Councillors vote to cut intake at six schools

Reception class numbers will be cut at six schools as Brighton and Hove City Council responds to the falling number of pupils.

Labour councillors voted through the cuts when the Children, Families and Schools Committee met at Hove Town Hall where parents from two Brighton schools turned up to object to the proposals.

The committee agreed to reduce the Reception Year intake at Brunswick, Goldstone, St Luke’s and Saltdean primary schools and Patcham and Stanford infant schools from September 2025.

The council had also proposed to cut the intake at three other primary schools – Queen’s Park, Rudyard Kipling and Woodingdean. But the plans were dropped after more than 1,500 responses to a public consultation.

At the town hall yesterday (Monday 22 January) St Luke’s teacher Emma Liles objected to reducing the intake from three classes to two at the Hanover primary.

She said that the cut would jeopardise the budget for specialist staff including the music teacher and a specialist supporting children who are in care or who have recently left care.

Ms Liles said: “For many families, such as those living north of the school on the Pankhurst Estate, St Luke’s is the only local school.

“These families live on the edge of the traditional St Luke’s ‘catchment’ and are highly concerned about the possibility of not being offered a place should the numbers be reduced.”

The council’s head of school organisation Richard Barker said that, last September, even if the intake had been reduced to 60, every child from the Pankhurst Estate who applied to St Luke’s would have been given a place.

Last year the furthest distance for a child offered a place at the school was more than 2km.

Another public speaker at the meeting, Rebecca Devereux, objected to reducing the intake at Patcham Infant School from three classes to two – or 90 children to 60.

She took issue with Conservative councillor Alistair McNair, who is also the chair of governors at nearby Carden Primary School, for “promoting the school” during the consultation.

She asked why a popular, successful, financially sound and full school was targeted for reduction.

She said: “No account appears to have been taken of factors other than NHS birth rate data/GP registrations, such as new housing developments or families relocating to our area from within the city and from London/other areas.

“Local estate agents tell us that a significant proportion of house hunters in Patcham fit this latter category.”

Conservative councillor Anne Meadows, who represents Patcham and Hollingbury, said: “The demography of the area has changed as older people are moving away for a variety of reasons and younger families are moving in.

“It doesn’t make any sense to reduce the PAN (published admission number) when next year, more than likely, there will be a new influx of families with an increase of children in the area.”

Councillors were first alerted to the drop in reception numbers in 2017 and started taking steps to cut intakes at larger schools in 2019 while facing opposition from parents, governors and teachers.

Even after having reduced the intake at some of the bigger schools in Brighton and Hove since September 2019, there are currently 2,610 reception places available.

The council forecasts that there may be only 1,970 children requiring a reception place in September next year, 1,953 in 2026 and 1,787 in 2027.

Mr Barker said that falling rolls meant reduced funding. Education costs were driven by the number of classes in the school, he said, which was why the council wanted to reduce 180 places from the number currently available.

Labour councillor Jacob Taylor, who co-chairs the council’s Children, Families and Schools Committee, said that the council had been trying to reduce school intakes for the past three to four years.

He said: “We have been clear in all our communications, both at public events, in the media and in speeches to committee, we’re having to propose this to try ot maintain the viability of the other schools in the city and the system as a whole.

“If you don’t pursue that approach, we can see the consequences. The school closures were absolutely the last resort.”

He said that, in two cases, the head teacher and governing body had backed the proposed reductions but parents had objected.

Green councillor Sue Shanks said: “It would be a bit odd for us to be so opposed to closing a school and then say ‘don’t cut PANs’. It’s much less damaging to cut the PAN.

“We expanded a lot of schools when I was on the council in 2011-12. At least when you expand you can reduce the PAN not close the school completely.”

Labour councillor Lucy Helliwell, who co-chairs the council’s Children, Families and Schools Committee, said: “The government only funds schools by the actual numbers in the school.

“And while it is a fair assumption that small class sizes benefit children, unfortunately, due to the way schools are funded, every empty classroom seat is an increasing debt in school budgets.

“By having fuller classes, schools can fund the extra support staff needed to support students, which is what all children deserve.”

With Brunswick Primary School reducing to three forms of entry, the last remaining four-form entry state primary schools in Brighton and Hove are West Hove Infant, Hove Junior and Downs Junior.