Falling birth rates and reducing numbers of children applying for places at the borough’s primaries have forced Croydon Council into a rethink over the size of some of the borough’s schools.
Fewer places: the council wants to reduce primary school places in Thornton Heath by 60
Two primary schools in Thornton Heath, Beulah Junior and Winterbourne Infants, are to reduce their intake numbers from September 2026.
The government’s School Admission Code 2021 requires admission authorities – in this case Croydon Council – to consult on their admission arrangements for its community schools at least once every seven years and consult on any proposed changes.
The council says that it is “proposing changes to its admission arrangements, including the reduction of published admission numbers for two Croydon community schools from September 2026”. And it is now going through the lip-service public consultation before implementing the changes it has already decided to make.
At Beulah Junior School, it is proposing a reduction in places from 90 to 60.
Winterbourne Infants School is proposing reducing intake numbers from 150 to 120.
One consequence of the reduction in pupil numbers at both schools will be a reduction in the budget available to them.
“The proposals are a result of surplus places, across the borough, owing to lower birth rate,” the council said in an announcement released yesterday.
The propaganda department issued this bowl of word soup: “Other proposed changes are in line with resident feedback and include providing more detail around definitions to make the criteria clearer for those making applications.” Clear?
The consultation, on the council website, runs until Friday December 13. The council press release failed to state how those without interweb access can take part, or even find out that the consultation even exists…
Jason Perry, the Croydon Mayor, who has his own peculiar way with words, is supposed to have said: “I encourage any residents who feel they may be impacted to take part in the consultation.”
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
To use public money wisely the council should be pushing harder to seek further school place number reductions.
The big reduction in school place demand is being seen across almost all of London as the capital becomes an unaffordable place to bring up a family.
Lambeth has a particularly severe fall in pupil numbers coming with the largest percentage fall in numbers in England expected there – down 24.5 % in primary and 18 % in secondary to 2028-29. Two more schools are up for closure in Lambeth, both in Tulse Hill.
Our situation is not as severe but is complicated by two concentrated areas of very tight primary sector supply (South West and Central) and by a panic provision elsewhere in the Borough of too many school places at the end of the Conservative administration to 2014 and at the beginning of Labour administration then. I did raise that worry publicly at the time. Inside Croydon reported at the time on that misjudged oversupply building spree. I was told by the Labour whip not to raise the issue.
We are likely to reach a 20% vacancy rate in primary.
Vacancy rates will be higher than that 20% in the South East (28%), East and North West of the Borough.
The South West of the Borough has long had a tight school place supply and new flats in the centre of Croydon suggest that extra provision would be worth looking at in these two areas. Hopes for building new homes on the Purley Way also counsels caution on class closures there. The high vacancy rates do mean that the case for fewer housing units on Purley Way can not be justified by referring to school place need as there is sufficient school place supply there.
Secondary place numbers will see a 16% vacancy rate in the North of the Borough by the end of the decade. Secondary supply remains tight in the South.