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School Place Planning

 

Services

The Council has a statutory duty to ensure there are sufficient places available in its area.This involves working in partnership with our local school partners to respond to changing demographic trends and implement proposals across the school estate.

 

Inevitably, while data and information are essential in helping to determine the strategic need for places, our approach and mindset to the school place planning function focusses on working with our local school partners to agree solutions intended to address the challenges of falling rolls and budget constraints.

 

By working collaboratively with headteachers of all schools, our purpose is to help provide the right conditions for schools to raise standards and thrive. We will do this by:

  • Developing relationships with headteachers/MAT leads, CEOs and the Regional School Commissioner’s Officer and harnessing these to influence and champion the value of our work and our strategic view of the needs of BCP
  • Encouraging a systems leadership approach ensuring that the work, support and interventions from BCP are joined up and are known where these have a significant bearing on the proposals we co-develop
  • Sharing intelligence and demographic data to help support decision making including admission data (patterns of parental preference), demographic trends, age profile, live births and new housebuilding proposals, the pattern of provision in BCP including cross border movement of children and pupil projections
  • Being open to school support and informal and more formal partnership approaches to creating quality sustainable schools

Place planning sessions take place annually and updates are provided at key datapoints during the year in order to provide Headteachers and governing boards with the data and information they need to consider the strategic need for places, working collaboratively with other local schools.

 

Staff contact information and team details

For more information please contact Head of Service: tanya.smith@bcpcouncil.gov.uk