Ministers urged to avert school places 'emergency' as thousands of kids set to miss out

Up to 130,000 children could be at risk of missing out on a place at secondary school over the next five years, ministers have been warned.



The Local Government Association said that by 2023/24, more than half of (52%) of all councils in England will struggle to cope with a surge of children born in the early 2000s.

The group has urged the Department for Education to tackle the school places "emergency" by loosening restrictions on local authorities.

The LGA's Antoinette Bramble said: "The reality is we face an emergency in secondary school places where the number of pupils is growing at a far faster rate than the number of places available.

"This is why councils need to be given the powers to help solve this crisis. As a starting point they should be allowed to open new maintained schools and direct academies to expand.

"It makes no sense for councils to be given the responsibility to plan for school places but then not allowed to open schools themselves."

Labour seized on the council group's findings, and accused ministers of "eight years of Tory failure in our schools".

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner added: "It’s unacceptable that large numbers of children and their families could face the anxiety of not securing a secondary school place.

“This is due to Ministers pursing their own vanity projects, such as their pointless grammar school expansion, rather than following the evidence on what’s best for pupils."

But Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: "This government has driven the largest creation in school places in two generations and by 2020, there will be one million more new places across the school system than there were in 2010."