Relief for Hackney parents but future looks bleak for school admissions

Cabinet Member for Children's Services, councillor Rita Krishna. Photograph: Hackney Council

Anxious Hackney parents have been receiving offer letters informing them if their children have been accepted into their top three preferences of primary school.

From the 2,655 parents and carers in the borough who applied on time, nearly 95 per cent were successful. The figures appear strong for Hackney with the borough surpassing the London average of 92 per cent.

Those who failed to obtain a place or applied after the deadline will be offered a place for one of the 282 remaining vacancies in a second round of offers.

Cllr Rita Krishna, Cabinet Member for Education and Children’s Services, said: “This is an anxious time for parents so I’m proud that we’ve been able to offer such a high proportion of them one of their preferences.

“As with all of London there is increasing demand for places in Hackney and we know that this is not going away, so we will continue to consult with schools, parents and governors to make sustainable plans to ensure we can continue to offer all Hackney children an excellent start to their education.”

This is the third year that primary school places have been co-ordinated across the capital using the Pan London Co-ordinated Admissions Scheme.

The scheme was first introduced in 2005 to co-ordinate the process of allocating secondary school places and was then extended to primary schools in 2011.

Chair of the Pan London Admissions Board, Helen Jenner, said: “The London-wide system enables more parents to be allocated a school of their preference by a fairer distribution of available offers 95 per cent of pupils have an offer from a school of their preference.

“It is important to emphasise that however proficient the admission system is – and our arrangements in London are about as efficient and fair as it is possible to have – it cannot create extra places at schools which are already full.

“London local authorities are working hard to try to ensure that they can offer every child a school place for the start of the new academic year but given the scale of the demand for school places across the capital this is becoming increasingly difficult.”

The scale of the demand has be brought into focus by a new report published by London Councils warning of a bleak and uncertain future as it is predicted there will be an increase in demand for primary and secondary school places of 90,000 in 2015-16 and 118,000 by 2016-17.

Chair of the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services, Yvette Stanley, said: “We should be under no illusion about the scale of the task before us. The long-term population data is clear ─ fair and flexible resources need to be made available now if our children are to be able to go to school.

“London needs a major injection of funding now to deliver hundreds of primary school classes and at least 22 new secondary schools.”

So far, the Department for Education has not allocated any funding for school places beyond 2014-15. In fact, London has only been allocated 36 per cent of the available funding for 2013-14 and 2014-15 despite having 42 per cent of the total shortfall in places.

The capital has received £576million for these two years. However, there remains a funding shortfall of over £1billion to provide permanent school places.

London Councils’ Executive Member for Children’s Services, Councillor Peter John, said: “The pressure for primary and secondary school places is much greater in London than the rest of the country and rapidly increasing, so it is simply staggering that the capital will get proportionately less funding compared with its need.

“We are calling on the government to acknowledge this and make the long term investment required to create the permanent school places which London pupils deserve.”

A new funding framework, seen by many to be yet another layer of unnecessary government bureaucracy is, according to London Councils, actually delaying or even preventing boroughs from building schools.

Under the new framework the Department for Education will fund only part of a new school expecting cash-strapped local councils to make up the difference.

Local councils will therefore be faced with a stark choice of whether to plunder existing budgets from other departments to stave off this looming crisis or hope the government will see sense to allocate extra money before it is too late.