Higher Birth Rates and Immigrants causing Accute Shortages in UK Schools

United Kingdom Education Department is going through an inconvenient situation when the country’s fast growing population due to higher birth rates among immigrants will be affecting its academic system. Government projections suggest that the country will need a million more spaces in UK schools to accommodate the pupils by the end of this decade.

The number of pupils studying in schools is estimated to reach nearly 8 million until 2020, a figure showing 935,000 more students than now. This figure is recorded as the highest in the last fifty years. If migration was to be decreased to become ‘zero’, 106,000 fewer spaces will be needed to accommodate the pupils.

The excess number of pupils is being attributed to the high birth rates and rising number of immigration in the United Kingdom. Officials claim that such conditions have already started to take Effect as the sudden population boom has forced the schools to acquire space in empty shops and empty warehouses just to accommodate the rising number of their students.

Town halls are being forced to draw emergency plans as a fifth of the primary schools in the country are full.

By the end of the year 2020, primary and nursery schools will need to accommodate more than 736,000 additional students. Presently, all the remaining space has been occupied by the secondary and special schools, pushing the primary schools to a corner.

The rising number of students and reduced number of available spaces in schools is bound to make the creation of super primaries necessary, which would accommodate up to 1,000 students.

Hundreds of children who still aren’t sure where they will be studying in September are point of main concern for the Councils in London. The councils are struggling hard to procure space for these students in vacant buildings and create a sort of makeshift school system for them.

The school management and administration also needs to pay much required attention to this issue by taking necessary steps to contain the situation as much as possible. The schools can start teaching children in shifts to avoid unnecessary congestion. The school administration can also eliminate class size limits to accommodate as much students as possible in single classrooms.

The ‘sibling rule’, allowing those children who already have a brother or a sister studying in the school a preference for admission, should also be abolished. Certain measures on the part of the school can prove to be quite encouraging for the government to take necessary steps of its own in this matter.

The government on the other hand, claims of already spending more than 4 billion pounds on the creation of extra primary schools, blaming the last government for not realizing the importance of the matter.

Shadow education secretary, Stephan Twigg, said that they have been warning the government from the very beginning about the possibility of such a problem.

“But instead of addressing this crisis head-on, the Government has slashed the capital budget by nearly two-thirds and are creating free schools, many of which are in areas where there isn’t a demand for extra places or from parents,” Twigg said.

Tags: Councils in London, Immigration, sibling rule, Stephan Twigg, UK immigration, United Kingdom Education Department