Have you been affected by the primary school place shortage?

[choicemyarse]

Have you applied for a primary school place recently and what was your experience?
Our 3 year old won't go to school until next year but in our area (in London) there seems to be a serious crisis in primary school places and I am concerned she won't get in anywhere. There were 274 families in our area that got NONE of their six choices and were asked to go to schools miles away from their homes (in rush hour traffic in London this is a very long commute).
The Local government authority recently posted a news release about this, which explains the school place crisis as a result of restrictions on local authorities to build their own schools (because they must prioritise free schools and academies).

www.local.gov.uk/web/guest/media-releases/-/journal_content/56/10180/7171350/NEWS
Personally, I am not interested in sending my child to a free school or an academy (for a variety of reasons) but more importantly, I just want a decent local school my child can walk to and this isn't being provided.

I'm involved in a local campaign around this issue (which is why I've namechanged) but I've been on mumsnet for years and had lots of good advice about schools, babies, etc.

Please post your experiences here and hopefully we can do something about this.

Thanks nldad, helpfol.

Thanks nldad it all sounds totally mad. So the only schools that will now be set up are Free schools?

On rereading I can see that is exactly what you've said. I just can't believe it.

That's not all quite right.

Local authorities can still set up schools, but can only do so once they can demonstrate that there are no possible providers of a free school. Any LEA which tries to pretend otherwise is (probably) following some other agenda. And as London Boroughs (through their Association) have been warning of the school place crisis for some years now, so have had the administrative lead time. The government is providing £1.6b (I think that's the figure) up to Sept 2016 for extra places. So there has been more scope than is sometimes realised for councils to tackle this.

Only 3 free schools have been forced to closed.

Planning permission and building standards exemptions are time limited for start up period only.

The freedom to depart from NC does not extend to exemption from SATS/GCSE/A level. So variations tend to be small, because still aligned with same goals.

Unfortunately, the shortage of (and expense of) suitable sites in London mean that it is vanishingly unlikely that schools can be located exactly where they are needed. And of course housing densities have changed over time, so existing schools are not always ideally sited either. At least in London in there are lots of transport options, so even a less than perfect site can still make a positive enough difference.

For the first time ever, our small city (nowhere near London) was set to have not enough Reception places for this September. When the actual figures/placements came out there were some schools who had received over 100 first choice applications for 60 places. I'm sure this is nothing new in many places - but here it is a big change.

The problem was solved by the building of a whole new school & obviously some children being allocated schools they hadn't applied for. There are now something like 12 spaces free for Reception across the city - mainly 1 or 2 spaces at each of the neighbouring village schools.

I don't know what will happen in the future - there are plans for 2000+ new houses in our village alone. Our village school has no land for expansion and received 43 first choice applications for 45 places as it is this year. So where the children from the new houses will go no-one knows.

For us its c400 applicants for 90 places with still 90 on the waiting list a year later, and typically 200 applicants for 60 places and 180-250 for 30 in the other schools. (we get 3 choices). The established free schools 2+ years old are filling up / full but new ones are not yet - probably as unproven although set up by existing education providers. People who would like an LA school are no doubt being given the free schools as other schools are full. One was celebrating getting 60% of places filled - but not sure how many would have been 1st preferences?!?!

The increasing birth rate, the central government prevention of local authorities opening new schools in conjunction with severe cuts to their budgets, barmy free school policies and the ever-increasing numbers of teachers leaving the profession have lead to a school places crisis.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to offer every child a school place. In the borough that I live in, this means that some of the children in the very family-heavy areas are allocated schools that aren't particularly local ie a bus ride away.

To be fair to the local authorities, they have expanded/opened bulge classes in the very oversubscribed areas year after year, but demand continues to outstrip supply.

Tbh, in parts of the country, especially London, families will have to adjust their expectations of what a 'local school' means.

I'm amazed that there is no guarantee of a place in a school that follows the national curriculum.

@meditrina

Can you give an example of an LA that has been allowed a new school, that is a Community School?

Nope.

I'm citing the provision in law, which councils do not seem to want to avail themselves of.

So - free schools and academies - are they essentially operated like independent schools, except they are free to attend?

I'm unaware of any crisis here, no shortage.
We had this thread recently... MNHQ started it.

Why are there so few school places now?

What's changed in the last couple of years to cause this? (if anything, people are having smaller families now than 5 years ago)
So why is there such a shortage/lack of places?

I don't get it. All 4 of mine managed to get into the same schools as each other and we moved around a fair bit when they were young and never had a problem whatever area we were in.

I can't imagine having to send siblings to different schools. Must be a nightmare trying to arrange transport etc.

Somebody has mentioned the increasing birth rate as being a factor.

I don't think people are having larger families - if anything, people are choosing to have less children.

So where are all these extra children coming from?

There have been problems for several years, do, not just this one.

