Education: Secondary Schools

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government which areas of England will be most affected by shortages of places for secondary school pupils in September, and how they intend to tackle the number of secondary schools that are above their capacity.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen, and at her request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, supporting local authorities in their responsibility to create sufficient school places is one of the Government’s top priorities. We work closely with local authorities to ensure that they are on target to achieve this. This Government are spending £7 billion to create new school places between 2015 and 2021, which, along with our investment in the free schools programme, we expect to provide 600,000 new places at both primary and secondary level.

[Baroness Donaghy]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, it will be of little comfort for almost half of all secondary school entrants in areas of high demand, who have just missed out on their first choice of school. First, will the Minister explain how this acute problem came about? Secondly, what measures will the department be putting in place for monitoring and training to ensure that this is not allowed to happen again?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Let me reassure the noble Baroness that, in fact, the latest figures that we have show that there were over 530,000 applications for secondary school places, yet 95% of parents received an offer from one of their top three preferred secondary schools. We accept that new places do need to be created, which is why we have committed £7 billion over the course of this Parliament to 2020 to deliver 600,000 new places. I also reassure the noble Baroness that, in 2015, there were 430 fewer secondary schools at or in excess of capacity than in 2010. Therefore, although more needs to be done, parents should be reassured that the vast majority do get their children into the school that they want.