Kentish Express Ashford & District
County’s schools looking at £149m funding ‘crisis’
Budgets lag far behind soaring demand
Kent County Council says it will be short of £149 million to meet the growing demand for school places over the next four years.
Education chiefs say they are facing an “insoluble dilemma” over the funding they need now and beyond 2022, and have warned the figure “grows significantly”.
The potential cash crisis is identified in the latest edition of the authority’s school commissioning plan, which sets out how the local authority will ensure there are enough school places for children.
Kent has come under increasing pressure for places, caused chiefly by population growth, the rising birth rate and inward migration.
The latest four-year Education Commissioning Plan states that Kent will need the equivalent of 70 new primary classes along with 84 additional secondary classes over the period – the latter representing the equivalent of 12 new secondary schools.
The number of secondary children is forecast to rise by 12,000 from 71,110 to 91,520 this year, while 6,000 more primary aged children will need to be accommodated.
However, the report warns: “The requirements set out in this plan cannot be delivered within the available budget, and at present we estimate we face a shortfall of £149 million in respect of all the places required by September 2020, and that figure grows significantly the further ahead we look.”
Funding for school places is in the main provided by the government but is supplemented by developers’ contributions negotiated with the county council.
KCC says it is facing two key pressures: the fact that it is more expensive to build or expand secondary schools, coupled with the government’s policy of creating more free schools to meet shortages of places.
Cllr Roger Gough, KCC cabinet member for education, said: “We have been saying for quite some time there will be a bulge in numbers coming through – particularly in primary schools, who are now coming into secondary schools.
“We believe that in the next few years we will need 84 forms of entry – that is 84 extra classes all the way through secondary school. That is about a dozen average-size secondary schools.”
He said problems with the government’s free school programme meant there had been delays in new schools opening.
He continued: “They have not been able to bring forward schools at the time required so we are now required to step forward and bring in extra schools and that is why we have a financial pressure.”
He said the figure of £149 million was largely because it was much more expensive to create new secondary schools compared with primary schools.
Kent had also lost grant money, which had fallen to around £15 million from about £40 million.