Bath and North East Somerset Council has published plans to increase Primary School provision across the district.
To ensure the Council meets the needs of a growing population and the demands created by new housing development, the authority has carried out a review of the number of school places required up to September 2019.
Over the next 12 months, the Council is set to invest more than £7million in local primary schools, expanding capacity to ensure there are enough places.
A total of 68 new primary school places are being created in September 2016, with a further 160 planned for September 2017 and 45 more in September 2018.
Cllr Michael Evans (Conservative, Midsomer Norton North), Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, said: “Investing in our area’s young people is one of the Council’s top six priorities. This includes increasing Primary School provision to ensure we have the right number of school places in the right locations to meet the needs of a growing population, whilst at the same time, supporting parental choice. As part of our drive to improve and promote educational excellence, we constantly review our school place provision to ensure we can meet future demand. This updated strategy sets out how we plan to ensure that the needs of local parents and children are met over the coming years.”
The extra capacity is being created through a combination of whole new schools and an increase in capacity at a number of existing schools across the district. The measures aim to future-proof these schools from further forecasted increases in pupil numbers due to both population growth and planned new development. The additional places are being funded using a combination of Basic Need funding from Central Government as well as Developer Contributions.
210 new places will be available in Keynsham at the Somerdale site, where a school os scheduled to open in 2017. This is to accommodate the new pupils generated from housing development in the area. Another 210 place school will be created in the East of Keynsham to accomodate for development on that side of the town.
More places will also be created in Ensleigh and two new primary schools will be built at the MOD Foxhill development and at Bath Western Riverside.
In addition, feasibility studies are being carried out on the expansion of Peasedown St John Primary, St. Keyna Primary School in Keynsham and St Nicholas’ C of E Primary in Radstock. A new 630 place primary Free School has also been proposed for the Midsomer Norton area, to open in September 2017.
In general, secondary pupil numbers are expected to be lower in Bath and North East Somerset over the next few years, as the smaller numbers of primary pupils seen in the past reach secondary school age.
The increasing primary age population is first anticipated to reach Year 7 of secondary school in the 2017/2018 and 2018/19 academic years. However, up to admissions in 2019, there are still projected to be sufficient secondary school places available in all areas of the Authority for children living within each of the secondary school catchment areas for Bath and North East Somerset.