By Mark Smulian | 3 September 2013
No further free schools should be created in areas where there is a surplus of school places so that funding can be focused on parts of the country that face a squeeze on capacity, the Local Government Association has said.
This is among a series of steps that it has urged the Department for Education to take to deal with rapidly increasing pressure on school places in England.
The LGA said two-thirds of councils could see more children looking to start primary school by September 2016 than they currently places available to accommodate.
Cases had arisen of schools being forced to covert music rooms and libraries into classrooms to cope, or to build on playgrounds. Some have also had to exceed the statutory 30 children per class total.
This has been driven by a birth rate that has reached its highest level since the ‘baby boom’ of the post-war decade.
The DfE had hampered council’s ability to respond by using four different methods to allocate funding for school places since 2007, ‘which has led to an unavoidable piecemeal approach to planning and councils are still in the dark as to how it will be allocated in future’, the LGA said.
Councils lacked powers to direct academies and free schools to expand or close in response to changes in demand, and are forbidden to open new maintained schools.
David Simmonds, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board, said: ‘Councils are facing unprecedented pressures in tackling the desperate shortage of new school places.
‘The process of opening up much-needed schools is being impaired by a one-size-fits-all approach and in some cases by the presumption in favour of free schools and academies.’
This could leave ‘parents scrambling for places that just don’t exist and threatens to seriously impact on our children’s education’, he said.
The LGA called for a single capital pot to be created for all schools, whether maintained schools, academies and free schools, in each area. Different types of schools should also be allowed to pool budgets.
Sufficient capital funding should be given to local authorities that have the greatest need for extra places and no new free schools should be built in areas with a surplus of school places, it said.
Free schools and academies that provide new places should have to demonstrate that they give value for money.
The worst affected places found by the LGA’s research were Costessey, in Norfolk, Purfleet, in Thurrock, and central Croydon, where there will be at least 75% more pupils by 2015 than the number of places currently available.
By 2016/17 school capacity would need to increase by at least 25% in Bedford, Central Bedfordshire, Croydon, Hounslow, Newham and Waltham Forest. A 20% increase would be needed by that time in Barking & Dagenham, Bristol, Ealing, Lewisham, Manchester, Peterborough, Redbridge, Slough and Sutton.
