School gets go-ahead for extra classrooms
APPROVAL has been given to build emergency classrooms to help tackle the predicted shortfall of 400 secondary school places in Macclesfield.
Six new classrooms will now be created at Tytherington School, on Manchester Road, in a two-storey extension to an existing block.
The successful planning application followed discussions between Cheshire East Council and the Macclesfield’s four mainstream local authority high schools.
It was shown that Tytherington,
Macclesfield Academy, Fallibroome Academy and All Hallows had a combined pupil admission number of 780 for September 2020.
And the council anticipated that ‘if current trends continue’ there will be a shortage of 392 places by 2024.
The application is a measure to tackle this and although it was passed - for a temporary five-year period - there were a handful of objections.
Residents in nearby Badger House wrote to the council saying the extension would be
‘too imposing’ and cause loss of privacy for them.
But Thomas Hiles, a council planning officer, said in his report: “The development will result in the loss of some open space, but it is considered that this loss would be outweighed in the planning balance by the importance of the scheme.
“The proposed development is therefore considered to comply with the development plan, and is accordingly recommended for approval.”
Even for the school year starting next month the predicted number of students to start secondary education is 835.
The extra will be shared between Macclesfield Academy and Tytherington School.
Manny Botwe, headteacher at Tytherington, said: “We have been oversubscribed for the last three years.
The good news for parents at Tytherington is students are going to have brand new facilities.
“The idea is to make sure all of us can accommodate our feeder primary schools and geographically pupils are able to go to their local comprehensive.
“It (creating 392 extra places by 2024) is manageable but we have to start planning as soon as possible.”
The news of the shortfall caused criticism of the council for previously granting planning permission for housing developments when fears had been raised of the pressure it would put on schools.
Jacky Forster, the council’s director of education and 14-19 skills, responded by saying: “Cheshire East reassesses its pupil place forecasts annually in line with the latest information on housing provided by the planning department.
“The 2018 forecasts indicated surplus places across the Macclesfield secondary schools for January 2019; the figure quoted of 392 places short referred to the anticipated position by 2024 if the current trend continued.”