Popular school's classroom crisis
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Tim Sandford teaches art to Year 10 students in the canteen at Brighton Hill Community College
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OVERCROWDING at a Basingstoke school has led to lessons being held in a canteen and library. While some local secondary schools are faced with falling numbers, Brighton Hill Community College is attracting so many students that there are often three more classes than there are rooms for. Now Hampshire County Council has applied for planning permission for three temporary classrooms to accommodate the surplus students at the Brighton Way site. Headteacher David Eyre said he has begged for two years for more teaching space. He said: "We are seriously overcrowded. The children we have got at Brighton Hill don't necessarily get a seat in a specialist classroom. "We have classes in our canteen and a room in the library." advertisement Mr Eyre said it led to huge operational problems, particularly for maths, science and English lessons, where there were more classes than specialist classrooms in which to hold them. He cited, as an example, history classes being shunted around so science classes could use a specialist room. Despite being forced to improvise in such ways as using a canteen table as a whiteboard, the overcrowding has not held the school back. Its results for students attaining five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C were the joint best in Basingstoke in 2006. Mr Eyre said his request for extra space had not been popular with some other educational establishments that feared Brighton Hill's expansion might be at their expense. He said: "I have had to go cap in hand on my knees to get additional classrooms in the face of opposition from other places. "But we have no intention of expanding in the 11 to 16 age group. We want to make sure these students have adequate seating arrangements. "Some schools feel they are not full so why should Brighton Hill expand? It's to accommodate what it already has." The problem, he said, pre-dated his arrival at the school two years ago. He explained the school consistently has around 1,280 to 1,290 pupils on its roll but, according to the Department for Education and Skills, it only has space for 1,220. However, Hampshire County Council, as the local education authority, says that the limit is 1,275 students. Mr Eyre said Brighton Hill exceeds that figure because it has to take pupils who fail to gain one of the 255 admission places each year, but who are subsequently successful at appeal. It also accommodates students facing exclusion from other schools. "We have managed a complex situation with no sign that the college reputation is going to take a downturn," he said. The planning application that has been submitted is for one double and one single temporary classroom for five years from September 2007. Mr Eyre added: "It will ease the current situation but they are not specialist classrooms. "We won't have to use the canteen and library as often as we currently do." In a statement, Hampshire County Council said Brighton Hill had coped well for a number of years. It said the law compels local authorities to comply with a parent's preference for a school place, unless there are valid legal reasons for refusing. The statement added: "Under the previous headteacher, the governing body felt the school had the capacity to take more pupils and approached the local authority for permission to do so. "The local authority increased the admissions figure from 240 to 255. "As the governing body stated that they had the capacity for additional admissions, if a parent appealed to the Appeal Panel against a refusal to admit their child to Brighton Hill, under education law their appeal would likely be upheld." Text taken from: http://www.thisisbasingstoke.co.uk/display.var.1459580.0.popular_schools_classroom_crisis.phpSee Text Analysis See graphic representation
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