Falling pupil numbers mean that the government has awarded less money to state schools in Brighton and Hove in the current financial year.
Government funding is broadly based on pupil numbers – and the fall in the number of pupils has led to a drop in the main funding stream, the dedicated schools grant, by £512,000.
The figure was contained in a report to the Brighton and Hove Schools Forum on Monday 13 October.
Days later, members of Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet were told that the dedicated schools grant, which is ring-fenced, is likely to be overspent by nearly £3 million this year.
Fairlight Primary School head teacher Damien Jordan raised concerns for the future, saying that £320,000 had been lost because fewer children were in early years education.
Mr Jordan said: “Because there are fewer children, it’s rolling forward in our pupil numbers. It’ll hit primary next year. It’ll hit secondary in six years.”
Community schools across Brighton and Hove share £228 million, with a further £29.5 million going to academies and free schools.
Currently the combined licenced deficits for the 29 schools that are over budget is more than £8 million.
Two secondary schools – Cardinal Newman and Hove Park – are each forecast to end the financial year more than £1.7 million in the red.
The figures shared with members of the Schools Forum showed that five of the primary schools expected to be in deficit had filled more than 95 per cent of their school places.
The council’s principal accountant for schools, Steve Williams, said that Brighton and Hove was an outlier among councils because of the high number of schools in debt as a result of falling pupil numbers.
But a growing number of other councils were now having to deal with a falling birth rate.
Since 2019, the council has reduced the published admission number (PANs) at several primary schools to try to address the falling numbers.
The council closed two of the smallest primary schools last year – St Peter’s, in Portslade, and St Bartholomew’s, in Brighton.
This year, another primary school closed, St Joseph’s, in Hollingdean.
There are more than 2,400 reception class places. The schools census figures for this term have yet to be published but 1,938 children were offered a place to start in reception last month.
In 2023, the council forecast that 1,953 children would start school last month and just 1,787 in September 2027.
At the cabinet meeting last Thursday (16 October), the Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, spoke about falling pupil numbers in a discussion focused on housing policy.
Councillor Taylor said that he had seen data stating that Brighton and Hove was the fourth most unaffordable local authority area in the country, with the third lowest birth rate.
He told the cabinet that the high cost of living was driving families away, adding: “There are complex reasons as to why birth rates fall. They’re falling nationally.
“But they have fallen to such a degree in our city that the numbers of pupils we are seeing come into our schools each year have fallen to such a degree, in my opinion, because the city has become so unaffordable.
“If we look at rents in this city, on average, residents are spending 44 per cent of their income on rent. That’s the fourth most unaffordable local authority in the whole country. The two things are intrinsically linked.”
Unless the Labour government properly invests in education then children in the city will continue to lose out. Schools are so stretched as things stand, both in terms of crumbling school buildings and day to day costs which impact on education.
The council here are just propping up a Labour government who are failing to deliver the radical changes needed and who are only offering sticking plaster solutions. Until councillors stick up for residents and push back against the Labour austerity we see nationally, residents will suffer – including children and young people who are being desperately let down by them.
The decline in pupil numbers will continue until such time that the council implement policies which encourage young people to bring up families in Hove and Brighton. I see no evidence of planning policies which encourage the development of family homes with gardens. All we seem to get are blocks of flats which suits older people and young professionals without children. Add to this the continual conversion of family homes into flats, bedsits or student accommodation and you have to ask whether the council actually wants young families.
I agree Peter, despite in theory being a great place to live, the council make life difficult for young families to live in. Agree re housing but also all of the lying and incompetence around secondary school allocation, general run down and scruffy feel of the city and sports and swimming facilities being decrepit don’t help.
You’re absolutely right that the housing mix plays a big part in whether families can stay in the city.
The challenge is that planning can’t easily require developers to build specific things when land values are so high and sites are often small or infill. What we’ve ended up with is a pattern where viability assessments and market pressures drive developers toward flats and investment homes that serve no-one locally; the Gasworks are a good example of this pressure.
That said, I think being hopeful, there are ways to rebalance things. I’d argue the bigger lever isn’t just planning policy, but affordability and land access: if homes were priced or rented at sustainable levels, families could thrive here even in well-designed flats.
