Queen’s Park Primary School is to cut its reception class intake to 30 pupils for the next two years because of falling pupil numbers and financial concerns.
Schools adjudicator Miranda Barnett approved a proposal put forward by Brighton and Hove City Council with the backing of governors.
The school, in Park Street, Brighton, is expecting 22 children to start in Reception this term but had 60 places.
The reduced “published admission number” (PAN) will come into force as the 2026-27 school year begins and means that the school will take no more than 30 pupils in total if more youngsters join.
Funding is based on pupil numbers but if the intake stayed unchanged and more than 30 pupils joined Reception, the school would have had to staff two classes. Thirty is the maximum class size.
The adjudicator’s report said that in the past four years the school had not admitted more than 40 pupils in its Reception class apart from in 2024.
The council expects to have 74 vacant places in the eastern part of the city in 2027-28 but fewer vacancies in the following two school years.
The adjudicator’s report said that the school was carrying forward a £52,000 surplus but is projected to go into the red for the next two years – to almost £150,000 in 2027-28.
She said: “The projected in-year deficit for 2026-27 is -£74,782 and the projected deficit for 2027-28 is -£146,768.
“While the school is not currently in deficit … it is clear that, based on current pupil numbers for the school for 2026-27 and projected pupil numbers for 2027-28 … there are unlikely to be full classes at the school.”
Queen’s Park is the fourth school to ask to reduce its admission number this year.
Brunswick Primary School, in Hove, is keeping its reduced Reception intake to 60 this year and next.
Coldean Primary School, in Brighton, is keeping its reduced intake to 30 for the next two years.
St Mark’s Church of England (CofE) Primary School, in Manor Road, Brighton, has reduced its Reception class intake to 15 for the next two years.
Queen’s Park was one of seven schools subject to a public consultation to reduce its intake for September 2023 because of falling pupil numbers across Brighton and Hove.
But such was the strength of feeling when the reductions were proposed – for Bevendean, Carden, Coldean, Queen’s Park, Rudyard Kipling, Saltdean and Woodingdean – that the council abandoned its plans.
Falling pupil numbers have led to three primary schools closing in the past few years – St Bartholomew’s, in Brighton, and St Peter’s, in Portslade, in 2024, and St Joseph’s, in Hollingdean, last year.
The once-thriving Middle Street Primary School, in the centre of Brighton, formally closed at the end of last month.
Parents withdrew their children because of concerns about safeguarding, leadership and governance – and official concern about the school’s finances prompted the appointment of an “interim executive board” (IEB) in place of the governors.
But the loss of confidence among parents continued and the IEB could not come up with a way to ensure that the school would be financially sustainable so recommended its closure earlier this year.
Good real estate coming to the market soon!
Everyone used to say that Queens Park was a brilliant School, it’s what they all wanted at East Side of Brighton.
But it wouldn’t surprise me now if City Academy has more intake for Reception that Queens Park.
Elm Grove and St Luke’s look like they ok right now.
But Schools are probably better in Central Hove than Brighton to be honest.
Shame really Teachers & Head Leadership do a Good Job .
Everyone used to say that Queens Park was a brilliant School, it’s what they all wanted at East Side of Brighton.
But it wouldn’t surprise me now if City Academy has more intake for Reception that Queens Park.
Elm Grove and St Luke’s look like they ok right now.
But Schools are probably better in Central Hove than Brighton to be honest.
Shame really Teachers & Head Leadership do a Good Job .
There is something rather troubling about watching the council manage school places one crisis at a time.
We have falling rolls, schools cutting their intake, four primaries already closed and others facing increasingly uncomfortable finances. Yet only three years ago the council proposed reducing places across seven schools, encountered opposition and promptly abandoned the exercise.
One cannot manufacture children to fill empty classrooms, of course. But demographic change is hardly an unexpected visitor arriving unannounced at Brighton Station.
Surely the purpose of strategic education planning is to anticipate where families will live, how many school places will be needed and where – and then manage the inevitable adjustment coherently across the city.
Instead we seem to be administering decline school by school, PAN by PAN and deficit by deficit. That may be politically easier in the short term, but I am far from convinced it produces the best schools – or the best use of public money – in the long term.
Surely you ‘ve identified the source of the problem? Three years ago the Council tried to reduce the size of popular primary schools that had grown during the baby boom and in several cases parents mounted successful campaigns to block them. In Hanover/ Kempt Town St Lukes is the hot school, it’s stayed at three-form entry and Queens Park is paying the price. Long-term strategic planning butted heads with short-term parent interests and lost.
There is certainly something in that, Harry Kane’s Mate’s Dad, but I fear it is rather tidier than the reality.
This has not simply been a heroic battle between wise long-term planners at the council and short-sighted parents protecting their own schools. More than 40 primary heads walked out of a meeting with the council over its approach to falling rolls in 2024 – which rather suggests the problems with consultation extended somewhat beyond a few determined mums and dads.
Difficult decisions were always going to be necessary. But there is a world of difference between strategic planning and charging about the primary school estate like a bull in a china shop, announcing proposals first and discovering the consequences afterwards.
One can plan for the long term while still listening to the people who actually run the schools. Indeed, I had rather thought that was the clever bit.
Why am I noticing that it’s mostly Brighton Schools that are reducing numbers or School Closures.
I know Hove Park will eventually but no Primary Schools have downsized as such have they in Hove-or have I missed that somewhere.