A new admissions policy will lead to undersubscribed schools taking even fewer pupils after the government blocked intake reductions at popular ones, a council chief admitted this week.
Deputy council leader Jacob Taylor said Brighton and Hove City Council was disappointed the Office of the Schools Adjudicator blocked its plans to reduce the number of year seven pupils starting at Dorothy Stringer and Blatchington Mill schools next year.
The changes would have come in at the same time as the council’s new open admissions policy, which allocates five per cent of secondary school places to children living outside a school’s catchment.
If the reductions had happened, it was predicted that 60 children living in the catchment of those two oversubscribed schools would have been allocated a place at a non-catchment school.
The first set of families to apply under the new system will find out where their child has a place on Monday, 2 March 2026.
Meanwhile, a consultation for more changes to admissions for 2027 has started – but no more reductions to secondary school intakes or an increase in the number of non-catchment pupils who have priority for places is being proposed.
During a cabinet meeting on Thursday 13 November, Green councillor Sue Shanks wanted to know what implications the adjudicator’s decision would have for school numbers and the council’s aim to reduce inequality.
Councillor Taylor said the council was disappointed the adjudicator ruled against reducing the planned admission number (PAN) at the two community secondaries for next year, but noted the decision recognised reductions would be likely in the future.
Councillor Taylor said: “The likely consequence is we’ll have lower numbers of pupils attending some of the other schools across the city.
“We’ll have to see that in the final allocation numbers for the next year. In terms of education inequality, it’s difficult to say, it’s a better outcome if our smaller schools receive a number of pupils that is closer to their overall PAN.
“We don’t want a situation where some schools are getting a much lower number of pupils. It’s not good for their budgets or their offer, but we’ll have to wait and see what the overall numbers are.”
Green councillor Raphael Hill questioned why the latest consultation –approved by cabinet later in the meeting – did not include increasing the open admissions criteria introduced for September 2026, from five per cent to 20 per cent of admissions.
Twenty per cent was the figure put forward in last year’s consultation, but was dropped to five per cent after parents vehemently opposed the idea.
Councillor Taylor said he believed in making education opportunities fairer, but accepted making changes is “hard”.
He said: “We never said we would increase it. We would look at the impact of the policy, and assess the policy, and keep it under review.
“Applications have closed for next year. Will have a look at those numbers in future years and consider the policy in the round.”
Proposals agreed by councillors, which are now part of a public consultation on the council website are to allow sibling links at secondary schools regardless of catchment area and make changes to waiting lists.
Councillor Taylor said the sibling link proposal was fairer for all families.
He said less than a quarter of pupils entering the secondary system have an older sibling in the years above, and expected eight or nine pupils to benefit from the policy if it is approved next February.
Currently, if a child is not allocated their first choice school they are automatically added to the waiting list.
The proposals are aimed at preventing duplicate offers from the waiting list and would require parents to name the school that they would prefer.
Governors at Downs Junior School in Ditching Road, Brighton, and Rudyard Kipling Primary in Chalkland Rise, Woodingdean, have asked to have their PANs reduced.
The council has been reducing numbers at infant and primary schools over the last six years to address falling pupil numbers, as funding is based on the number of children.
Between 2011 and 2021, the number of under-fives in the city fell by a fifth, and the reduced pupil numbers is now impacting secondary schools.
Public events are currently planned for:
Downs Junior School
In person on Wednesday 26 November in the morning
Online on Wednesday 19 November in the early evening
Rudyard Kipling Primary School
Online on Tuesday 2 December in the early evening
General meeting
Online on Wednesday 3 December in the early evening
Brighton and Hove currently has 2,445 places for reception-age pupils, with a quarter of them expected to be vacant in September 2027.
Projections show no more than 1,900 children are expected to start in reception in 2028.
The drop in admissions after a series of “bulge” years is now hitting secondary schools too.
In September 2027, 2,234 of the 2,500 state secondary school places in Brighton and Hove – including the two religious schools Cardinal Newman and King’s – are expected to be taken up, leaving 11 per cent vacant.
By 2031, just 2,009 secondary spaces are expected to be filled, leaving a fifth vacant.
The consultation which is open on the council website ends on Friday 9 January.
Forcing children who live within walking distance of two good schools to spend 2-3 hours a day travelling by bus to Longhill (a failing school with abysmal GCSE results located in the middle lof nowhere) is insane and completely unfair. Sad to say but the best and fairest thing to do would be to shut down Longhill and disperse its pupils across the other schools.
The key thing is that even perfect admissions planning cannot outrun the maths. When every new cohort is significantly smaller than the last, the pressure to reorganise the school estate will keep growing. Whatever the politics of PAN changes or catchment tweaks, a city with a fertility rate that sits at roughly two thirds of replacement simply cannot sustain its current level of capacity in the long term.
This is an issue that is not going to go away; a challenge that will persist for at least a decade or more, even if it was fixed tomorrow.
Well, this has been a bit of a pickle in Brighton and Hove for, oh, forever really. The council? Never quite ahead of the game. Never really had a plan. And—spoiler alert—still doesn’t.
Instead of fixing things, councillors seem to spend most of their time polishing their political points, popping up in the papers (oh look, it’s him again!) and firing off press releases like confetti. Meanwhile, the actual problem? Still sitting there, waving politely.
Then they act all shocked when an expert swoops in and overturns their decisions. Decisions made by councillors whose main qualification on schools is… well… they once went to one. And let’s be honest, they’re probably advised by people who’ve never set foot in a classroom unless it was for parents’ evening.
