Why are so many of the capital’s schools closing?
Plummeting pupil numbers are pushing inner-city schools to the brink of collapse. As young families flee London
EUGENIE Dolberg, 44, feels heartbroken every time she approaches the school gates. The artist and mother of two has felt a particular affinity with her daughter’s school, Colvestone Primary in Dalston, ever since staff were so kind and patient with her other daughter, who has ADHD, throughout the Covid lockdowns.
Despite being in the heart of Hackney, Dolberg says Colvestone had always maintained a “village school” feel. It has long been popular with families of children with special needs for its calm, nurturing environment; it is the only non-denominational school in Dalston; and parents say its small, single-form nature is key to its appeal, with children from all year groups playing together.
But in the last few weeks, a storm has threatened to destroy Colvestone’s inner London idyll. Just before the Easter holidays, Hackney council said the school was at risk of closure due to falling pupil numbers — one of the latest in a series of closures across London as Brexit, a post-pandemic exodus to the countryside and soaring living costs force young families to flee the capital. According to estate agent Hamptons, almost a fifth more Londoners are buying homes outside of the capital than before the pandemic.
The Dolbergs are just one of hundreds of families devastated by the news of closures like Colvestone’s. The council says remaining pupils will be merged with those at a nearby larger school, Princess May, but current and former Colvestone parents including the author Michael Rosen have compiled a 62-page dossier, arguing that the plans aren’t just disruptive for pupils, but that closing schools across the capital will only force more families to leave.
“Councils need to stop giving up on the idea that London is a place for families to live,” says Tara Mack, a parent-governor with a daughter in Year 5. “It’s going to be disruptive,” say parents Corine and Brandon Bishop, who fear their daughter with special needs will refuse to go to her new school.
Dolberg calls the proposed closure “frightening”. “The kids are going to find this unbelievably traumatic, after everything they’ve been through [with Covid],” she says. “We have to start asking ourselves: what kind of city do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a city without any children?”
Not if we want the parents who raise these children to keep working as our nurses, teachers, builders and firefighters. Yet recent months have seen this child-free dystopia become increasingly plausible as gentrification, spiralling living costs and falling birth rates hollow out the heart of London.
Schools — particularly primaries — have found themselves at the sharper end of this hollowing-out. Since funding is per pupil and with a 17 per cent fall in London’s birth rate since 2012, many schools cannot afford to stay open. Latest figures show 29 out of the 32 London boroughs expect a drop in demand for places in reception classes, with a predicted 7.3 per cent fall in reception numbers and a 3.5 per cent drop in Year 7 in secondaries by 2026.
In many areas, this fall in pupil numbers to 2010 levels has begun. In Hackney, six schools are currently under threat of merger or closure, with 589 fewer children in reception today than in 2014 — the equivalent of roughly 20 vacant classrooms. Nearby Camden has seen a 20 per cent drop in pupil numbers since 2012, with four schools shutting since 2019.
Haringey is reported to be the worsthit borough so far, with applications down 14.1 per cent year on year. But it’s not just a north London problem. Southwark has warned that 16 primaries are at risk, while Lambeth is projected to become the worst affected, with Archbishop Tenison’s — the 350-year-old secondary opposite Oval Cricket Ground — the latest to
We have to ask ourselves: what kind of city do we want to live in? Do we want one without any children?
announce an abrupt closure at the end of next term. “We’re still in shock,” says parent Tomeka Miller, 42, whose daughter will be one of hundreds forced to join a new school just before or midway through her GCSEs.
London’s outer boroughs face the opposite problem. In Barking and Dagenham, there’s been a 34 per cent increase in households with children. Education leaders say the situation is at “crisis point”. “It points to what Camden and other central boroughs may look like in the future and it’s bleak,” says Andrew Dyer, the National Education Union’s branch secretary for Camden. Helen Connor, executive headteacher of Rhyl Primary in Camden, adds: “When [a school is] not there anymore, the community is going to start to fall apart.”
So what’s the solution? Greater Government funding from Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, left, more affordable housing
and a change in attitude towards state schools, according to campaigners. Lambeth council recently launched an action plan to manage surplus places at its schools and says it is lobbying the Government to provide better funding, while Camden council leader Georgia Gould is calling for an end to the housing benefit cap.
Families in the borough have also launched their own campaign, Meet The Parents, encouraging more “aspirational parents” to at least consider local state options.
But what about the schools that have already closed — how do we support those children? Won’t continuing school closures trigger a vicious cycle of parents fleeing the capital? And what happens to the economic powerhouse that is London if it loses all its families?
“I guess London will just become this transient spot: you come in, you live there for a bit, then you leave,” says Sam Carew, 44, a father-of-four who is among the growing numbers of parents who’ve felt forced to leave for more affordable counties outside the capital. The footwear company founder and his wife Lisa, 42, had lived in the same two-bedroom flat in Lewisham for a decade and never wanted to leave. They were deeply embedded in the local community, but house with a garage and garden for £227,000. “It was completely devastating... but it became a no-brainer,” says Sam. “Every time I go back to Lewisham now there are new houses being built, but I don’t hear of any new schools being built. Maybe that’s the thing now: so many people are leaving, they don’t need any.”
This is more than the usual leaving-London rite of passage. Less than a decade ago, inner London parents would be in a mad scrum for primary school places; now, it’s the schools that are in a mad scrum to find pupils.
Education leaders are now warning that there could be tens of thousands of surplus primary school staff in the next five years and each closure also comes with a social cost, too. “They’re the group who never got to finish primary school because of Covid — they didn’t have any leaving parties or proms, and they didn’t get to start Year 7 or Year 8 properly either, so Years 9 and 10 would’ve finally been a chance for school to settle down a bit,” says Tomeka Miller of her daughter’s unsettling years at Archbishop Tenison’s. She has been allocated a new school by the council, but it’ll be a longer journey from home and means she’ll be separated from several friends.
Dolberg and Mack fear the closure of schools will signal the death knell for their Hackney community, driving more families away. “It’ll become a vicious cycle,” says Mack.
Dolberg agrees. “People from all over the world come here to live alongside each other,” she says. “But why are families going to move to an area where there is no local school?”
When a school is not there anymore, the local community is going to start to fall apart