Agenda item

Report of the Head of Legal and Governance

Nick Lee, Director of Education Services at Nottingham City Council, delivered a presentation on the Council’s progress in ensuring the supply of sufficient school places for secondary education.

The following points were highlighted:

(a)  £40 million was made available for additional school places because of a significant increase in demand since September 2010;

(b)  extra capacity has been negotiated with 5 city academies;

(c)  there is still capacity at 3 city schools; Nottingham Academy, Djanogly City Academy and Farnborough Academy. Late applicants still need to be placed;

(d)  8 new forms of entry are still required to meet increased secondary growth with Year 7 demand peaking in 2022;

(e)  additional demand can arise from increased pressure on county schools and the number of new housing developments within the city;

(f)  ensuring that the supply of school places meets demand remains a statutory duty of Local Authorities as per the Education Act 1996, even though they are no longer able to open new schools;

(g)  there is a need to promote parental choice with access to good and excellent schools close to their homes;

(h)  the Council needs to increase capacity to popular and successful schools, primarily through support to schools with developing proposals, funding bids, free school applications and consultation/stakeholder management;

(i)  the goal is to increase the percentage of first and second preferences which has decreased from 92% in 2018 to 86% in 2019. Although, the actualnumber of first preference offers has remained consistent with last year, due to the additional capacity negotiated in collaboration with academies;

(j)  there is the challenging context of a fragmented education system, especially with relying on direct bids from MATS to deliver the required capacity;

(k)  there is insufficient Capital/Basic Need Grant for the Council to deliver all the required secondary capacity;

(l)  the Free School Presumption route is dependent on availability of sites and sufficient Basic Need funding to build a new school, which the Council doesn’t currently have;

(m)the demand for high quality and diverse provision is growing in areas of need;

(n)  there is a lack of available sites for new schools and existing schools are often unable to expand due to constrained sites;

(o)  children of all school ages continue to move in to Nottingham, with an increasing number of multi-sibling families;

(p)  11 new forms of entry have been negotiated with Nottingham Emmanuel School, Nottingham Girls Academy and Nottingham Free School, for September 2019, adding a further 62 places.

The Committee’s questions were responded to as follows:

(q)  the Council is trying to acquire a site in Nottingham for use in the Free School Presumption route;

(r)  more needs to be done to identify areas which need prioritising to ensure that parents don’t send their children to schools outside of their locality, for example, parents in Bestwood sending their children to be educated in Arnold;

(s)  the Archway Learning Trust has submitted a direct bid to the Department of Education for acquiring provisions for more places.

RESOLVED to thank the Director of Education Services for delivering his presentation to the Committee, and to note its contents.