Latest News: Frank Le Duc
Education chiefs have budgeted £28m to ease the squeeze on school places as they look again at catchment areas
Brighton and Hove needs the “equivalent to a large new secondary school” if it is to have enough places for our growing young population. Even if every school were full, there would still be a shortfall of about 150 places a year from September next year, according to current estimates. And, if some flexibility is built in to allow for parental preferences, the shortfall will be about 300 places a year until the end of the decade.
Brighton and Hove City Council has budgeted more than £28 million over the next three years for building work to try to soak up some of the extra pupils. Pinaki Ghoshal, the council’s executive director of children’s services, said: “We can’t tweak things to find those places and we can’t find those places by building one school and putting all 1,500 children there. The solution is going to be a series of things that we need to do.”
Representatives of the council met with senior figures from all ten local secondary schools, including the new King’s School in Portslade and the two Aldridge academies, earlier this month. They were joined by staff from local colleges and the two universities.
Mr Ghoshal said: “I would hope that as a creative city we will come up with some creative solutions. What that solution might look like might include expanding existing schools, federating existing schools, academies… Let’s explore all of those options in an open way.”
Some secondary schools have spare capacity. Only three out of the ten schools had more applicants naming them as their first choice for this coming September than places available – Blatchington Mill, Cardinal Newman and Dorothy Stringer. Patcham High came close, having grown in popularity among parents in the past few years.
“I would hope that as a creative city we will come up with some creative solutions”
Improved performance at Hove Park has also led to more naming it as their first choice. It’s in the government’s list of the top 100 most improved schools. But the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA) and its sister school in Portslade (PACA) still struggle to pull in the numbers. Yet their pupils have made better progress than those at any other secondary in the area.
The proposed studio school, the Hive, and the university technical college approved in Newhaven – both for 14 to 19-year-olds – will offer some options. But the council is under pressure to allow the building of more than a thousand homes a year for the foreseeable future. A school could go up alongside homes in Toad’s Hole Valley in Hangleton but it won’t be enough by itself.
Mr Ghoshal also said: “We do need to look at our catchment areas. We’re constrained by where our schools are. If we were starting again, we wouldn’t have our schools where they are. We need to look at where first preferences operate. They change. Look at Patcham High. A few years ago it wasn’t a school of choice. Now it is.
“I don’t have a view of what the solution will look like. We need to do that at the same time as we’re looking at capacity. Whatever we come up with some people will be happy and some people will be unhappy. We’re not going to please everyone.”
Mr Ghoshal took up his job last July but has heard about the last review of school catchment areas seven years ago. He said: “I hope the temperature doesn’t get too high. I have been involved with school reorganisations before and I know emotions run high around this.”
The timing is set in law so nothing is likely to change before the September 2016 school intake although September 2017 looks like being a more realistic date. Mr Ghoshal said: “That’s really difficult for parents. Parents at the top end of junior school will want some clarity but I can’t give that. In an ideal world I’d sort it all out for September.”
Time and effort will have to be spent educating parents about the realities of a tricky situation while imagination and intelligence are needed to bring forward smart solutions.
