Empty Places in Y 7

[kittymum]

The space at Borlase has just come up - someone moved - they had a waiting list at the start of year 7 so will hopefully be filled (esp as I know there was someone on here after a space )

[Sally-Anne]

There have always been spare places in Y7 ... this is very old news.

Agreed.

Facts, facts, facts.

I am missing the numbers for 2007 & 2008 (probably put them in a safe place somewhere), but here are the rest up to January 2014.

Note that, for the sake of consistency, I have used the current PAN for each school to calculate vacancies. There have been some small changes to PANs here and there over the years, but no more than a handful of places.

Vacancies at Bucks Grammar Schools:

2005 - 120
2006 - 122
...
2009 - 179
2010 - 91
2011 - 108
2012 - 95
2013 - 134
2014 - 53

And as for this claim ...:

Yet at the same time, they [Local, Equal, Excellent] say that Bucks County Council has been putting pressure on local upper schools to increase their Year 7 intake in order to meet the shortfall in secondary school places.

Vacancies at Bucks Upper Schools:

2005 - 201
2006 - 110
...
2009 - 266
2010 - 146*
2011 - 202
2012 - 323
2013 - 247
2014 - 362**

* Figures for 2010 do not include Aylesbury Vale Academy (formerly The Quarrendon School), for which the numbers are simply missing.

** 2014 includes the two new free schools, Khalsa & Fremantle (see below ...); Khalsa had 57 vacancies, Fremantle had 3. The underlying year-on-year figure is therefore 302.

Meanwhile, over in the Bucks Examiner (not on their website yet, so I can't link to it), Cllr. Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education, is quoted as saying - with reference to the Khalsa Academy:

"The good news is that we didn't need the secondary places, it's primary places we have needed to increase."

Mind you, earlier in the same article he is also quoted as saying:

"Mr Appleyard added the ongoing debate over free schools is not relevant to Bucks yet, with only one in Stoke Poges - the Khalsa Academy - catering for secondary pupils."

Err ... did someone say "Sir Thomas Fremantle"?

Campaign groups ... Local press wanting headlines ...

[WillowFae]

Surely the out of catchment issue shouldn't apply. We are OOC (only by 300 yards) and there is no way we would have gone through all of this if we DIDN'T want him to go to a GS. I would have thought that OOC pupils were more likely to take up a place.