Pupil Roll Numbers and School Closures: London

Debate between Munira Wilson and David Simmonds

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson]

The hon. Gentleman is making a well-informed speech. On that point about pupil admission numbers, it is my understanding—I am happy to be corrected—that if a school has a published plan of 60 and 45 parents put down that school as a first choice, those 45 places have to be granted and therefore the school has to open two classes, even though it is only one-and-a-half classes full. As a result, the school ends up with the shortfall in cash that the hon. Gentleman has outlined.

Does the hon. Gentleman think that, as well as some of the strategic planning powers I talked about for local authorities, there needs to be an interim measure whereby the Department for Education provides some sort of additional funding or grant for those classes that are not full? Schools in my constituency are asking parents for money for glue sticks and to be in sports teams, and are cutting teaching assistants because they are struggling so much financially.

[David Simmonds]

The hon. Member makes a good point. We also see the converse of the situation in which a school has fewer applications than it has places, and this creates additional pressure on places: rather than maintaining a PAN of 60 with 45 applications, a school makes a decision to reduce its PAN to 30, which means that 15 children who want to be in that school but do not have a place are put somewhere else in the system. I will discuss later a way in which we might be able to address that.

Within the context of reducing pupil numbers, we are consequently seeing significant localised pressure on school places where local authorities are still having to look to expand schools to meet demand. There has always been a need for some spare capacity—5% was the traditional rule of thumb to allow for normal fluctuations —but because we have seen the loss of many of the strategic levers that local authorities could use for planning that, we now see a hotch-potch of situations in which some schools remain under acute pressure to find capacity for more children while others relatively close by struggle for numbers and reduce their planned admissions number.

From a parent’s perspective, everything seems absolutely fine if their child is the one that gets into their school of choice. If that school has reduced its planned admissions number from 90 to 60, but their child is one of those 60, that is fantastic. But if someone’s child is one of the 20 that cannot get in, they are displaced to a school that is not of their choice. That situation creates unhappy children and a financial challenge for the system, which tries to find another place for the children to go.

None of this is helped by the fact that although councils have no control over the dedicated schools grant—the ringfenced budget that funds schools—it is still legally part of councils’ budgets, so a duty is imposed on them to ensure that over a period of time the dedicated schools grant breaks even. I know Ministers have been working on that with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which has overall responsibility.

We see the converse of this challenge in respect of SEND places. The Timpson reforms represented an enormous transformational change in the approach to SEND education across the whole country. The downside is that the huge expectations that were raised by the reforms—particularly the extension to the mid-20s of the age entitlement for young people to access education and training—did not come with sufficient funding to ensure that they were delivered in reality. That is one reason why we see such enormous pressure on SEND in the capital.

Audit data from the London boroughs on the children who are given education, health and care plans and those who have some form of diagnosis demonstrates that the decisions are entirely the right ones. The children are meeting the relevant tests and criteria for the NHS, educational psychologists and so on, so the levels of need are undoubtedly being correctly assessed. We can see councils across the capital—I certainly include in this Hillingdon and Harrow, which serve my constituents—that are enormously challenged by rising demand against a backdrop of the reforms not being funded in line with the expectations that families now reasonably have.

There are many small, specialist SEND providers in the capital—for example, Sunshine House in my constituency—that are very popular with parents. They can offer a very high-quality service, but they are also often extraordinarily expensive, with a single place funded by a local authority not infrequently costing in excess of £1 million a year per child.

The delivery of the additional capacity that we require has been quite slow in the centralised programmes compared with the council-led ones. In my constituency we have seen additional SEND place capacity created through the local authority, such as the Eden Academy and specialist resource provision at other schools, all delivered on time and on budget. But some of the larger free school programmes, which are to deliver the bulk of the additional places we need, are many years behind where they need to be. Although there might be good reasons for the delays—we all understand the period of covid—the reality is that they impose massive cost pressures on our DSG high-needs blocks.

Although safety-valve agreements are being reached at individual local authority level, we need to recognise that the failure of programmes to deliver places on time, even if they eventually arrive, is the main reason why we see such a high level of pressure on the DSG across London for SEND. We know that the in-borough SEND—the state school places—is significantly cheaper than the private sector provision, but the awaited reform of SEND financing cannot come soon enough to make sure that the cost pressures are eased and that parents and children’s expectations can be met.

Let me conclude with some ways forward. I know there has been some consultation on this matter, but my first ask of the Minister is that we look at the enhancement of local authority flexibility to allocate budgets much more strategically in order to ease the way forward, especially when schools go through a transition period of downsizing. Rather than a sudden step from 90 children down to 60, which has a huge impact on the ability of parents to get their kids into a school, as well as a major financial impact on the institution itself, we should smooth that process out and recognise the fluctuations in rising and falling demand.

My second ask is for greater powers for local authorities to strategically plan, recognising that in the context of falling rolls there are areas of growing demand, not just for SEND but mainstream as well. There is an urgent need to be able to direct the overall school-planned admissions number to ensure that the provision matches the demand in a local area.

My third ask is that we do not forget that London is likely to see its population increase again at some point in future. We know that our capital’s population is smaller at the moment than some of its past peaks, that the density of the population has been reducing and that the crowding has been dropping for decades, but it will almost certainly begin to rise again in due course. To facilitate that, multi-academy trusts should be prohibited from selling or disposing of any land or closing sites without the agreement of the local authority that has the legal duty for school places in the area.

I finish by thanking London Councils, and in particular the leader of one of my local authorities, Councillor Ian Edwards, who is the lead member for children’s services at London Councils, along with the officer team that have been supporting him. I place on the record my thanks to the leaders and members in Harrow and Hillingdon, particularly Councillors Hitesh Karia and Susan O’Brien, for their work. I also thank the hon. Member for Vauxhall again for securing the debate on this important issue.

On a positive note, this is an opportunity for us to thank the teachers and councils of London for the work they have done to ensure that this remains, to this day, one of the best cities in the world in which to get an education.