Bristol secondary schools asked to build new classrooms to meet places shortfall
Bristol is around 300 places short of the number it needs for September 2022
Bristol secondary schools are again being asked to take extra pupils to make up for a desperate shortage of Year 7 places in the city.
The council hopes about six schools will agree to have new classrooms built so they can take up to 60 extra students each in September, and that others will agree to “nominal pupil increases”, a new report shows.
The building work for the “bulge classes” will be paid for with £6million of Department for Education (DfE) funding, the city cabinet report shows.
A number of Bristol schools are already taking more than their official maximum number of children and some students are being sent to South Gloucestershire for lessons so the council can meet its legal requirement to provide a place for every Bristol youngster.
But, despite these measures, the city is more than 300 places short of the number it needs for all the children due to start secondary school in September.
The shortage follows delays to the opening of two large new Department for Education (DfE) secondary schools, in Lawrence Hill and Knowle West, for a total of 2,500 children.
Bristol City Council is currently negotiating with “various” secondary schools to create the 311 extra Year 7 places needed by September, a meeting of the ruling Labour cabinet heard on Tuesday (January 18).
Cabinet member for education, councillor Asher Craig, thanked school heads who she said had worked “extremely hard” with officers to take extra pupils where possible without harming “students’ safety” and “quality of teaching and learning”.
When asked if more pupils would have to be sent outside the city for their education, as happened for the first time last year, Cllr Craig said she did not “anticipate” that happening.
“I’m hoping that the negotiations that we are having with secondary school heads at this moment in time will be able to cater for the bulge that is coming through,” she said.
“But we will see.”
Council talking to schools in north and east Bristol
The schools in negotiations are “predominantly in the North and East of the city”, according to a report to the meeting.
The council hopes to provide “temporary” places at these schools in two ways: by “nominal pupil increases” at some of them; and by building extra space for one or two “form of entry classes” at about six of them, the report shows.
Cabinet approved the use of £6million of DfE funding to pay for the building works to accommodate the so-called “bulge classes”.
The council hopes construction will take place during this year’s school summer holidays and will be finished by the time school starts again in September, according to the report.
But there is a risk “some aspects of the projects” will not be completed by August 31, it says.
“In such scenarios, the works will be prioritised and fully coordinated with the schools,” the report says.
Bristol mayor Marvin Rees has previously said he could not rule out the possibility of bigger class sizes but the council was planning ahead to try to minimise the risk of that happening.
The two new secondary schools that have been delayed are the 1,600-place Oasis Academy Temple Quarter in Lawrence Hill and a 900-place secondary school in Knowle West.
Both are government Free Schools and their plans have been approved by the council.
But the DfE has told the council the school in Knowle West will not be ready until September 2024, a year later than planned.
And the Temple Quarter school, which was meant to open in 2018, cannot open until September 2023 at the earliest, if it opens at all. Its future depends on a decision from a government planning inspector expected in the next few months.
£12million approved in total
In total, cabinet members approved the spending of a total of £12million of DfE funding.
Of this, £5million will be used for already announced building projects for children and young adults with special educational needs.
These include relocating Elmfield School for Deaf Children from Westbury-on-Trym into better premises in Horfield, refurbishing and expanding Claremont Special School in Henleaze, and new accommodation near Gloucester Road for 12 young people to learn to live independently.
The remaining £1million is for maintenance of school buildings.
More money is still needed to meet the total cost of the £15.4million Claremont School project, according to an appendix to the cabinet report.
Cllr Craig said: “The Government is putting more money on the table. We’ll know around Spring what that looks like, and then we will bring back to cabinet a second wave of SEND projects that we would like to approve.”