‘Marvin Rees’ administration has failed Bristol’s children’

Education is the universal statutory service for children, the most impactful public tool available in preparing and nurturing our children as they grow.

Much more than academic skill development – essential as this is – education provides children with opportunities as they begin to explore life outside their family, supports them as they negotiate the choppy waters of adolescence and helps them develop into their early adulthood.

Having sufficient school places for local children is also page one, item one when it comes to an authority fulfilling its statutory child safeguarding responsibilities.

With 25 years’ experience in the education sector as teacher, local governor, chair of Bristol’s Schools Forum and expert in all things school admissions, I’ve watched as local politicians have side lined their responsibilities and are now attempting to build a narrative that would have us believe Bristol’s current crisis of place shortages falls solely at the feet of central government.

This narrative suits the city’s Labour administration and its four Labour MPs, but is a poor substitute for the actual work needed to ensure all children in our city can secure a school place.

The future of the proposed Oasis Academy on Silverthorne Lane on is in jeopardy after a government decision to “call in” the planning consent – image: Sulis

School place provision is a core legal duty of any local authority, but as Bristol’s children return for the new academic year, many will be obliged to make long commutes far outside their neighbourhoods and even to neighbouring councils; children with SEND still await suitable places; and some families are unable to access any school place, mainstream or otherwise.

Despite having years to prepare for this, Marvin Rees’ administration has failed.

Councils hold the legal duty to plan and provide for the future system. This is a complicated business involving keeping track of numerous, ever-moving parts impacted upon by the competency (or otherwise) of central government, predicting and meeting future school place demand across an entire city based on known population data.

It’s an ongoing statutory task that requires knowledgeable, stable political oversight.

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

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Bristol’s first elected mayor, George Ferguson, commissioned an Integrated Education Capital Strategy. Updated just before he left office in January 2016, it ran until 2019.

Shockingly, this document, two years out of date, remains the only school place planning document published on Bristol City Council’s website.

In his sixth year as mayor, Marvin Rees is yet to dedicate himself sufficiently enough to the education of our city’s children to update or even put his name to a school place planning document.

In April 2017, three new secondary schools were given the go ahead. Over four years later, just one has been delivered.

As things stand, our council does not know whether the long promised new school on Silverthorne Lane will ever be built or if a much-needed school in Knowle will be ready to accept students for the September 2022 intake.

Where the required school places will come from is to be revealed at a cabinet meeting in October. Meanwhile, current Year 6 parents are literally applying for school places that do not exist.

Detail is also still light on how a big public commitment made by the mayor to provide 450 special school places will be delivered.

At a recent scrutiny session, the administration could not tell us the cost of these places, how they will be funded, where they will be or when they will be ready to accept children.

Beyond the city council’s planning failures, another element of Bristol’s place shortage remains the social and geographical selection choices made by some schools in Bristol.

Montpelier High School (previously Colston’s Girls’ School) continues to ring-fence fully a quarter of its places for applicants who live in neighbouring authorities. Each place allocated to an applicant from outside Bristol is one less for children living in St Paul’s, who are displaced to schools further away.

St Mary Redcliffe, St Bede’s and St Bernadette take applicants from neighbouring authorities because religious affiliation is more important to them than meeting local demand.

Listen to the principal and some of the pupils at Montpelier High School (formerly Colston’s Girls’ School) in the latest episode of the Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast – photo: Martin Booth

The solution here is a simple matter of policy change at the school level – but those who run these schools (the Society of Merchant Venturers, and Bristol and Clifton dioceses) are more concerned with protecting their ‘vision’ than providing a service to all local children.

The mayor has never challenged these school level practices.

So what needs to change? For a start, Rees needs to show leadership and treat local education with the importance it deserves.

It is unacceptable that the most recent public school places plan is two years out of date. We must make delivering much-delayed new schools an urgent priority.

And for the immediate crisis facing children and families in September 2022, there will be a need for temporary classrooms, but political pressure to ensure all currently available places are allocated to Bristol resident children could considerably reduce the number needed.

Our children deserve better from their elected mayor. Statutory education is the fundamental building block of equality of opportunity.

Until Bristol has a properly working education service that meets the needs of our city’s children, our recovery from the pandemic, or any other type of recovery, will lack a key foundation stone.

Christine Townsend is the shadow cabinet member for education and the Green Party councillor for Southville – photo: Green Party

Main photo: Trinity Academy

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

Listen to the principal and pupils from Montpelier High School in the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: