Third of Bradford district schools above capacity (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)
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Third of Bradford district schools above capacity
4:00am Thursday 12th January 2012 in News By Anika Bourley
One in three Bradford schools are running above capacity – with forecasts predicting another 7,000 pupils needing places in four years.
The Department for Education said 54 out of 155 primary schools across the district and six of the 28 secondary schools had at least one pupil over their limit.
Across England, a fifth of schools were oversubscribed.
Pupil numbers across Bradford are predicted to rise by more than 4,439 primary school-aged children and 2,838 secondary pupils by 2015/2016 – 1,197 more than the current number of spare spaces, according to the data.
There are 2,588 unfilled places across secondary schools and 3,492 in primary schools but this can largely be explained by geographical disparities as well as the fact that the vacancies are for a different age group to the children needing places.
Bradford Council member with responsibility for education Councillor Ralph Berry said: “We have been making this point for some time and I have met with Michael Gove to discuss it and raise my concerns. I do not know where the resources are to deal with this problem and we have identified possible sites because this is extremely urgent.
“The share of money we received to deal with overcrowding, while welcome, was not enough. This is a real challenge and these figures come as no surprise to me. We had 1,800 new children to Bradford last year. I am glad these figures have been published and recognised there is a real problem that needs to be dealt with urgently.”
A consultation is under way on school admissions, which could lead to the expansion of some schools and changes in admissions policies.
The consultation, which ends on January 27, includes proposals to increase the admission numbers at four primary schools – Ashlands in Ilkley, Idle CE, Ingrow and Wycliffe CE, Shipley.
A second consultation is for the expansion of premises where admission numbers have already been agreed.
Comments(5)
justjustice
says...
7:54am Thu 12 Jan 12
So we have now an entire generation, even 2 or more if you include underage parents, who have been milking the system. I remember reading an article where 2 sisters were raking in £100,000 a year between them!
Even now with a limit of £26,000 per family is absurd! There are people out there scraping off £10,000 a year if they are lucky! Yet here, just because they have a kid and are unemployed, they are being offered up to £26k?! Is it any wonder why chavs prefer to stay on benefits!
Add the fact that they do not raise their kids, the just drop them off at school using the education system as a babysitting service! And whilst at home, well they can afford a gaming console, so instead of being parents they just shove them in front of those!
And this of course increases the chances of them being anti-social, which then affects other children in their classes as it can easily take 10 minutes to settle these brats down!
I can confirm this as I actually started a pgce course, the first 10 minutes of every lesson by almost all teachers was waiting to calm them down! That's 10 minutes of each lesson, so if you have 7 periods a day, that is over an hour wasted per day, which is almost 300 hours of education lost per year!
So if that were at a work place with a hourly rate of £6, that's £1800 per year per student! If this were a business there'd have been an investigation years ago! Yet the governments allows this to continue!
Isnt it time to stop trying to be nice an tackle the real root causes of so many problems?! : Parenting or the lack of it!
angry bradfordian
says...
7:55am Thu 12 Jan 12
The only 3 reasons can be that working people are having lots of children; people aren't paying their taxes; or the council are spending the additional taxes on something else.
Thee Voice of Reason
says...
9:23am Thu 12 Jan 12
.
Also, I for one have mentioned about infrastructure regarding all these new houses they intend to build, and this story confirms we don't have the infrastructure in place to cope with what we already have, nevermind thousands of new houses.
Saltaire Bantam
says...
4:02pm Thu 12 Jan 12
justjustice wrote:£26,000 per year is alot more than what a soldier gets paid risking their life fighting in Afganistan.
I agree, but is it any wonder when the governments were giving so much in child benefits; for some chavs their "job" was to breed! So we have now an entire generation, even 2 or more if you include underage parents, who have been milking the system. I remember reading an article where 2 sisters were raking in £100,000 a year between them! Even now with a limit of £26,000 per family is absurd! There are people out there scraping off £10,000 a year if they are lucky! Yet here, just because they have a kid and are unemployed, they are being offered up to £26k?! Is it any wonder why chavs prefer to stay on benefits! Add the fact that they do not raise their kids, the just drop them off at school using the education system as a babysitting service! And whilst at home, well they can afford a gaming console, so instead of being parents they just shove them in front of those! And this of course increases the chances of them being anti-social, which then affects other children in their classes as it can easily take 10 minutes to settle these brats down! I can confirm this as I actually started a pgce course, the first 10 minutes of every lesson by almost all teachers was waiting to calm them down! That's 10 minutes of each lesson, so if you have 7 periods a day, that is over an hour wasted per day, which is almost 300 hours of education lost per year! So if that were at a work place with a hourly rate of £6, that's £1800 per year per student! If this were a business there'd have been an investigation years ago! Yet the governments allows this to continue! Isnt it time to stop trying to be nice an tackle the real root causes of so many problems?! : Parenting or the lack of it!
Wakeywakey says...
6:57am Thu 12 Jan 12