Many councils ‘can’t meet places demand’

ALMOST HALF of councils in England and Wales risk being unable to meet demand for secondary school places within the next five years, the Local Government Association (LGA) has warned.

Department for Education (DfE) data and local pupil forecasts showed 125,000 children faced missing out on a secondary school place by the 2022/23 academic year, according to the body.

In Yorkshire, York and Leeds have emerged as facing a shortage of places, with an additional 5,600 places needed between the two local authorities by this date.

The LGA is now urgently calling for new powers that will allow councils to force academies and free schools to expand to meet any need for new places.

Academies and free schools currently answer directly to the DfE, bypassing local state education control.

Councillor Richard Watts, chairman of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said increasing numbers of families face growing uncertainty when trying to secure a secondary place for a child.

He said: “Councils have worked hard to help create almost 600,000 additional primary places since 2010.

“This is no small feat. However, as those children move on to secondary schools, the majority of which are now academies, securing new secondary places in the areas where they are needed is becoming increasingly difficult.

“Councils are working with one hand behind their backs to help as many pupils as possible receive a place at their first choice school.

“If we are to avoid this looming secondary school places crisis, councils need to be able to force existing academy schools to expand if voluntary agreement is impossible and must be given back powers to open new maintained schools themselves.”

The LGA’s analysis claims 12 local authorities, including City of York Council, would face a shortfall in secondary school places from 2018/2019 without changes. That figure rises to 23 in 2019/20, 41 in 2020/21, which includes Leeds City Council, 57 in 2021/22 and 66 in 2022/23, it argues. According to the figures York will need an additional 1,157 places by 2022/23, while Leeds will need an extra 4,057.

Maxine Squire, assistant director of education at City of York Council, said: “Working with York’s schools, we have already predicted an increase in the demand for places and, by using funding from central government, have already started increasing capacity in primary and secondary schools to meet the expected need.

“We’ve created extra school places in areas of the city which need them alongside managing our existing supply that includes a surplus of places in some areas. Our latest forecasts are that we have sufficient secondary school places based on current trends and we are planning to add additional places where needed.”

However, Councillor Lisa Mulherin, Leeds City Council’s executive member for children and families, argued it would be a struggle. She said: “Leeds will need 4,057 secondary school places by 2023 and is facing a shortfall in funding to provide those school places of around £80m over the next three years, which will start to show this financial year. We fully support the comments that local authorities need the ability to build schools and new school places need to be properly funded nationally.”

A DfE spokesman said the figures were “thoroughly” misleading. “Local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure that there is a school place available for every child. We have allocated £5.8bn of basic need funding between 2015 and 2020 to enable them to do this,” he said.