Coldean Primary School is reducing the number of reception children it is able to take this September due to falling numbers.
The school, which has a good Ofsted rating, offered places to just 25 children this year, but as its published admissions number (PAN) was 60, it could have found itself admitting just over 30 with late applications.
This would have meant it would have to provide two classes, with two teachers – but only funding for just over half of them.
Brighton and Hove City Council applied to the schools’ adjudicator to reduce the admissions for the 2025/26 school year after consulting with the school’s governing body.
Governors agreed to the reduction for September raising concerns about the impact on the school’s budget, as funding is based on pupil numbers.
However, the change is only being made for one academic year.
In its application, the council said: “The risk to the school of admitting more than 30 pupils will exacerbate the financial pressure the school is under.
“It already had a deficit budget position agreed with the Local Authority for 2024/25 financial year.
“It remains in a deficit budget position in 2025/26 and this places greater pressure on the school’s management and performance.
“The school needs to ensure it is able to be cost-effective in its delivery of education, and their current budget plan assumes that the number of pupils does not exceed 30 pupils being admitted in the academic year 2025/26.”
A recent report on schools’ deficits said Coldean Primary underspent its budget by £8,243 in 2024/25, reducing its cumulative overspend to £28,298 from £36,541 the previous year.
Adjudicator Dr Robert Cawley noted that without any change across the city’s north planning area for schools, which includes Coldean, Moulsecoomb, Bevendean and Coombe Road Primary Schools, 35 per cent of the 180 available spaces in reception classes – 63 – would remain empty.
Reducing admissions at Coldean would result in 33 surplus places across the north area, or 18.3 per cent.
Dr Cawley said: “It is clear from the data that if I do not agree to a reduction to the PAN in year, the school would be obliged to admit children until the PAN of 60 is reached and would therefore need to run two year classes, which would be economically unviable.
“This is because it would require the substantial cost of another teacher, potentially another teaching assistant and other costs associated with running two classrooms as opposed to one.
“Additionally, the school would have the difficulty of having to try to recruit a qualified teacher mid-year.”
Dr Cawley noted the school is already using mixed-age classes for years three and four, which have 45 and 46 pupils respectively. Information provided by the school shows none of its year groups has 60 pupils,
Coldean was one of seven schools slated to have its September 2023 admissions reduced from 60 to 45 – plans which were dropped following outcry from parents across the city.
Since 2019, Brighton and Hove City Council has looked to reduce admissions at primary and infant schools due to falling numbers and a low birth rate in the city.
I blame the tories 50m black hole
Stating 50m proves your an idiot
The deficit was 22billion when liebour came into office.
Giving away pay increases willy nilly with no agreements etc and tanking the economy worse than Truss is how we ended up Fifty Billion short
Labour have reduced debt and have fixed immigration. We are lucky we have government that support British people
When Labour came into office in 2024–25, the UK’s public sector net borrowing (the deficit) was about £131 billion.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06167/
Again, it’s a product of a really low birth rate, sitting at about 0.9 TFR. To replace, we would need about 2.1. To put that in perspective. That means that the population of Brighton would halve within two generations, without migration.
Great! Let the population halve!
Why always the need for immigration, let the populace fluctuate, the needs and requirements of the populace will fluctuate too! Its not a bad thing!
Populations do ebb and flow, but a sharp fall creates real problems, economically speaking.
We have lost 2 schools last year as not enough children locally, and St. Joseph’s School this year.
This is due to decades of Brighton Councils (all parties) not having the foresight to think that having 2 universities without their own fully incorporated student housing onsite would lead to problems and impact upon the town and local society.
This has allowed 40,000 university students to occupy homes both council and private properties, which were formerly rented by families, into a tiny town 3 x 3 miles square for the most part.
As a consequence without affordable housing, as demands for housing has pushed up rents to unviable levels, many indigenous Brightonian families have had to move away from the town of their birth, fragmenting generations of families.
North Moulsecoomb and Coldean and Stanmer now have 69% student occupancy and it is around 26/26% for the rest of Moulsecoomb and Bevendean (Government Census 2021) so few homes for families to move into the area as the council houses have been bought by landlords and businessmen, and a massive waiting list for homes in the City. There is virtually no housing available for anyone, and certainly not larger homes for families.
(The Council have no idea where to put any of the 500/600 families/people who need to be rehoused as the 8 tower blocks will need demolishing in the next few years for starters).
As a result, the communities near the universities are without families to fill the schools and top heavy with student populations (who mostly go home for the summer holidays, leaving shops and businesses without enough trade).
Not the students’ fault and as a born and bred Brightonian I benefited from a Sussex Uni. education myself, but the system of running the City needs to change quickly.
The subsequent Council management has socially changed the demographics of our town and now we have a top heavy society whereupon the majority are aged around 20/25 years and fewer families in the middle, and then just the elderly.
Socially engineering families, the working population, out of the City when they are the workers who run the town 365 days a year, will backfire.
The council does not provide student housing,
It is all private sector provision.
I know of no University that providers accommodation on site for ALL its students.
They are often able to do it for freshers but after that they have to move into non university accommodation.
But whenever there is an application to build purely student accommodation (that would divert some from occupying houses ) there are always screams of outrage (and usually incorrect comments that the council is building them as well!)
We know the Council does not build student housing.
The problem is, that when new student blocks are built, they still cannot accommodate enough students and so the rest have to rent in town. Sometimes these new blocks of flats are far more expensive to rent than many students can afford, so they still have to find other accommodation in town.
