Nine schools will be asked to reduce their intakes in addition to the two school closures planned by the council to tackle plummeting pupil numbers.
Brighton and Hove News reported yesterday that St Bartholomew’s Primary School in Brighton and one other school – now named as St Peter’s Community School in Portslade – are slated for closure. About 130-40 pupils currently attend each school – the lowest of all the city’s primary schools.
Today, a report published by Brighton and Hove City Council recommends reducing intakes from 2025 at Brunswick, Goldstone, Rudyard Kipling Queen’s Park, Stanford, St Luke’s and Woodingdean primary schools, as well as Patcham and Stanford infant schools.
If all go ahead, this would be a reduction of 300 reception spaces – about two thirds of the spaces the council estimates need to be chopped by 2026.
Councillor Jacob Taylor, co-chair of the council’s Children, Families and School’s committee and also finance lead, said: “There’s no easy solution to falling pupil numbers, and no one wants to talk about school closures.
“But having very high numbers of unfilled school places isn’t something we can allow to continue and as a responsible council, we must take decisive action.
“The issue has been kicked down the road for too long and we must act in the interests of children who will be denied support if the problem isn’t addressed.”
Nick Childs, senior regional officer of the NEU union representing teachers, said while it planned to work constructively with the council, it would consider balloting for strike action if compulsory redundancies were on the cards.
He said: “We hope that the difficult situation of falling roles can be managed through such a negotiation.
“We shall be requesting an assurance, from the council, that there will be no compulsory redundancies because of the proposals.
“The union will fight compulsory redundancies of our members at any school as a result of these proposals including, if appropriate, balloting members for industrial action.”
Matt Webb, from the Unison union which represents school staff, said: “The falling pupil numbers across the city has been accelerated further by both austerity and the cost of living crisis. As usual, it is working people and families who are priced out of our city and face losing their livelihoods.
“Whilst understanding the challenges this city faces and seeking to protect educational provision, we will be concentrating on what is most important to us which is protecting the jobs of our members.
“The council knows full well that we cannot and will not accept compulsory redundancies of our members.”
Three of the schools being asked to shrink – Queen’s Park, Saltdean, Woodingdean and Rudyard Kipling – were in line to have their intakes reduced last year, but the plans were dropped.
However two others which had been in line to shrink their PAN (published admission number) are not being asked again – Bevendean and Coldean primary schools.
The seventh, Carden Primary School, has voluntarily reduced its intake from two forms to one for this year, but remains at 60 after that.
The reductions and closures are in response to an estimated 20% drop in pupil numbers from 2021 to by 2026.
If a school ends up taking 34 pupils, it must employ two teachers and run two classrooms to accommodate them – but with funding for only 17 pupils per class.
This year, 14 pupils were offered a place at St Bartholomew’s Primary School, and 11 at St Peter’s Community School. St Bartholomew’s was rated as good by Ofsted at its last visit in 2020, but St Peter’s was rated as requires improvement last year.
Brunswick is being asked to go from 120 places to 90. It offered places to 79 pupils this year.
Goldstone is being asked to go from 90 to 60. It offered places to 90 pupils this year.
Patcham Infant is being asked to go from 90 places to 60. It offered places to 78 pupils this year.
Queen’s Park is being asked to go from 60 places to 30. It offered places to 35 pupils this year.
Saltdean is being asked to go from 90 places to 60. It offered places to 72 pupils this year.
Stanford Infant is being asked to go from 90 places to 60. It offered places to 68 pupils this year.
St Luke’s is being asked to go from 90 places to 60. It offered places to 87 pupils this year.
Woodingdean is being asked to go from 60 to 45 places. It offered places to 43 pupils this year.
Rudyard Kipling is being asked to go from 60 to 45 places. It offered places to 40 pupils this year.
Bevendean and Coldean, where plans to shrink intakes were dropped last year, both currently have 60 places. They offered places to 31 and 35 pupils respectively this year.
The report, which will go before next Monday’s meeting of the Children, Families and Schools committee, recommends launching consultations on the school closures and the PAN reductions
The 2021 census showed there’s been a 22% drop in children aged 0-4 in the city compared to the 2011 census and this is already having a huge effect on some of our schools.
Each year there are 2,610 primary school places in reception, but we forecast there may only be 1,959 children requiring a school place in 2025 and 1,948 in 2026.
The government recommends a surplus of 10% in spaces, which means by 2026, there would need to be 2,143 spaces – 467 fewer than there are today.
Seems unfair that St Luke’s has been asked to cut places when it almost filled the required demand for places. This means parents instead of getting into a good school like this will be forced instead to go to a school like Queens Park which is one of the 12% worst schools in the country according to the latest Oftsed rating. They should have cut the places in line with parent demand and also considering oftsed ratings.
Shouldn’t you then be more concerned about advocating raising the standards of schools you feel are lacking, Sarah? I assume you care about young people not being disadvantaged.
Parental choice is what’s created the St. Luke’s = good and Queens Park = bad situation. All the engaged parents try to get their kids into St. Luke’s from the off, or transfer them across as places open up. If the middle classes of Hanover and Kemp Town suddenly believed that Queens Park was the ‘good’ school the situation with results, etc would reverse rather quickly.
Surely if everyone reduced their numbers, no school would have to close
reduced pupil numbers = reduced funding.
And schools are expensive to run. The more you spend to keep a building open the less there is for other schools.
The plan is political cowardice and is the worst of both worlds for schools. Forcing schools to have a PAN of 45 means they have to run two classes with 3/4 of the funding. The idea of combining reception and year 1 children is flawed. The plan will also pass the buck of staff reductions to Headteachers. No wonder unions are angry.
Won’t they need to increase their intake if two schools are closing?
This makes no sense.
It is not correct to say that Carden is reducing to one form – it reduced to one form entry for one year only and has now returned to two form entry.
Hi NC, that’s what the story now says. It was edited to correct that mistake about half an hour before you commented.
Apologies, my page hadn’t refreshed to see the edit.
Who would have foreseen this happening??! It’s almost as if Brighton is totally unaffordable to live in a raise children. I wonder if the areas around Brighton (Worthing, Lancing, Peacehaven etc) are having the same problems, or if they need more places due to the sheer numbers of Brightonians relocating there due to being priced out.