Councillors have voted to start a formal consultation on closing two primary schools in Brighton and Hove with pupil numbers projected to keep falling.
As the number of four-year-olds has fallen, the number of spare places has been rising, causing financial losses for schools and making it hard for them to fund enough staff.
The six-week public consultation is going ahead as Brighton and Hove City Council looks to reduce the number of spare places and the level of schools’ financial deficits. To take part, click here.
The council wants to shut two schools – St Bartholomew’s Church of England Primary School in Brighton and St Peter’s Community School in Portslade – at the end of next August.
The vote – to start the consultation today (Tuesday 7 November) – took place at Hove Town Hall last night at a meeting of the council’s Children, Families and Schools Committee. It is due to end on Friday 22 December
Some of the staff and parents who would be affected by the proposed closures were watching and listening to the town hall debate from the public gallery.
Labour councillor Jacob Taylor, who co-chairs the committee, said that the decision was difficult and not taken lightly but was necessary to “deliver better education for all children in the city”.
Councillor Taylor said: “What we’re proposing is about trying to create a properly funded school system in the city.
“That will benefit all pupils, particularly those who need the most support, those with special education needs and disabilities and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“Schools are funded by central government, not by councils, and they’re funded on a per pupil basis. If they have less pupils coming through the door than they’re set up to take, they lose significant amounts of funding.”
Councillor Taylor said that most school funding paid for classroom teachers and other staff so that schools with too few pupils could not employ as many support staff and that children’s education would suffer.
The council’s head of schools organisation Richard Barker said that extra homes were due to be built over the next seven years but there would be too few children to fill the hundreds of empty places in primary schools.
He said that the decision was not a reflection on the schools or the quality of education that they provided or on their leadership.
But the two schools had the lowest pupil numbers in Brighton and Hove and were each more than £200,000 in the red.
St Bartholomew’s had 141 pupils. More than half were classed as disadvantaged, 35 per cent had English as an additional language, 52 per cent were non-white British, 32 per cent had additional needs and 13 children had education, health and care plans.
Councillors were told that all pupils at St Bart’s could be found places within a mile, including at a Catholic school. If only Church of England school places were counted, some children would have to go more than a couple of miles.
St Peter’s had 210 places but just 109 pupils. Seven pupils had education, health and care plans. The Portslade school also had support from bilingual services and the council’s Ethnic Minority Achievement Service.
All pupils could be placed at Brighton and Hove schools within two miles of St Peter’s.
Mr Barker said that if the closures went ahead, families could apply for places at other schools at the end of the spring term.
Green councillor Sue Shanks called for an immediate halt to the closure process – which was voted down – and urged the council to consult present and prospective parents, school staff, unions and other interested parties.
Councillor Shanks said that the council should also explore other options for the two schools, adding: “Closing these schools so quickly is a really difficult thing for them.
“We know we need to consider how we work together if we keep these schools open.”
Labour councillor Les Hamilton said that he wanted to attend a consultation meeting and to hear from concerned families and staff.
He said that his father, a late long-serving former councillor also called Les Hamilton, went to St Peter’s 100 years ago – as did, more recently, his fellow South Portslade ward councillor Alan Robins.
The school did excellent work, he said, with parents contacting him to praise the staff, but he added: “We’ve got to grasp the nettle here and get this sorted out.
“Portslade is at a disadvantage. We have five single-form entry schools whereas, in Brighton and Hove, there are several with two or three (forms of entry).
“We can cut the admissions in those (bigger) schools but you can’t do that in Portslade.”
Conservative councillor Emma Hogan, a former governor at St Peter’s, said that the proposed closure was “very sad”.
Each school is expected have three public meetings about the proposals and people will have the chance to respond to the plans on the council website or by phone.
The consultation results are due to go before the council’s Children, Families and Schools Committee on Monday 8 January.
Brighton Council only have themselves to blame. I reported to Caroline Lucy’s the inaffordability of teachers to live in the town they work, serve and, in my case born. I collated hours of research to show that Brighton was more expensive comparatively than 3 inner London boroughs and 13 outer London boroughs. Though Caroline took it to her peers, it was thrown out of parliament and I never heard heard – and as a teacher, had no time, to follow it up. The impact of the obscenely expensive housing market has, it seems, now driven families put of Brighton too. If Brighton residents aren’t protected, the council has no right to act surprised and offer empty apologies that this has happened. I had to move out of my home town and now commute frim Lancing. I am sure there are more negative impacts to an already lost sense of Brighton community to come.