It looks likely that there could be 50 fewer primary school places on the Isle of Wight from September 2024.
4 schools could have admission numbers reduced, as the Island continues to see a drop in birth rate and declining numbers of pupils entering Reception.
The Isle of Wight Council’s cabinet is looking to approve the reduction of pupil admission numbers (PAN) at its meeting on Thursday.
Changes would mean the Island’s smallest primary school could accept 13 children in reception, compared to the biggest which would be able to take 60.
Responses from a consultation argued a wider, long-term strategy was needed to deal with the overprovision of primary school places and that “trying to keep all schools open wasn’t going to work”.
1 commenter said they would prefer smaller, failing schools were closed rather than see funding stretched and larger primary schools brought down to a lower standard.
Officers acknowledged the point but recommended the PANs are reduced as it would support the resource and financial viability of the schools in question.
The places are set to be removed from 4 primaries: Barton, Broadlea, Carisbrooke and Godshill.
A strategic place plan is being worked up by officers and is scheduled to come before cabinet in June.
Overall, if approved, there would be 1,342 primary school places available for pupils starting school in September 2024 and the following years.
It’s only going to get worse.
Population decline is a good thing. Good for the planet. Human extinction via reduced reproduction is an inevitability and it can’t come soon enough.
Good for the pure bloods for sure.
Unfortunately, it is the freeloading spongers who now ‘have’ the most children.
So as many use having such as a life style choice to avoid doing full time work, and to gain a free rent home, pay no council tax or little, and work the most of sixteen hours per week, and get their money made up to more than full time workers, then their offspring grow up the same.
So society gets worse with a tax credit growing benefit society, who know what their ‘entitled’ to. but take more out then they EVER pay in, so we all fund them and grow poorer.
We need wanted, loved children, not results of drunken, or drugged cretins, who we will fund cradle to all too long grave
Spot on Steven
we soon is be on the job.fill schools is no prob for bruvs
I’m sure are overseas neighbours could fill them
And will, along with prisons.
Yet won’t be ‘with’ the womb provider and buggy full, we will be funding that for life.
The number of babies born locally falling dramatically, yet the need for thousands of new homes to be built everywhere goes through the roof due to the surging growth in population – hmm I wonder what could be driving this ?
It is a fact, that anyone can confirm, that the number of deaths on the Island has been higher than the number of births for the last 25 years.
Yet our population has increased in that time.
If you compare the age demographics between the 2011 and 2021 censuses you see that the number of those aged under 60 has actually decreased. Yet our population has increased in that time.
A bit of simple maths and logic shows us that the entirety of our population growth is in people moving to the Island and the vast majority of them are over 60.
Hardly a surprise. The island is evidently a good place to die.
thank you smiffy – hypocrite using different names after telling others not to.
Better build mores houses and import more people to fill the places….
No surprise here, nothing or any hope for the younger generations on this island so they move to mainland for a better life. Both of my offspring have left with no intention at all of returning, both of them see this island as a dead end dump with very poor employment and salary options. Perhaps the council could use the money saved from education and spend it on the ever increasing elderly population that are attracted here to retire. I somehow doubt it, they would much sooner waste it on the floating joke between East and West Cowes.
I hope they’ve taken into consideration of the high amount of pregnant ladies being transfered to the mainland, having no choice but to have our babies in another Council district, so therefore the “birth certificate” not being registered on the island, so not in the numbers that they’ve generated, as known under another Council ( if based on “being born on the island”). I hope someone has thought about this…. could have the opposite effect if they close down primary schools just saying…..
This is absolute fabricated rubbish. Please state where you got this information from.
The only time women are transferred to the mainland to give birth is when there are complications beyond the scope of the local unit.
Sorry, but what figures do you have to back up your claim of ‘the high amount of pregnant ladies being transferred to the mainland’ to give birth?
Are you talking about a few cases which have complications or do you seriously mean a large percentage of women, because that’s what a ‘high amount’ seems to imply?
That is total rubbish. A birth will still be registered on the island if the mother lives on the island. That is why you have to go to the registry office to register the birth and get a birth certificate.
Tori is a very thick person
I assume that the short term consequence will be that there will be increasing pressure to close some school or schools. That will inevitably lead to a shortage of pupil places when the birth rate picks up again, unless there is proper monitoring of it and, more importantly, timely provision of adequate additional places. I am not optimistic that it will be dealt with in a timely manner but perhaps pigs might actually fly in the future.