Impending shortage of primary school places

[Worker]

On another thread a poster described ED as having the ?highest birth rate in Europe?. Joking I'm sure, but you only have to play bugaboo dodge on LL on a weekend morning to realise that there are an awful lot of young kids in the area (including mine).

Is anyone else worried about a shortage of primary school places in a few years? Or is this already happening?

[Coach Beth]

There has been many of discussions about this over the past years. Evidence of this shortage of places can be seen by the numbers of extra buldge classes most primary schools in this area have had to take on in the last few years. Search for buldge class on the forum and you will find many discussions about this. Or search for primary schools.

[James Barber]

I recently asked a formal council assembly question about reception class forecasts. The answer was that by 2015 the Dulwich area will need an extra permanent 60-75 place each year.

The ideal school size has been stated to me as being 60 places per year. So this forecast is telling us we need an extra primary school locally.

The only obvious site is Dulwich Community Hospital site.

The current mechanisms are that such a school is likely to be a 'free' school.

[Tracy551162]

Hi, what's a "free" school? I've heard mention of this before. Thanks.

[James Barber]

Hi Tracy551162,

A 'free' school is free of Local Authority control and report directly to the Department of Education in Whitehall.

Bonkers idea extending the Academy programme Blair started up all those years ago. For some reason national conservatives nad Labour party leaderships hate local authorities and don't trust them to run local education.

Insulting where local councils run good education departments. A little more understandable when they don't. But people get to vote every four years on local authority leadership.

Anyway, the idea is that freed up from local authorities such schools will fly from parental and expert leadership. Also idea of creating a bigger market for parents to choose the school that suits them. Clearly carried to an extreme it would create wild diseconomies which would reduce the amount per child to be spent on education.

To facilitate them the normal rules about school design and space requirements are hugely relaxed and things like office blocks will be allowed.

Recently confirmed that the DoE wont accept teaching of creationsm as a scientific theory.

[Worker]

Sorry about the delay in responding and thanks for your posts, James.

Funny you should mention the hospital as a potential site. There is a group proposing to set up a bilingual German/English free school in south London and the hospital has been touted as a potential location, but it seems a decision as to what use the hospital will be put will not be made until 2014. Does this tally with your understanding?