In the news: are your local primary schools at breaking point?

[KateMumsnet]

Hello all

Research published today by the Labour party suggest that one in five primary schools does not have sufficient capacity for their pupils, with class sizes exceeding the statutory maximum of 30 children, and children being taught in temporary makeshift classrooms. Also in the news today, the Local Government Association is warning that 880,000 extra places will be required in England by 2023, pushing some schools to breaking point.

Is your child's school affected? Are your local schools under increasing pressure? And what's to be done? We'd love to know what you think.

DDs school ( and at least a couple of others in the area) have expanded to three form entry and are expanding on another site, hopefully ready next year. Feels like a complete shambles this year will all the kids crammed in on one site, will hopefully improve next year.
When dd was a baby I remember picking up a leaflet saying something along the lines of "by 2015 there may not be enough space in local school for your child... Write to your MP......" I think this was a local council sponsored leaflet. I remember feeling quite enraged by it because it felt like they were passing the buck. This problem has not occurred over night, 4/5 year old children do not suddenly appear and need a school place ( yes I know some will come from overseas or move into an area). Where is the forward planning?

We got a gazillion bulge classes over the last couple of years and many of them are now permanent fixtures.

Central London, birth rate soaring, little physical space for expansion and a massive number of immigrants with young families has piled on the pressure.

DD is one of only 3 'White British' in her class - which while fantastic for her in terms of mix of kids and diversity has also meant that one can't really blame the council for lack of planning (after all, predicted levels of EU migration were a fraction of the reality) and I think they've done pretty well to achieve the level of expansion that they have - and I say that as a former councillor for a different party!

I do worry about what will happen if levels continue to rise and what will happen with secondary provision in the Borough, but they have got a bit more time to think about it.

Also wonder - in a semi-hypothetical way - what will happen if Britain leaves the EU and thus changes the rules for immigration from Europe... will we find in x years time that we have a massive over-provision of school places?

No, not here. Ds is in a class of 19 which we chose over a school with a class of 7.
Better facilities at the school we went with. There are 120 pupils at the school tho and it was only designed for 70 so they have classrooms built in the grounds. It's lovely though and everything was refurbished over October holidays

No, but we did have to move 30 miles to get a place in a school we actually wanted.

DC's junior school was 3 form entry 4 years ago, but has now increased to 4 form entry across the school. And this year every year group bar Year 6 has at least 30 children in each class. That's a huge increase in a short space of time.

Interestingly, a lot of the increase of pupils comes from out of catchment, because other schools didn't have any capacity to increase their numbers.

In my case, I'm in an area with a lot of new development and school places are still to catch up with number of houses.

Very worried about secondary provision. At the secondary open day for our catchment children we were told there were 50 more Y6 children in catchment than the school had places for next year, so they relied on children going private/faith/out of county. Can only see this getting worse.

Problems here too - local village state primary. Limited physical space for expansion. A good ofstead report has meant that the school is now oversubscribed and obliged by council to take a max number of pupils which is greater than actual capacity. It impacts all areas of school life. The school has a building project planned but is having to fund most of it = with the PTA making a substantial contribution. Since when did PTA fundraising get used for capital expenditure?

Overall there are school places here. We are in a village and locally there are several schools, one of which is always undersubscribed so you will always get a local space even if it isn't the first choice school. However, where the pressure is felt is that other schools, for example my dcs school, are small and have small classrooms and cannot expand as there is nowhere to expand to. Our school has 4 classrooms and teaches in mixed classes. It works well and is great but class sizes simply cannot reach anywhere near 30 let alone more. If you started to add temporary classrooms to expand there would be no playground left. Thankfully it is usually fine but high birth years do cause a problem. Dd is in year 1 now but when she started reception we had to appeal to get her in and she is a sibling. I do worry about ds2 who I will be applying for this time next year.