There was massive birth rate decline once the baby boomers stopped having kids, LEAs even went around closing schools. Part of why UK like rest of Europe is considered to have ageing demographics. The children of the baby boomers + immigrants (like me) are driving the mini peak in birth rate seen recently. But the population overall is still relatively Old.

I'm not sure that there's a national shortage of places.

But a spare place in York is no good to a child in Bristol and a spare place in Croydon is no good to a child in crouch end.

I think it's really localised. I was looking at two LAs to the north of us. Lots one single form school mainly, lots of schools with only PAN 15 or 10. Spaces in several.
Our area - schools all expanded to 2 or 3 form. Busting at the seams. Spaces are free but not within 2 miles of me - which here is a vast distance away. (Except a new free school not yet open)

"Why are there so few school places now?"

It's number relative to size of cohort in those years. School sites were sold off (usually for housing) until very recently, and the demographic worry was that there would be insufficient young people to support the aging population. Councils also like to have more money to spend, and so selling sites made sense. But some kept doing it, even as the demographic change because clearer and clearer and that really didn't help.

So the challenge was to recreate the school places lost by closures, then add more. Difficult in London, because it's hard to find school sites once lost to housing development. And more sites are needed, because the number of additional pupils to existing schools is reaching saturation.

Ideally, there is a small oversupply of school places - this allows for a modicum of 'choice' for parents, and gives a margin for churn. Unfortunately, some parts of London just don't have enough places, nor undersubscribed areas within reasonable reach, and so firefighting every year eg by adding bulge classes.

And of course councils can only sell the schools they owned, which is a factor in why there is an apparent oversupply of church-owned schools in some areas.

And as more flats are built and more families stay in them, population densities spike.

choisemyarse - I also do not like the fact that academies have more freedom about non-qualified teacher and what they teach. But the truth is, the reality will be that schools will convert and unless you have the freedom to find one which doesn't or you go independent (but then these schools also do not have to obey LEA funded state schools-rules) you have to hope that your allocation is a school which cares about education.

It is sad that educating our children is seen as a business approach instead of what it should be, a free from all influence, state provided duty with independent people who actually know what they talk about controlling it.

N reality, are many free schools employing non teachers?

Increasing birth rate -

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-birth-rate-leaps-by-18-in-a-decade-9107483.html

meditrinia I don't think it's so much that local authorities have turned their back on the need for more school places, rather than that so many of them have been cut to the bone by central government cuts and are continually crisis managing to provide statutory services, without the capacity to plan.

Preventing LAs from opening new schools is completely coherent with the coalition and new government's free schools and academy agendas, of course.

Our free school follows the national curriculum but with an additional focus on STEM. We found that the DoE wanted an "emphasis" and as we are a community group, not religious, this seemed the obvious choice (we're in an area where a lot of people are employed in IT and engineering) plus it enabled us to get the large local corporations to back us with promises of sponsorship, donations to raffles, PTA, equipment, staff community days where loads of employees turn up and help the school .

Al our teachers are fully qualified but the fact that we do not have to employee fully qualified teachers will allow us to hire a drama teacher or football coach (or whatever) without a formal teaching qualification should we wish. I see no harm in this.

Our LA opened three schools in association with an education provider. These schools aren't full with first choice applications as ours is. This is because they put these schools where they had land and not where the need was. These schools are 4th choice or "nearest available school with spaces".

The "problem" years are the current Y2 (born 2007/8) and the incoming YR. The other years are not as oversubscribed. Also causing the oversubscription in our area is the vast numbers of new houses being built.

We will have the same issue when our children need secondary school places. The council are opening a new comp. secondary but we have been told (off the record of course) that it's unlikely our children would get in as we are over 3 miles away and a new "mini-village" of 10,000 houses is being built between us and this school.

I can't see any option but move to a cheaper area and send our son to an independent school for secondary. And this sticks in my craw like you would never believe because I want good, free and accessible education for all children in this country. Shouldn't be too much to ask after all (as you point out in your first post OP!)

Our borough is 200+ places oversubscribed each year and growing. This area of London has been under pressure for years, the baby boom here has been known about since 2007.

Lots of 2 and 3 bed flats being built. One two-form free school approved for our area, which has a dire shortage of places exacerbated by a large number of church schools. One new school won't even touch the edges of the problem.

Unfortunately, the Educational Funding Agency decided to ignore the recommendation from the MP and council to put the school on vacant council property near us, in the heart of the pressure on places and exactly the area where the school wanted to open. Instead, they've placed it several miles away on the other side of the borough where it will no doubt help there but make zero difference here.

Meanwhile, the council has lost two years when they could have been encouraging other providers (as they are told to do by the govt) or jumping through the hoops required to prove they could find no free school to meet the need for more places, and can they build one please. Back to square one, with multiple years of children shafted.

If find it curious that the government is all about localism, except when it comes to letting councils decide what educational provision is needed locally.