Scarborough and Whitby Secondary School Places Dilemma

Thursday, 1 December 2022 06:00

By Matthew Pells

The Scarborough Borough has a surplus of secondary school places but there is concern that they might not be in the right areas to cope with future demand.

There are nearly 2,000 spare places in Secondary Schools in Scarborough and Whitby.

But Eastfield Councillor - Tony Randerson - is concerned that the continuing housing development in the Eastfield Area will mean pupils having to travel to other parts of the borough for a secondary place.

Matt George from the County Council's Strategic Planning team says they do work with developers to forecast where future school place demand will be, and negotiate contributions from developers to help fund those places. But Matt says that the available places don't always end up in the ideal places at the ideal time.

In Scarborough and Whitby in 2021/22 there was a surplus of 1,932 secondary school places. That figure is predicted to fall slightly over the next few years as new housing developments add more families to the local area but at the same time the underlying trend is for demand for secondary places to shrink as population growth slows. By 2026/27 the County Council is predicting that Scarborough and Whitby will have a surplus of 1,677 secondary places.

There are a number of proposed housing developments in the Scarborough area which are yet to gain planning permission and those developments are not included in the figures. A report presented to local County Councillors last week said:

"beyond this time the surplus will be reduced if the allocated housing sites in the Local Plan achieve planning permission and are built out. Further
projections of this scenario indicate that additional secondary accommodation may need to be provided at George Pindar School to meet the developments within their catchment area. However, it should be noted that there is a current surplus at the school and this is projected to continue unless a large proportion of the proposed housing comes forward."

The County Council says there were some issues with Secondary admissions for pupils in Eastfield this year, but says it doesn't expect those problems to continue in the future, the report stated:

"During the 2022 admissions round for Year 7 places at Scarborough Secondary Schools a combination of this PAN reduction, a peak of
pupils on roll and a number of parents not applying for places created some challenges for the Admissions Team and initially led to some pupils being allocated places outside of Scarborough/Eastfield. The trend of need for secondary places across the area is declining and this is not projected to occur again. If there were to be pressure on secondary places in future years Graham and Pindar would be asked to admit above their admission number in line with their physical capacity"

In Whitby the County Council says

"there is significant surplus capacity within both the Primary and Secondary sector. The reorganisation of the secondary schools into a federation has been implemented. The schools now share an Executive Headteacher, with two 11-16 institutions located on separate sites and a shared Sixth Form Unit located on a third site."