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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Lib Dem research shows new secondary school needed by 2015
May 22, 2011 11:34 AM
• [May 13] NEW analysis by Richmond Liberal Democrat education spokesperson, Malcolm Eady, shows that the borough will need the equivalent of an extra secondary school by 2015 in order to meet demand for places. Given that the lead-time for a building a new school would be more than four years, Cllr Eady warns that time for action is fast running out.
Malcolm Eady writes: "A year after coming to power we still have no plans from the new administration on how the Council proposes to deal with shortage of secondary school places resulting from the rise in birth rate which hit our primary schools a few years ago. They announced five months ago a feasibility study to provide two new secondary schools, one of which would be for Catholic students. We will run out of places in September 2015. As it took 4½ years to rebuild Teddington, time is running out. I have analysed primary school pupil numbers, the primary school retention rates and the numbers of children transferring to our secondary schools. By 2016 the shortage of places will be up to 170 places, and this increases by about 100 over the following couple of years. This was assuming our three academies only made moderate progress. If, as hoped, they reach the standards of our other secondary schools, then there will be a further 100 pupils looking for places.
"All we have had is talk of plans to add sixth forms, which they admit in the administration's own white paper; 'Schools will also need to free up class space to take sixth form students. It is proposed to reduce the intake at each school to accommodate this. They seem to understand the problems, but are then intent on making the problems worse, and finally are reluctant to set about implementing solutions. The Government is very short of capital for new schools. It has to provide an extra 70,000 primary school places across London. There is a backlog of school repairs in England of about £8.5bn, and there are already a number of new secondary schools stuck in the pipeline, for example they have still not announced the funding for the new school in North Kingston. It is therefore very unlikely that the Government will fully fund our secondary school requirements. They are also unlikely to fund new extra post 16 capacity in our schools, when the colleges have spare space. The local Conservatives put in an unrealistic PFI bid to rebuild our secondary schools in 2002/3 and failed. They run the risk of repeating their mistakes in 2011. What they should be doing is working with the schools that can be expanded, and with holders of educational land, such as our two colleges, for the provision of new places."
• Richmond will be out of secondary school places by 2015, say Liberal Democrats [RTT May 19]
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