The challenge of providing secondary school places in Bristol amid looming shortfall

Delays in building two “much-needed” academies leave a potential shortfall of some 2,500 secondary school places in Bristol.

Plans for a new 1,600-place school on Silverthorne Lane and a 900-capacity school in Knowle West were due to meet the rising need in the city but both new buildings have faced multiple setbacks and are now not expected to open until 2024 at the earliest.

Acknowledging the challenges this poses, Marvin Rees has said the council will meet its obligation to provide enough spaces for all children in the city despite the lack of facilities.

The solution to the 2,500 shortfall could be a “mix of interventions”, including temporary buildings and increased capacity in existing premises. The mayor said he could not rule out bigger class sizes.

Asked if he is confident Bristol City Council will be able to fulfil its legal duty to provide a school place to every child in the city in the coming years, he responded: “We will. We have to work with the way the world is. There have been challenges, whether it be flooding or schools in flood areas but we will provide the places for our children – we will look at increasing capacity in existing sites for our children as we always were planning to do.”

Oasis Temple Quarter School is set to be built as part of a major development project on the Feeder Canal in St Philip’s and was initially due to open by 2018, but delays and flooding concerns have seen this date pushed back at least six years.

It was initially hoped the new Oasis Academy in Knowle West would be ready for 2022 but the Department for Education has recently announced it will now be September 2024. Both academies will be run by Oasis Community Learning, a multi-academy trust that already runs eight schools in Bristol.

The new Oasis Academy is due to be built on the site of the Park in Knowle West, along with a new community centre

South Bristol MP Karin Smyth has hit out at the government for failings leading to the delays in building the new schools and raised concerns about the accountability of multi-academy trusts.

Asked what the council is doing about the impending shortfall of secondary school places, Rees told journalists: “We’re going to have to have a mix of interventions. What we’ve looked at today were some temporary classrooms but it would depend on the school sites that are being used.

“There may be additional capacity that could be pulled on using the existing buildings.”

He continued: “This is a conversation with government as well because we are accountable but so many of the factors that determine what happens in education are obviously not in our control as a local authority. But clearly, it will need a bigger teaching force, it will be physical space, but we will very much be working with our director of education and our schools to put those plans in place

“At least we know ahead of time so we can plan ahead of time to make sure that what is brought through is as higher quality as possible.”

Will the situation mean bigger class sizes for secondary pupils?

Rees said: “There’s always a risk. No sensible person would ever say there’s no risk; yes there is because that’s the nature of the world. But our job is to plan ahead to minimise those risks.

“That’s all we can ever do; minimise risk as we set out how we reach the standards that we want and that our children and our families deserve.”

Main image: A CGI of the Oasis Academy Temple Quarter – source: Square Bay 

Read more: Dismay as opening of ‘much-needed’ secondary school delayed until 2024