My MIL recently tried to oppose a new housing estate im her area. There were already not enough school places in the area yet a new estate including a lot of "affordable housing" aimed at young families was built with no provision of extra school places . The opposition failed and the estate has been built. Will be interesting to see the stats for that area this year and next once all the housing stock has been sold.

We are ok in my locality however I read yesterday a thread on here regarding a primary school in the next town from me that is oversubscribed. So it might not be affecting me but it absolutely could be if I lived 10 miles away.

It's an issue here. My DD's school has had to expand and other schools locally have had to either expand or take a bulge class in recent years. Luckily, DD's school has huge grounds so they've been able to expand without having a huge impact on playground space and so on. Parking will be very difficult from September though- it's already chaotic without the extra class.

We're in area where there are a lack of places. And a lot of new houses being built. They are expanding 1 primary school but the new site is the last part of the development. People are living in the new houses before the school has been started. I don't understand why the facilities are allowed to be the building companies last job.

A London LA refused to expand a school in the borough we used to live in as it was too close to the borders of another borough so would not help them meet the demand from their borough as pupils would apply from over the river. The school in question is hugely oversubscribed and on large grounds and is being REBUILT ANYWAY. Talk about short sightedness. The problem with school places is that it is run by fumbling, short sighted LACs. Schools is this borough have been oversubscribed for over 15 years and the council copes with this by encouraging families to go private or move, which we did. This is how they are managing demand. Also, by expanding the less popular schools, I have seen this again and again. Families don't want these schools so take them out of the system, again moving or going private.

For the last 3 years my sons primary has had more applicants for reception than places.
It will only get worse, I think.

The lea look at the birth figures but haven't accounted for families moving in. I live in a commuter town and there are HUGE numbers of Londoners moving into the area, all of whom need school places. House prices have soared as a result, even the local park is now unbeareable it just so busy.

The most popular school takes double the number it was designed for its horribly cramped.

I don't think it's long until the law is changed so as to permit more than 30 in a class. Up the limit to 35 and hey presto you have a cheap solution.

I'm not advocating that but i was chatting to my elderly neighbour and she said that when her children started school just after the war there were 52 children in one class!

The education minister at surrey cc is on record as saying that part of the problem is that less people now rely on the private sector.

Offers day in April will be interesting to say the least.

What worries me is that the focus is all on creating primary school places but no-one seems to have considered what will happen to all the children when they reach secondary age. In my town, one primary school has been expanded and they are looking to extend a second, yet no additional secondary school places have been created. All the secondary schools in the town are already oversubscribed. What on earth do they expect to do with the additional children if they can't accommodate the ones they already have?

There are 80 new 4/5 bed family houses being built in our 'sought after' area. The council thinks this will mean an extra 8 - yes that is eight - more places needed in our school. Not sure what planet they live on!

Here the council has expanded 20 schools (some with more than one extra class), plus a new school, plus bulge classes. And they still expect to be about 70 places short this year. It's scary.

Not helped by huge local opposition to some school expansions, one was scuppered and one was delayed by several years (and consequently became much more expensive).

We've seen the closure of a small but popular and outstanding local primary here...and the other schools have had to make room for the children who left. My DC attend a tiny, over subscribed rural primary out of catchment but we had to wait on the list to get in. The other option was an overfull, failing school which literally stank. It was badly maintained with poor staff moral and a HT who had been off sick for over a year.

The high schools are huge, enormous and soulless with behaviour issues throughout.

We're moving abroad.

Imperial but that was before the government had built all the council estates and schools to go along with them during the late 50s and 60s...there was a huge building spree then to account for that overflow.

It used to be that 20 was a big intake at our village primary, but thanks to new housing developments, it's usually over 20 and was up to 28, when DS2 first started (though his class is much smaller, now).

It doesn't sound bad on the face of it, but years 3/4/5 used to be split into 2 classes, but now needs 3, which means that one class always has a ridiculously tiny classroom.

And like others, we have more housing developments in the pipeline - about another 250 houses, in total, mostly aimed at families.