Agenda item

Claire MacDonald asked the Executive Member for Children's Services the following question:

 

We understand that space can be made available at Loddon School, using either “The Parent Hut”, which has provision for young children, or the former Children’s Centre which is, currently partly used as offices. Considering there are circa 30 Earley families that have been offered a divert school then we would like to understand from the Executive what factors are preventing the council from utilising this space for a 2015/16 reception class?"

 

Minutes:

 

Question

We understand that space can be made available at Loddon School, using either “The Parent Hut”, which has provision for young children, or the former Children’s Centre which is, currently partly used as offices. Considering there are circa 30 Earley families that have been offered a divert school then we would like to understand from the Executive what factors are preventing the council from utilising this space for a 2015/16 reception class?"

 

Answer

The Loddon buildings as you know are fully deployed at the moment. The former Children’s Centre has been leased to Loddon Primary School to provide additional Early Years capacity; so that is for two year old children at the moment.  This is to meet a statutory need to provide additional places for younger children. The offices are used by Wokingham Borough Council and they accommodate the “Adopt Berkshire” service. Adopt Berkshire provide adoption services for four unitary authorities. Due to the sensitivity of the services provided the activities could not be relocated in time to be confident that the space could be released to be remodelled as a classroom. The parent hut is well used to provide a necessary training space that it would be difficult to replicate elsewhere at short notice. It is possible that using any of these spaces as teaching spaces would constitute a change of use for planning purposes; and if so would require planning consent.

 

Internal space is only part of the need though and the Council would need to determine if the playing areas would provide sufficient space to accommodate 30 additional children and that needs to be done with safety in mind as well; without compromising their education.

 

The fundamental problem with creating a bulge class is not only around the provision of space (internal and external). They are around the recruitment of staff, funding, the wider impact on education, the impact on future admissions and on the local community and in particular managing the school run.

 

A bulge class requires a school to be able to deploy a series of specialist teachers for relatively short periods. This inevitably means employing teachers on short term contracts. This works against the need to provide a stable, highly skilled team of teachers to run a school to provide the quality of education that our children need.

 

Funding comes from a central pot; this is called the Dedicated Schools Grant or DSG as many people know it. It is normally “lagged” and that is to say that the funding is largely based on headcount from the previous academic year.  Bulge classes need additional non formulaic funding to fund teacher and resources; because these are new classes on top of the previous year’s headcount. This reduces the funding available to schools generally. This is particularly problematic at a time when the Council knows that it has a large number of new schools to open all of which will require top up funding, on top of the formulaic funding, to support them in their early years.

 

Not only would the new class require additional unplanned for spend in the 2015/16 year, but the removal of the children from other local schools to the bulge class would lead to the school suffering a reduced budget in their 2016/17 year. These schools are currently making staffing and activity plans based on their expected rolls and unplanned for roll reductions has a direct impact on the services they can provide for their school roll.

 

Children admitted to a bulge class after the normal admission round often come from the surrounding community, outside the school’s Designated Area. The consequence of this is that additional siblings in later years may not have a prior claim on school places over first and only children; even when those live in the Designated Area and the families with a sibling claim do not.

 

The wider community impact must also be considered. A bulge class will generate additional school run car trips. Where schemes have a longer preparation period it is often possible to look at measures to mitigate that impact. This could be through additional parking controls eg yellow lines or new parent drop-off zones or measures to encourage walking to school like walking buses. If planning consent for change of use is required then these measures would need to be in place before the classes are opened. This might not be possible at this stage.

 

The final issue and consideration is the ability of the school to be able to respond to this request. The school are keen to help the community but have informed us that regrettably they will not be able to assist due to the teaching capacity at the school available for 2015/2016.

 

Supplementary Question

On 18 May George Osborne e-mailed a Leed’s parent in a similar situation to us saying it is incumbent on councils to ensure school places are allocated in a way that meets the needs of local parents.  Given that Loddon Primary School has existing infrastructure and empty classrooms what measures are the Council taking to help the headteacher of Loddon secure the staff she needs for an extra September intake and have the Council taken advice or learned lessons from George Osborne and Leeds City Council who have managed to secure 90 additional places for children, appoint the necessary teachers, secure the co-operation of heads and governors of three schools all within five weeks of a school place shortage becoming public knowledge?

 

Supplementary Answer

We have asked the school and their response thus far has been that they are unable to assist this year.  I understand why you are asking because of the other services that are already provided in those spaces.  I think my first answer gave you the answers about what those spaces are being used for at the moment.  If we were to put in a bulge class then we would need to consider where the bulge class would go and those spaces at the moment are not available for that bulge class.

 

If we are to go back to the school we would need to be asking them where else we could put a bulge class and we would also need to consider what other teachers would be used for that bulge class. 

 

In terms of our duty to provide sufficient places this year we have done that in the Borough and over the last number of years I have been in place as Lead Member we have fulfilled our sufficiency duty to find places within the Borough.  I am incredibly sympathetic with the fact that they are not within the local area to where you would wish them to be.  What I can say is that it is a long time between now and September and I know that some of those places will change and some parents will be able to send their children to more local schools. I hope that those numbers will change dramatically between now and then but we will work with parents between this date and September to ensure that there are as many places as possible locally so that you are not having to go too far to local places.

 

The Leader of Council made the following comment:

I know you will be disappointed with that answer but if the Head is saying they can’t help.  In the case of Leeds you are probably absolutely right that everybody was willing to try and work and I am sure we will be continuing to try and find a solution to this particular issue.