If we want to fix education in this city, here’s a radical idea: invest in education. Stop playing politics like it’s a board game. And maybe—just maybe—leave the decisions to people who actually know what they’re doing. Because if they don’t, there won’t be any council schools left. They’ll either close because no one’s in them, go bankrupt, or turn into academies. Which, let’s face it, is probably already happening while everyone’s busy writing press releases.
I gently disagree, and this is more about simple demographics. The number of under-fives in the city has fallen by roughly a fifth over the last decade, and that decline is now working its way through the system. Even with flawless planning, you can’t keep every school full when each new cohort is smaller than the one before, nor is it financially viable to maintain status quo.
Most of the technical side of admissions, modelling and forecasting is carried out by specialist education officers, and the adjudicator’s decisions are based on that evidence rather than on anyone’s politics. Where many councils, not just Brighton, has struggled, is not through a lack of intent, but because the sector has shifted faster than almost any local authority can restructure capacity.
Investment ultimately comes back to matching capacity to the number of pupils. It’s unglamorous, it’s never going to be popular, but it is the bit that will make the biggest difference to our children.
Ultimately there are two massive and simple factors which they seem to lose sight of:
1. Parents will overwhelmingly want their children to go to schools that are a.) nearby b.) good – however each family judges that is up to them
2. It is completely logical for there to be more schools where more people live – this is not unfair it is just common sense to locate facilities where there is most demand for them
To allocate children to a school does not need to be as complicated as it has been made – very few people, even those who create the policy, really understand it and the levers the council pull do not get to the root cause of the problem.
By all means reduce intakes, but consider #1 and #2 when doing so.
At the risk of ruining my reputation, what you say makes complete sense. Make all schools to an equal and of a high standard, and it shouldn’t matter where they go. I guess people would say there lies the challenge, but the princible is solid.
Currently Longhill High School has a roll of 735 pupils with capacity for 1200. The Year 7 capacity for 270 pupils only succeeded in accepting 93 places. Many pupils do not live locally, with 8 double decker buses + one single decker bus seen taking pupils home this afternoon at 14.45 hrs. Followed by another double decker bus arriving and taking a small number of pupils away at 16.00 hrs. That is NINE buses for a school with just 735 pupils. The closure of the secondary school on Wilson Avenue, ( Comart? Marina High?) has probably had the greatest impact on the need to bus pupils in to Rottingdean from other parts of Brighton. I wonder if the sharply falling school roll at Longhill High School has got anything to do with the council seeking to buy up residential properties for council housing in Rottingdean? Maybe? Maybe not?
Buying a handful of properties (which may not even have children living in them) is unlikely to move the dial when it comes to prospective school numbers
A lot of data would point to the consequences of having a low total fertility rate (TFR) as the major driver for falling roll call. There’s quite a few good YouTube videos out there that explains it in a lot of depth, and worth a watch!
I’m afraid many councillors, led (by the nose) by finance/ number-crunching officials like Richard Barker, just don’t value/listen to parent choice. That’s why Varndean is popular and Longhill isn’t !
As a former councillor supporting misplaced families since 2017 – and, incidentally, with two grandchildren misplaced, & their younger sister waiting for “school offer day” – may I suggest Varndean and Stringer in separate catchments, with two schools (at least) in every catchment area ?
Then perhaps councillors will reduce their politically correct virtue signalling, and stop ruining some children’s education 😡
Unfortunately the disastrous Labour policies within the City re housing will only exacerbate the problem. Young families are moving out of the city to Worthing, Hassocks & Seaford whilst our council are happy to build flats & not houses in Brighton & Hove. Generally families want houses. The Marina blocks are being filled with foreign university students.
… Now my stopwatch is on for keyboard warrior, Benjamin
You’ve even given me a little drum-roll. Cute.
I’ll give you two factual points today. Firstly, fundamental land economics. Brighton is one of the most land-constrained cities in the country. Every planning inspector for the last decade has said that delivering houses instead of flats at scale simply isn’t realistic within our boundaries. Secondly, basic demographic data shows that the student element at the Marina is extremely small.
It’s a shame you seem so resistant to providing homes for actual residents who need them, councillor. The CON’s policy of building exactly zero homes whatsoever is why there is housing crisis that’s having to be dealt with by everyone else.
On a positive note, why not reduce class sizes so that the teacher/pupil ratio is better and the level of education is increased? Part of the reason for falling numbers is that families struggle to obtain affordable accommodation. Factor this into future planning policy.
You’re right Mitch, children in the east of the city have not had their own school since Comart closed. Longhill is just in the wrong location and the standard of education is very low. Even the children who live nearby travel to cardinal newman or got to private schools. The council forcing all of these children to waste hours a day sat on buses and the resulting pollution is so ridiculous.
Benjamin !
Wow. That was… quite the performance. I must commend you on your dedication to the art of the lengthy, predictable, and remarkably unoriginal comment.
It’s truly fascinating how you manage to string together so many words while saying absolutely nothing new. It takes real skill to so obviously cut and paste entire sections, ideas, and even specific phrases that have already been thoroughly dissected and refuted by others hours ago. Did you even read the comments you were plagiarizing from? Or were you just focused on maximizing the character count to look “informed”?
For future reference, “long-winded” doesn’t automatically mean “intelligent.” Next time, try contributing your own actual thoughts instead of serving up a reheated, stale, and frankly boring word salad of other people’s arguments.