Primary School Places (London)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) on securing this important and timely debate. Today is a significant day in the lives of many parents and children who are waiting for the letter to drop through their letterbox or the e-mail to hit their inbox, telling them whether their child has got the school of their preference. Many of us can appreciate the anxiety that parents feel at any stage in their children's journey through education when they find that their child does not have a school place. It causes huge stress, anxiety and disruption to the whole family. I draw on personal experience, as I am waiting for one such letter to arrive today. I hope not to be cast into the limbo described by my hon. Friend and faced by many of our constituents with children of primary school age. Nevertheless, we know that those problems are at large in our high school system.

I have three key points to make. They are all unapologetically Sutton points, but they speak to the wider points made by my hon. Friend. The first is that Sutton experienced London's third largest increase in births between 2005-06 and 2006-07. At just 2 per cent., Sutton has one of the lowest levels of surplus capacity in its primary schools, with surplus places in the upper years of schools rather than the lower years, and with no surplus places in reception classes. The past projections of birth rate figures supplied by the Greater London authority were critical to its application to the Department for its basic need capital funding. Because it used and relied on those figures, as required by the Department, the Department gave the London borough of Sutton an extremely low allocation that will be insufficient to enable the local authority to respond to the much changed circumstances of which we are now aware.

My hon. Friend was right to describe the situation as a crisis. The prospect of one's child having no school place causes anxiety and stress, and the resulting loss of education and all that comes with it has a huge impact on the child. Past GLA projections showed that Sutton would have had sufficient primary school places for the next 15 years. However, the data that were available in March 2008, on which Sutton based its primary capital bid to the Department, showed only a modest increase in the birth rate that would have led to a short-term, one-year peak in 2011-12, during which there would have been 70 children without places in reception classes. I think it is unacceptable for even one child to be placed in that unwelcome and unacceptable situation, so 70 is far too many; none the less, that was the basis of the bid. Since then, however, things have changed beyond all recognition.

The key to understanding what is happening is how the transfer rate, or retention rate as my hon. Friend described it-the ratio of the number of children going into reception classes in Sutton schools to the number of births in the borough five years previously-has changed. The changes in the number of children who go to school outside Sutton and the number of children from outside Sutton who are coming into Sutton's schools have had an impact on that rate. My hon. Friend has mentioned that families are moving far less now and are making different choices about private education-there is clear evidence of that in my constituency. That change, too, has an impact on the transfer, or retention, rate.

Last September, for the first time in many years, every reception place in my borough was filled, so things have clearly changed. That change has been driven by the transfer rate rising from an average of 86.3 per cent., over the past five years, to 90 per cent. now. It has also been driven by the 8.6 per cent. increase in the birth rate between 2005-06 and 2006-07. With birth rates on the increase in Kingston, Merton and Croydon, and to some extent in Surrey, there are fewer opportunities for children to go to schools outside the borough of Sutton than there once might have been. As my hon. Friend has said, the pressures arising from the credit crunch mean that fewer families are moving home and that many are reconsidering whether independent education is an option.

The bottom line is that many hundreds of children will be in limbo in the next few years, without the offer of a primary school place. Whether the transfer rate remains at 90 per cent. or falls back to 85 per cent., according to the figures that my local education authority officers have worked out, there will be a shortfall of between 147 and 271 places by 2011-12, rising to between 209 and 337 in 2012-13. The deficit in places is huge and growing and a variety of approaches will be needed to close the gap. I hope that the Minister will respond to my hon. Friend's questions on how those options will be paid for.

Using spare capacity is part of the solution. Analysis so far has identified just two schools in the borough with available rooms that are not used directly for educational purposes, which could be released for classrooms. That would cost £1 million. Another option is to add accommodation to schools. It might be possible to add as much as one form of entry at about seven primary schools, which would cost £9.4 million. Taken together, those options of using spare capacity and adding accommodation would still provide only 209 places. If the worst were to happen, although the figures do not suggest that it will, and there were higher demand-for 337 additional places-more schools would have to be expanded and a new, two-form entry school would have to be built.

The cost of dealing with the problem therefore ranges between £10.4 million and £22.2 million. Some of that money is needed now, not in a few years' time, so the formal bid processes cannot be followed. If they are followed, the necessary school places will not be available for children when they need them in 18 months' time. That is why we need the Minister to give us answers

today, or at least as soon as possible, about how the Department will respond to the extraordinary need that is emerging, so that resources can be released as a matter of urgency and so that planning and work can be done with as little disruption as possible to the education of the children already in those schools. That is why my local authority needs to know now whether it will be able to secure £4.8 million to upgrade two schools and to provide two one-form entry expansions in existing schools.

I hope that the Minister will respond to my hon. Friend's many significant and detailed questions, and I request that she meet me, my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and the officers from Sutton borough who have been dealing with these problems and grappling with what needs to be done to provide a decent education for children in my borough. I hope that she will meet us to discuss in detail what can be done and when, because we can be certain that if something is not done, we will have hundreds of children not going to school in the London borough of Sutton-in Worcester Park, Cheam and Belmont. Instead, they will be standing outside the school gates, looking in, unable to join their friends or to get the education that they deserve. I have outlined the need and made my plea. I hope that the Minister will meet that need.