MPs plead case for fair deal extra cash to stop primary school cramming‏

The borough's two Liberal Democrat MPs, Paul Burstow and Tom Brake, led a delegation today (14th Jan) to lobby Schools Minister, Vernon Coaker, to release some of the £30 million he has left to help Council's cope with a rising birth rate. The MPs pressed the Minister to help the borough cope with the increased demand for primary school places that will start to hit the borough from September 2011.

Sutton Council is already working closely with primary schools investing £8.4 million to provide extra permanent classrooms to cater for the extra 300 children expected in 2011. The MPs warned the Minister that the Council and schools were working to a very tight budget and there was still a risk that there would not be enough places available to meet the choice and demand of parents.

Commenting on the meeting Paul Burstow MP said, "We have a very strong case for extra financial help. Sutton is in danger of falling between two stalls when it comes to funding primary school places.

"There is good collaboration between the Council and schools to agree a workable plan but it will be very tight. I think the Minister understood the basic fairness of our case. Now we have to wait and see what he decides.

Tom Brake MP added, "The Minister gave us a fair hearing. He must now convert his understanding of our case into hard cash.

The Minister told the MPs and Council officials that he hoped to make decisions in the next few weeks.

The delegation also included Ian Birnbaum the Councils Strategic Director of Children's Services.

ENDS

Notes to editors

ADDITIONAL FUNDING FOR KEYSTAGE 1 PLACES IN SCHOOLS

Between 2000/01 and 2007/08, the cumulative increase in births in Sutton is 29.4% which represents about 300 children per year. This level of increase alone will require us to open additional classes. When coupled with rises in transfer rate into reception year the impact has been even greater.

Our projections indicate that after a peak in 3 to 4 years time, there will be a decline in the number of births but, when a new stable level is reached, this will still be significantly higher than the level of recent years.

The increase in demand for reception places in Sutton during the period 2011 to 2016 is forecast to peak at +9 forms of entry (FE) above our present capacity by 2012 but the overall increase in the longer term could be in the order of + 6FE. The increase in demand falls particularly heavily on certain wards with approximately 50% of the births in the Borough being experienced in 8 wards (there are 18 wards in the Borough)

Sutton has already had to provide additional classes to meet increasing demand at reception and, because of the long lead-in times, is now actively planning to add further permanent capacity to meet the initial surge in demand over the period 2011 to 2014. This is very resource intensive and the Borough has been obliged to divert capital funding streams from other initiatives to meet this unanticipated demand in basic need places.

Just over £10m capital funding in the form of Basic Need, Modernisation and Schools Access Initiative was made available to Sutton for the three year period 2008 to 2011. This was largely committed to 8 major priority projects (4 in secondary and 4 in primary schools) along with a programme to address condition backlog. These works are by now either completed or well in train.

In effect, all of the uncommitted capital resources still available to the Borough will now have to be used for primary school expansion, which means that opportunities to address the priorities identified in the PCP Strategy for Change have been lost with the consequence that schools serving areas of significant disadvantage and working in poor, unsuitable buildings will not be supported in meeting these challenges with the necessary capital investment.

The allocations of funding under Basic Need Safety Valve (BNSV) Grant were announced in mid-December. The methodology used by DCSF appears to be designed to focus only on those local authorities which have already been experiencing excessive demand on their reception class places for two or three years. Unfortunately 12 London boroughs, including Sutton, which have as yet not experienced their peak in such additional demand, did not qualify for a share of the funding under this methodology.

A different allocation methodology, for example, one based more on the level of increase in live births and the excess in demand relative to capacity at Reception Year, could have given greater recognition to more of those local authorities having to plan for expansion in the very near future. It could also have been possible under this approach to give focused support to those authorities already in the throes of providing additional capacity for the increase in demand. Accordingly, the funding could have been spread more widely rather than being concentrated in just over half the local authorities which applied for additional safety valve funding. Arguably, Sutton would not have received anything like as much as some neighbouring authorities, but could have at least received something to support the expansion in places that it urgently requires.

The main surge in demand experienced by Sutton will be in two to three years time which is slightly later than that in neighbouring boroughs. This timing is particularly unfortunate because we had already committed more or less all of the funding available to us for the period 2008 to 2011 other than the £8.4m of Primary Capital Programme (PCP) funding which has now had to be diverted from its original purpose into funding school expansions for 2011 and beyond.

As far as is possible, we wish to avoid offering additional accommodation in temporary buildings because this would not be a cost effective use of the limited resources available to us. In order to provide high quality permanent accommodation we have to commit to invest in provision for places up to 2013/14, which requires up-front funding - i.e. the PCP allocations in their entirety. Our initial estimates are that to expand capacity sufficiently to meet demand at Key Stage 1 will cost £8m to £10m with a further £10m to £15m required to meet subsequent demand at Key Stage 2 and to address associated "infrastructural" issues (additional halls, group rooms, staff accommodation, specialist spaces etc)

We estimate that in the order of 1000 basic needs primary places will be required to accommodate future demand in Sutton. Because it appears that there could be across-the-board reductions in local government funding during the next spending review period, it may be that the per place allocations under Basic Need will be frozen or reduced, which would penalise local authorities such as Sutton, if indeed, as floor authorities, they are in a position to benefit fully from basic need allocations which currently are in the form of supported borrowing. It would assist were all (or at least a significantly greater proportion) of future Basic Need funding to be in the form of grant, as have been the recent £270m Safety Valve allocations.