Battle to improve rural schools as pressure mounts in towns

EDUCATION chiefs have admitted they are embroiled in a delicate balancing act to ensure North Yorkshire’s rural schools are not undermined amid growing pressures to provide adequate facilities in towns which are witnessing rising pupil numbers.

A dramatic fall in funding from the Government means that North Yorkshire County Council is faced with intense financial pressures to ensure schooling across the vast rural swathes of the county is boosted, while also dealing with an increasing number of students in urban areas.

Senior politicians at County Hall have stressed that they remain committed to ensuring schools remain “safe, warm and weather-tight” but confirmed to the Yorkshire Post that they have witnessed repeated reductions in funding from Westminster in the last few years.

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The Government’s austerity drive has coincided with a national trend for more primary places as children reach school age following a rise in birth rates since 2002. While North Yorkshire is witnessing an ageing population, there is nonetheless a growing need for more school places in towns including Scarborough and Selby.

The council’s executive member for schools, Coun Arthur Barker, said: “At a time when the county council is facing significant reductions in the money that is available to invest in school buildings it is important that we focus our investment in the right areas.

“The county council must provide enough extra school places for North Yorkshire children at a time of rising pupil rolls whilst continuing to direct investment at improving the quality of existing school buildings and ensuring they remain safe, warm and weather-tight. This will make sure that pupils throughout North Yorkshire will continue to enjoy high quality learning environments.”

The council announced yesterday that more than 50 schools have benefitted from a £20m programme of improvements in the latest round of investment across North Yorkshire.

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The work has ranged from small-scale projects such as replacing boilers to one of the biggest schemes at Stokesley Primary School which cost £400,000 to provide new classrooms to
replace ageing temporary buildings.

But the authority has been handed a dwindling amount of capital funding from the Government which fell from £17.5m in 2011/12 to £17.1m in 2012/13.

The figure has reduced significantly to £12.8m for the current financial year, with the biggest fall in the so-called basic needs funding – which is the allocation to deal with increasing pupil places to satisfy demand.

The council received £5.3m in basic needs funding in 2012/13, but the amount has fallen to £1.5m for each of the current and next financial years.

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The assistant strategic planning manager for children and young people’s services, Jon Holden, stressed that where major housing projects – such as the Middle Deepdale scheme in Scarborough – are being built, developers will be asked to finance community facilities such as schools through Section 106 agreements.

But Mr Holden admitted the council is faced with specific issues due to the vast geographical area of North Yorkshire – which is England’s largest county – when compared to other local education authorities covering far more urban districts. The county council is responsible for 365 primary, secondary, special schools and nurseries with many of the sites having relatively low student numbers in sparsely populated countryside communities.

Mr Holden said: “It is a challenge, but our job is to ensure that the investment is made in the right areas.”

The council is faced with having to enforce cuts across a host of services including social care and bus subsidies totalling £169m by 2018/19 – about a third less than the overall revenue budget it had only eight years previously.