School places

If there is one thing that makes me feel my age, it is the fact that for most of my career as an education officer in Somerset and Dudley, that is, from 1996 to 2008, I and my colleagues spent a huge amount of effort on closing schools because there were too few children, and the birthrate indicated that the schools were not viable. And at the time the DfE (in its various historical manifestations - DES, DfE, DFEE, DFES, DCSF) insisted that local authorities did close these schools when the 'surplus places' exceeded a modest threshold. And local authorities were only too ready to close schools and sell the sites and buildings to plug gaps in capital plans.

At the same time, this policy put local communities in direct conflict with their local authority - closing schools and hospitals is always contentious and often highly emotionally charged - I recall one (extremely ill-judged) local TV interview against a backdrop of local mums who had chained themselves to the school fence.

Now, directors of children's services are busy opening new provision to meet the bulge in the birthrate, with the National Audit Office saying there is an urgent need for 250,000 places. This is (of course) not news, as local authorities and health services have known of the increased birthrate for several years. But however it is managed, there will need to be capital investment in new schools and school places, less than a decade after schools were being closed.

Local authority planning is pretty good up to five years ahead, as the children have been born, and the other factors - notably new housing, and in- and out-migration - within the UK and to and from the UK) can be estimated pretty accurately. But what we need is a better assessment of the national position by the professional statisticians at the Office for National Statistics - that might have saved school buildings from demolition or sale, and they might have been mothballed or put into short-term alternative use. As it is, someone (local or national government) is going to have to pay a lot of money to buy expensive land and new buildings - diverting much needed cash from maintaining and renovating the existing school estate.