest would be for boroughs to merge until there were three or four LEAs in the centre and five or six around the outside - each the size of an average county.

yes I was aware of the change from catchments which just seemed dumb. I really think local walkable school is a far better idea for many many reasons which is why we chose ours, in our area it's effectively about catchments anyway as all schools publish the distance they let people in. Hate free schools as imo it will only benefit those areas where people are well educated enough to understand how to go about it and have enough money to follow it up and put the immense amount of work in to do it. Aren't there a ridiculously small no that have taken up the idea anyway?

Indigobell I get that it's about money and that there basically isn't any but it's just so frustrating. Thanks for those figures, it looks more like figs for 2001 (the lower end) are more of a blip than the higher. Has your school been asked to take a bulge too? I guess it depends what the figs are for my area too. It's been suggested that there may be an exodus to private school in year 2 so the bulge may not be needed through the life but that seems unlikely to me.

In my borough they have announced 630 new primary places for 2018, all are extra classes added to existing schools. Many will be ready by this September. The question is where are they all going to secondary school as most are oversubscribed?

The ILEA wasn't a particularly good organisation.

Isn't this something in which the Mayor could usefully have a role? After all, the London Boroughs are cheek by jowl, so co-ordination seems sensible. Perhaps census data will help in school place planning?

No they won't let us take a bulge year - they're insisting on expanding our school. So they're going to build another 7 classrooms in our already small playground :(

They won't even build a 2 storey extension as it will cost more....

We will then become a 4 form entry! Which no one will want to go to....

It is disgraceful. But we have fought it all the way, and lost.

You are right - ILEA had faults by the bucket load ad was living in the 1960's well into the late 70's
but yes, maybe this is an area where the Mayor's office could insist on cooperation to reduce carbon emissions in London (both from cars and Mums letting off steam!) among other things

Hi back on now as kids are near in their beds. I'm in outer london so I guess the demise of the ILEA didn't make any difference here. Don't all bodies have problems especially with bureaucracy but maybe something strategic would help? It seems the only cross london body at the moment is the GLA and that makes sense. I'm at a bit of a loss though how another borough could help take up the slack unless it happens near borough borders. Indigobell how did you fight it? initially I was thinking this was to do with an inept council and was thinking about tabling a question to them to raise awareness but perhaps this is one for my MP instead.

Our school has barely any facilities compared to similar local schools. It was promised capital funding which we have been waiting for for some time. Looks like that money has now gone. During the time we have waited and because of a series of head teachers we have missed out on regular maintenance that others in the borough have received. I was just so angry at being powerless about this but I suppose it's not the end of the world.