Agenda item

Officer presentation.

Glenn Garcia, Head of Pupil Access announced that letters were sent to inform parents about whether their child had been offered the secondary school place of their choice.  Usually offers of a school place are conditional until proof of address has been confirmed by the school.  If a child was not offered a place there was an appeals process which would be dealt with by the school admissions team in Southwark.

Glen then gave an overview of where the council were at in relation to addressing the huge shortage of school places particularly with regard to primary school places year on year.  The council had to build extra capacity to deal with the shortfall and a lot of factors were taken into consideration with regard to this issue.

The council took the following steps to address the problem:

• Established a steering group in Southwark which consisted of council officers, teachers and parents to ensure the extra capacity was right, the ‘quick win’ schools are in the right areas in order to tackle the high demand.  In addition, the steering group would look at those local primary schools which were in close proximity for parents so children do not end up going further than necessary.

• Created an extra 30 classroom places to support demand in the area, Langbourne School was one of those schools.

• Established a code of practice for schools – make it easier for schools to expand if there was a need, making the process less bureaucratic.

• Schools were asked to be more flexible for additional children in a class of 30 so that new arrivals or a set of twins could attend the same school.

• A School Preference Advisor would be based at Cator Street to give advice and guidance to parents.

In response to questions, it was noted that the expansion of a 30 class size at Langbourne was definitely needed in the area even after the build up of additional places.  Although the expansion at Langbourne would be a temporary measure the council were looking at permanent solutions to address this issue.  Also no capital works would be involved in accommodating the expansion.  More information on this was available if required.

It was noted that a recent Ofsted report suggested that Langbourne Primary School had improved and the quality of education was good.

A resident asked local councillors whether they were aware Village Infants and Dulwich Hamlet also had a problem with class size and was there any way they could seek a solution to this issue.  The officer explained that any transitional arrangements were outside the council’s control because one is voluntary aided and the other is an academy.  Councillor Eckersley explained that he and the former Southwark education head, worked together with both schools about five years ago to try to alleviate the problem.  He agreed that it needed to be revisited and as a local ward councillor he would support this.

Glen agreed to take back comments and questions that were highlighted at the meeting.

RESOLVED:

That officers were asked to attend a future community council meeting with data (Dulwich area) on the three points given below:

·  Where local children in the area ended up?

·  What were the pressure points?

·  Firmer proposals on what the solution is?