When Dominique Hawkins gave birth to her daughter Sophie in October 2010, it was a bumper year for babies. The maternity ward at her local hospital was full to overflowing.
“They had a lot of babies due that autumn,” says Hawkins. “I remember the midwife saying that if we’d come in the day before they were turning people away, it was that busy.” Sophie is now four, turning five – as are all those other babies – and is part of a population boom that is causing a growing crisis in primary school places.
When we meet, Hawkins is waiting – like 600,000 other families across the country – to receive an email that will tell her which primary school her daughter has got into. There was a bit of nervous chatter among parents at the nursery gates that morning, but, in contrast with other areas, everyone seemed reasonably confident of getting one of their top choices.
Hawkins lives in the London borough of Hillingdon, on the far western reaches of the capital, where – in common with other areas of London and elsewhere in the country – demand for early years and primary school places has shot up over the past six years due to rising birth rates and more people moving into the area.
In Hillingdon this year, 85% of parents will find out that they have received their first choice of primary (a 1% improvement on last year), with 95% getting into one of their top three schools. This is in the context of a record number of applications, with 4,145 children seeking a primary place for September – a 7% increase on last year’s figures.
Conservative councillor David Simmonds, who is responsible for education and children’s services in Hillingdon, is rather pleased with how things have gone. “Despite the rising demand, we have yet again delivered all our school places on time.
“We have made significant investment to ensure every child is allocated a good-quality school place as close to home as possible. This demonstrates that, with our sound financial management, we have been able to invest in providing school places to put our residents first.”
Hillingdon has managed to keep its head above water thanks to a £160m expansion programme – the biggest of its kind in London – funded by the council’s budget reserves built up over years. It has paid for the construction of three completely new schools, as well as massive expansion of existing schools, to create a stable of supersized primaries. The biggest of these will be able to accommodate well over 1,000 children – the size of many secondary schools – with five forms of 30 children in every year.
Craig Horsman is head of Lake Farm Park academy in Hayes, one of the three spanking new primary schools serving Hillingdon. It opened its doors to children last September, and there are currently 120 children on roll in nursery and reception.
He has just been casting an eye over the offers of places for September 2015, and the £9.8m school – which still smells of fresh paint and newly laid carpet – is already oversubscribed.
When the Guardian visits, there isn’t a child in sight; they’re tucked away in classrooms at the far end of a long lilac corridor. When it is full, the school will have three-form entry and a total of 700 children. It is worth noting that, in 1985, the average primary school had 181 pupils. The school was built – in the face of local opposition – on greenbelt land on the fringes of Lake Farm country park. Horsman acknowledges it has been a period of extraordinary expansion in this part of Hillingdon.
“There are not many schools in this part of the borough that haven’t taken on additional capacity,” says Horsman, who used to be deputy head at nearby Cranford Park academy, which now has 900 children. When it completes its transformation to four-form entry, it will be able to accommodate 960.
“It was a challenge,” admits Horsman, reflecting on Cranford Park’s swelling numbers, “when you’ve got to get to know 120 children’s names every year. We worked very hard to make sure that the feeling of a community school was not lost. It was hard to do. But we tried to make sure it did not feel to those pupils like they were going to get lost in a big school.”
When Horsman was deputy, there were 850 children on roll; to cater for them all, a new eight-classroom block had to be built on site; the food technology room was scrapped to make room for more classrooms and cupboards were turned into small study spaces. “The building is 75 years old. You knew you had 850 children in that school.”
However, Wood End Park academy, also nearby, is the big daddy, with 960 children. It’s due to increase to 1,080 once all the year groups are made up of five forms. All three schools are in Hayes – an increasingly popular area of the borough – and all are part of the Park Federation Academy Trust.
Horsman is confident that education does not suffer just because a school gets bigger. In any case, needs must, and in Hillingdon attention is already turning to the borough’s secondary schools, which will inherit the challenge of such huge numbers all too soon.
That’s all a long way off for little Sophie Hawkins, who doesn’t seem too concerned about which school she goes to – as long as it’s “big school”, there’s a uniform and she can play with her friend. But Sophie gets her first choice – and everyone’s delighted.
