Three Brighton schools are appealing the council’s decision to reduce their intake.
Patcham Infant School, Goldstone Primary School and St Luke’s Primary School are all earmarked to only take two forms in reception from September 2025, down from the three they all currently offer places in.
Brighton and Hove City Council says it needs to slash places across the city, with one in five places currently unfilled.
As schools are funded per pupil, underfilled classes put a huge strain on budgets.
However, the schools argue that cutting places at schools which currently fill most if not all places would stop parents who want to send their children there being able to.
There are also several other schools where applications are already significantly less than current capacity which could also reduce their intake.
Chair of governors at Patcham Infant School David Skeet said: “We have a very well managed budget and have not been in any deficit – although I suspect we will have to be if the council is successful in reducing our intake.
“We are lucky to be in a nice area of Brighton and Patcham is a real community. There is undoubtedly a village feel and the three schools are very much part of that. To reduce our numbers and then obviously by default do the same to the Junior school is damaging and shortsighted.
“But the biggest and most important point is the council is removing parental choice over which school parents want to send their children to.”
Head of St Luke’s Simon Wattam said: “We are significantly oversubscribed and have been for many years, apart from a small blip last year. This coming year we have many more first choices.
“It would definitely frustrate the preference of parents in the area who are choosing our school.
“The school has a distinctive ethos and character which parents want to be part of. It would be a shame to lessen the choice for parents to be a part of that and of our community.”
Councillor Jacob Taylor, co-chair of the council’s Children, Families and School’s Committee, said: “More than a fifth of primary school places are currently empty, and forecasts show there will be hundreds more empty places by 2027.
“Funding for schools is mainly calculated per pupil. The empty places mean more and more of our schools are finding themselves in extreme financial difficulty – without the resources needed to provide the support to children they would want to.
“Given that context, we have had to make proposals to reduce the size of some schools – and very sadly propose the closure of two one-form entry schools.
“As a responsible council, we have had to act now to secure the long-term future of the city’s schools.
“With yet more empty places forecast in the coming years, I would like to see our primary schools thinking and acting collaboratively like a family of schools going forward to help us address this issue.”
The council also voted to reduce places at Brunswick Primary School from 120 to 60, at Saltdean from 90 to 60, and Stanford Infant from 90 to 60.
Brunswick and Saltdean said they would not be appealing. Stanford had not replied at the time of publication.
Brunswick, Goldstone and Stanford previously successfully appealed an attempt to cut their intakes in 2021, on the basis it would frustrate parental choice.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s head of school organisation Richard Barker told consultation events that if schools appealed this time, the council would argue that if places weren’t cut at these schools, other schools would close.
is this so our Labour Council can say there aren’t enough pupils and shut these schools down as well to sell off the sites?
There simply are too many excess places in B&H and you know this Barry.
It means that the schools funding from the GOVERNMENT won’t support every school being keot open
To be blunt if these schoos want to remain open / not have their intake reduced they need to say which of the other schools in the city should be closed / have their admission numbers reduced.
There’s already plans to relocate patcham infants into the junior site. Father in law is caretaker and already aware
You selfish people are the reason st Bart’s and st Peter’s are now suffering stop being so damn selfish!!!
Utter garbage.
Appealing this will put other schools at risk of closure. They need to play their part and reduce surplus places. It’s ridiculous they are three form. This is part of the problem!! They need to accept the PANS reduction and move on. At least they can stay open!! Ridiculous.
Patcham Infant School might be 3 form but it is still an incredibly small school due to being an Infant School, with only 10 classes in total. The proposed PAN reduction will bring the school to be even smaller than a one form entry primary school, putting Patcham Infants at huge risk of closure as this would not be financially viable.
Perhaps worst schools that are not oversubscribed should be closed. This will ensure the best schools have the very good levels of funding which will make them much more able to provide excellent teaching and specialist support.
I wonder if this stems from the huge numbers of students that are now renting properties in the private rented sector and taking over former family homes and driving families with children out of the areas
Given the relatively flat numbers at both local universities over the last decade, probably not. It’s just demography – the UK is experiencing a downturn in the number of children for a large number of reasons.
Who do they appeal to?
office of the schools adjudicator
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-the-schools-adjudicator/about