On the surface, it should follow as you say, that building these new student blocks should free up some housing for local populations to rent, including families.
What has happened in reality, is that these landlords of the HMOs (houses of multiple occupation) have kept their rentals at too high a rate for many families to afford.
What has happened instead is young professional single people and couples who want to move to the City, have taken over these properties to rent themselves, as they cannot afford to rent whole properties by themselves, and so they then share rooms in the HMOs with other professionals or students in some cases.
The primary driver of school intake reductions in Brighton is the continuing low birth rate, not student housing. The council has been reducing admissions since 2019 due to fewer four- and five-year-olds entering school.
We know the Council does not build student housing.
The problem is, that when new student blocks are built, they still cannot accommodate enough students and so the rest have to rent in town. Sometimes these new blocks of flats are far more expensive to rent than many students can afford, so they still have to find other accommodation in town.
On the surface, it should follow as you say, that building these new student blocks should free up some housing for local populations to rent, including families.
What has happened in reality, is that these landlords of the HMOs (houses of multiple occupation) have kept their rentals at too high a rate for many families to afford.
What has happened instead is young professional single people and couples who want to move to the City, have taken over these properties to rent themselves, as they cannot afford to rent whole properties by themselves, and so they then share rooms in the HMOs with other professionals or students in some cases.
Sorry, it printed out twice by mistake.
Yes, true, low birth rate and decreasing every year is a factor, but again, that is partly due to many Brightonian families having to move away from their City of birth as there is very little affordable housing for them, so they bring their children up elsewhere, attending schools outside Brighton.
The reason the families and other locals cannot afford housing here is partly because little housing available, and too costly, as landlords have a huge market of student populations who will rent through necessity, so they will always have a market at higher rents.
This low birth rate figure will fall even more over the next 3 or 4 years, as the children starting school now are the covid era babies during lockdown, so fewer than ever births at that time.
Absolutely, we need more housing. And unfortunately, we have a lot of constraints with the implementation of a housing development policy. Severe land constraints, high costs of construction, competing demands – like student housing vs retirement vs commercial vs general supply.
Also, much housing delivery is in the hands of private developers whose priority is profitability, not affordability. For me, on that developer aspect, that signals the need for a bold community land trust under a CLG structure .
I completely agree with what you are saying and wrote to our MP and councillors saying exactly this . Result? The usual banal response with additional placatory non committal statements.
They don’t want to know.
Students do not pay council tax. Just about everybody else does with the odd exemption. So it doesn’t really make a difference if the blocks are built by the council or not. Then on top of that you have properties being converted for short term rentals for example AirBnB and HMOs which are better generally profit wise but means that there are less and less family homes available for rent. And I feel it will only get worse.
You’re right that purpose-built student blocks don’t take council tax out of the system, but they still have a housing market impact. Without them, students are more likely to occupy former family homes as HMOs, which pushes rents up and reduces stock for long-term residents, which do pay council tax!
I’m a bit more hopeful, because I think, with devolution, the city would have more tools to manage the housing mix, regulate STLs, and steer development toward family homes. It could also raise extra income through measures like a tourist tax, which would help fund local services without adding to residents’ bills. And also, with more local control means we can tackle oversaturation of things like AirBnB, and put additional pressure on land banks and empty properties.
Yes, true, low birth rate and decreasing every year is a factor, but again, that is partly due to many Brightonian families having to move away from their City of birth as there is very little affordable housing for them, so they bring their children up elsewhere, attending schools outside Brighton.
The reason the families and other locals cannot afford housing here is partly because little housing available, and too costly, as landlords have a huge market of student populations who will rent through necessity, so they will always have a market at higher rents.
This low birth rate figure will fall even more over the next 3 or 4 years, as the children starting school now are the covid era babies during lockdown, so fewer than ever births at that time.
3% of Brighton, 8,500 in 3 buildings are breeding on the NHS funded by the taxpayers that will mean there will be more places needed in the schools.
What has happened in the last few years that might have reduced the birth rate and hence the number of four to five year olds entering primary school this September?
The national birth rate has been in long-term decline since around 2012.
Hucklepickleberry, surely lockdowns and wfh should have resulted in more births and not less … see tradition of UK birth rate leaps after power cuts etc. Consider also the difficulties in accessing contraceptives and the morning after pill during lockdowns.
Why was there not a significant increase in the number of births?
Might there be some medical explanation for the dramatically reduced birth rate?
Lockdowns didn’t trigger a UK baby boom; in fact, most comparable countries saw flat or falling birth rates during the pandemic. Surveys at the time showed that economic uncertainty, job insecurity, housing pressures, and the stresses of the pandemic made many couples delay or abandon plans for children.
It’s part of a long-term trend that has been happening even before COVID. It’s mostly about socioeconomic factors reducing the number of people choosing to have children, rather than a medical one.
No, if you remember, the first covid wave was so frightening that people were dying without virtually any way to stop the virus and pre-vaccines were invented. It was a very frightening time. People tried not to go near hospitals if possible as inadequate prevention, masks etc. We were in a long isolation period. People were too frightened to bring babies into the world in many cases, and so births were delayed. Hundreds were dying daily.
This is the first year that those 4 year olds who were amongst the first covid era babies, are now starting school, and I know of several cases where two classes have had to be reduced to one in primary schools for this September.
Who knows, after the covid era, there may be more having their children, having postponed during lockdowns and covid years?