Almost half of councils in England and Wales risk being unable to meet demand for secondary school places within the next five years, the Local Government Association has warned.

New powers allowing local authorities to force academies and free schools to expand to meet any need for new places are required, it said.

The LGA said its analysis of Department for Education data and local pupil forecasts showed that 125,000 children faced missing out on a secondary school place by the 2022-23 academic year.

Academies and free schools currently answer directly to the DfE, bypassing local state education control.

Councillor Richard Watts, chairman of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said increasing numbers of families face growing uncertainty when trying to secure a secondary place for a child.

And yesterday new DfE statistics revealed that there was rise in the number of appeals from parents who failed to get their children into their chosen secondary school this year, compared with last year. 

‘Looming places crisis’

The Labour councillor in Islington, north London, added: “Councils have worked hard to help create almost 600,000 additional primary places since 2010.

“This is no small feat. However, as those children move on to secondary schools, the majority of which are now academies, securing new secondary places in the areas where they are needed is becoming increasingly difficult.

“Councils are working with one hand behind their backs to help as many pupils as possible receive a place at their first-choice school.

“If we are to avoid this looming secondary school places crisis, councils need to be able to force existing academy schools to expand if voluntary agreement is impossible, and must be given back powers to open new maintained schools themselves.”

The LGA claims that 12 local authorities would face a shortfall in secondary school places from 2018-2019 without changes. That figure rises to 23 in 2019-20, 41 in 2020-21, 57 in 2021-22 and 66 in 2022-23.

Academies and free schools are state-funded but free from local council control, with power over areas such as the curriculum and teachers’ pay.

Academies were first set up under Tony Blair’s Labour government and the scheme was extended by the Coalition government, with all existing schools allowed to apply for academy status.

Free schools were introduced by the Coalition after the 2010 general election and the government has pledged to open 500 by September 2020.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “These figures are thoroughly misleading. Local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure that there is a school place available for every child.

“We have allocated £5.8 billion of basic need funding between 2015 and 2020 to enable them to do this, and over 735,000 additional pupil places were created between 2010 and 2016. This money is given to councils based on their own estimates of the number of places they will need.

“We also know that a vast majority of parents are securing a place for their child at their first choice of secondary school - 83.5 per cent this year, with more than 94 per cent having received offers at one of their top three choices.”

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