Is your primary school expanding?

[golb7]

Have just seen another thread on this and wondered how common this is up and down the land?
So, is your primary school expanding?

What area and by how much?

Was there a consultation or just imposed?

Obviously the pros of expanding a school are that the council solves a place shortage.

But, what are the cons of large primary schools? Some seem to be growing to almost 900 / 1000 places??

Yes - going to 4 form intake.

My understanding is that the pressure on places is worse in inner cities - families just can't afford to move up and out to the suburbs as their children get a bit older anymore, so are staying put. It used to be the suburban schools with more pressure on places; now it's flipped and they have a lot of spaces in my city.

But apart from the logistics of staggered playtimes/lunches etc, I can't see many cons. More staff = more shared good practice, more expertise.

We have doubled intake from 30-60 in past 2 years, two classes this year too, feasability study on permenant expansion. Nowhere to park for people travelling from the expanded catchment area. Also concerned that the family feeling (e.g. Older siblings being able to watch younger siblings in assembly + whole school activities) will be affected. They say they all fit, which maybe they do now, but as their bottoms grow bigger further up the school, and the numbers expand, they won't in a few years. But people don't want to go to less popular schools, so victim of its own success.

DD's school is expanding by the fact that it is becoming a primary school rather than a first school so two more years (5 & 6) being added, however still one form entry of 24.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17632475?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=bgflnews

I am in Sheffield and our school has expanded from 2 to 3 form entry.

DS is in Y3, so largely unaffected, though there was a lot of construction work last year which curtailed his footy at breaks!

DD is in reception. I think that because she was used to the school because DS was already there , she was not as affected as she might have been, but think it must be quite daunting if you were completely new. I will be interested to see how the school copes with nativities, and school trips etc that have almost been routine till now. DD is with a long standing reception teacher so no noticeable difference to DS' experience. I suspect when DD gets to Y6 and the school is 33% bigger then it was in 2011 it will feel quite different

We were consulted over the changes , but I think the approach taken was " its bound to happen so lets work with the change rather then waste energy fighting it"

Hello Wizzler :) always nice to "see" fellow sheffielders about!

No our 3 nearest schools are all one form entry. DD is at the school no-one wants so we've had a couple of children join reception since September. The school we wanted had 15 siblings so no chance there. Other parts of the city have had huge shortfalls of places.

What concerns me is whether they've learned their lesson re Secondary places. They've been closing secondary schools for the last few years. Obviously once this bulge reaches secondary we'll have another problem.

Academies can be forced to expand.

The difference is they can also expand without the LEAs consent - which they couldn't as maintained schools.

There's no need to increase admissions before they're needed. The year starting Y7 in 2012 is actually a low birth rate year (in our borough)

Mrz - those statistics are astonishing!

Obviously we need to find lots more places and fast, but it does worry me that we've been thrust into a world of super primaries - it's not like the population said "what we really want is much much bigger primaries".

I've looked, and there doesn't seem to be much research on the effect of large primaries - I saw something on Kingston council's site surveying the research and it seems a bit inconclusive. They can point to very good 4 form entry schools, and there's no real evidence to suggest that large schools are bad.

But it still worries me - I haven't seen anything which begins to tackle what it's like for very young children - 4 and 5 years old - to be at these huge huge schools?

I do feel cross that it's an issue partly caused by council's inaccurate forecasting. It seems to me the councils plodded along saying it's fine, fending off parents' demands for new schools, and then realised the extent of the crisis - re-forecasted and suddenly we now know that we need 450k extra places!

Re secondaries, we may not need a big increase in places yet, but I bloody well hope they've planned for the extra spaces these boom years will need in a few years time. In fact, I think we should all be asking our councils to prove they've planned for it!

What I find incredible is that only a few years ago (perhaps 3) lots of primaries were ear marked for closure because of falling roles and no one in authority realised it was just a blip and in fact there were boom years following

there's a school not far from where i live which is consulting on having 6 form entry giving 180 children in a year group (Selfish but thankful its not DD's)

sorry pressed post too soon

What I want to know is how to plan to deal with all these bulge year groups when they get to secondary school age

My DS's school is taking a bulge year in 2014 though we all expect it to become a permanent expansion. It's currently the only single form entry school in the borough, so the expansion was expected. The consultation didn't change the proposal to expand (the council can impose an expansion even if the governors etc oppose it, I understand) but it did flush out the main objections and help the planners come up with some sensible solutions that mean overall it's not a terrible thing for the children already at the school.

We're in SW London, BTW

mrz dd's school started to be built three years ago with a pan of fifty when it opened exactly two years ago. Last year they admitted 61 to reception and funding has just been agreed to expand the school by two classes. It seems ridiculous that no one had the foresight to consider the numbers needing places in the school when it was first built, instead the school will lose a third of its playground to accommodate the expansion.

The school my children attended was due to close this year with the intention of busing children to the nearest town. Instead they have begun building a new school on site ... you would think they might have realised giving planning permission for a hundred new family homes would increase demand

I also think that expanding secondary schools can be easier. Because usually not every class is used, so you can often increase the PAN without any building work at all.

Which is very different to primary schools.