London’s schools are struggling to stay open as student enrollments fall, with soaring rents and sky-high property prices combined with the cost-of-living crisis and among factors crowding out families.
Between 2012 and 2021, London’s birth rate fell by 17%, resulting in 23,000 fewer babies in the capital, according to the London Councils.
The hardest-hit central borough of Camden has the second-lowest birth rate in the country, while the average house price in the region is more than £1m. In the past four years, four elementary schools have been announced to be closed.
One, St Dominic’s in Gospel Oak, has about 40 students left. It is scheduled to close at the end of the school year, but staff are wondering if they can afford the building’s energy bills until then, according to the Camden branch secretary of the National Education Union (NEU).
Carlton Primary School in Kentish Town was half full when it closed in 2021. It has since been merged with Rhyl Community School at two locations.
But the school is still struggling to fill its places despite the closure of two local primary schools, headteacher Helen Connor told BBC London.
“If we can’t fill the spots, we won’t have enough money to educate the kids and keep the school open,” she said.
“When a school closes it’s devastating, it’s the heart of the community – there’s so much they offer. When that’s gone, the church will start to fall apart.”
Ms Connor added she was “very concerned” about the situation.
“If you don’t have schools, we won’t have educated young people working in the community,” she said.
“We’ve had families who have moved out of the area because they couldn’t afford the rent. When Brexit happened we had a small number of Eastern European families who moved back to Europe.
“There are simply not enough children in our area.”
For every primary school pupil who leaves school, a school loses around £4,000.
To keep his funding going and to attract potential parents, Rhyl has added babies to his age range. It also now offers community services like breastfeeding clinics and adult education to keep parents in the area.
Elsewhere in the capital, Hackney has warned that two of its primaries are likely to collapse and another four may need to merge to survive. Meanwhile, 16 schools are at risk in Southwark, with demand down 26% since 2015.
Chris and Roberta Hodder have recently moved to Eastbourne in Sussex from Forest Hill in Lewisham with their children aged six and eleven.
They told BBC London it was the prospect of never being able to own a home that drove them out of London.
Their former three-bedroom rented property has now sold for £600,000 as they settle by the sea in a house of the same size they bought for £200,000.
“As we were about to leave, we noticed that some kids at our local elementary school were disappearing from the books. When we visited a house in another coastal town, there was a couple with us who were also planning to move out of town; it definitely seemed to be the trend around us,” explained Mr. Hodder, a lobbyist.
“In the long run, we need security for our family. I don’t think it’s healthy for London to become a city without children – it’s becoming a necropolis.”
In addition to coping with the exodus of children, schools are struggling to recruit enough staff, according to Camden NEU branch teacher and secretary Andrew Dyer.
He said the situation was “at a crisis point”.
“Young teachers can’t afford to live in the area either, and when they hear about schools closing, it’s not an attractive prospect to take a job in this district when it’s about to close,” he said.
“It shows what Camden and other central counties might look like in the future and it’s bleak. It used to be a district full of creativity with life and families.”
Mr Dyer added that “if the government wants public schools to be attractive to teachers and families alike, they need reassurance that their budgets will not be cut”.
Camden Council leader Georgia Gould believes one of the biggest factors contributing to families leaving the capital was the benefit cap introduced in 2016, which capped the amount families could receive in London at £23,000.
She said: “We are seeing central London increasingly being hollowed out and central London children being displaced. In Camden we do everything we can to support children, we build thousands of council housing and buy lost homes back to the right to buy.
“Unfortunately, unless we see a change in national policy – real investment in public housing, an end to the housing benefit cap – we will see further decimation of the center of our cities.”
An Education Department spokesman said: “Next year school funding will reach its highest level in history – in real terms – as measured by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, after the £2bn additional investment for 2023-24 and 2024-2025 in the Autumn statement.
“It is up to local authorities and academy foundations to balance the supply and demand for school places in line with changing demographics, as they have been doing for many years.”
Follow BBC London on Facebook, external, Twitter, external and Instagram, external. Send your story ideas to hellobclondon@bbc.co.uk, external
Add Comment