So I guess, the question I would pose to you is this. Do you think Brighton’s problem is more about the type of homes being built, or about who can afford to live in them?
That funding should be directed at teacher training degrees instead of using “stand ins” with zero qualifications in anything, raises the level and quality of teaching instead of digging deeper holes.
Supply teachers are qualified teachers, but a lot of schools use Teaching Assistants to cover staff absence and PPA.
There are loads of supply teachers who would love to teach but classes are covered by teaching assistants because of the budget and there are loads of experienced teachers who aren’t employed because schools cannot afford to pay them. No need to train teachers when so many are looking for work.
Obviously I don’t work in that field but I was shocked to learn that one or two unqualified builders are working as “teachers” and they have zero qualifications in anything, so it’s all about the money and don’t worry if the kids finish school as muppets. pretty sad really considering that as you say real teachers are available and training them was never cheap in the first place. Just remembered, most politicians are qualified at nothing, todays standards I suppose.
With 1 in 4 family court cases are not the biological father in Brighton , national average is 1 in 5 . Paternity fraud in the increase . 97 % of custodial care awarded to mothers.
Coming from farming . I wonder why ?
No incentive for males to start a family.
The fact that 250 immigrant children went missing in Brighton then something very odd is going on . Parenting assessments produced with out court instruction is a bit like a car accident report before the car accident
Completely Incorrect:
1) No data exists by city.
2) National Average is 2%
3) Nothing credible shows a current UK rise in paternity fraud
4) Family courts mostly make Child Arrangements Orders outcomes are far more mixed than 97%. Official MoJ stats don’t support that claim; research on contested residence found no systematic gender bias in decisions.
5) The documented drivers of falling pupil numbers are a nationally lower birth rate and local housing unaffordability.
No father should have to go to a member of parliament to gain access to there own child .
A million children In the UK have no contact with there biological father.
1 in 4 family court cases in Brighton ( the highest in the UK) is not the biological father.
33% of DNA request by father’s are not the biological parent .
3 years average for the ailinated parent to give up hope.
£25,000 to £35,000 cost of legal representation implacable hostility .
97% of custodial care awarded to mother . 3% to father’s.
75•85% of accusations false . 85% of the accusations made that are false by cluster b personalities.
800% rise in domestic abuse allegations since legal aid removed from family courts .
87% of young offenders in prison are fatherless.
Out of 198 no contact orders who answered a poll only 1 had no contact overturned.
These are a repeat of the same fabricated statistics you have posted before under school-related or “family breakdown” topics. Almost all of those numbers are either grossly inaccurate or entirely made-up. Once again, none of your numbers stand up to even a quick comparison with official MoJ or ONS data.
Across the UK 2.7million children have no father figure at home, representing almost 1 in 5 of all dependent children (5). 10.
https://committees.parliament.uk
Evidence on Mental health of men and boys – UK
The claim of an “800% rise” is likely a misinterpretation of data on non-molestation orders (NMOs), which rose by up to 900% in some areas after 2012 legal aid cuts, according to a BBC article citing the charity Families Need Fathers. The cuts made legal aid only available for domestic abuse cases in family courts, and while some genuine abuse victims benefited, the rise in NMOs was also driven by a concern that some people were falsely or inaccurately claiming abuse to gain access to legal aid to stop estranged partners from seeing their children.
Hey Benji … Did you also know about baby p cases in Brighton.
Because that data not available it comes from people that know .
And you have to be dating those people which something I’m sure you never done considering the amount of time you spend calling out every one on every topic .
Perhaps go a family need fathers conference for starters .
All I get a year is a bill from dwp . No pictures no updates nothing. And yet I was granted parental responsibility. Fact finding hearing found no finding of fact .
Why was I given an s7 report with template written on it .
Why did I have to have court ordered DNA test paid for me by the court .
Why did my son fall asleep in my arms in a contact center.
Why doesn’t my mother a Brighton and hove trained children nurse and handicapped nurse not get to see her grandchild.
Things you can’t always Google because people would lose their jobs numb nutd