Aberdeen faces a “schooling emergency” as the council struggles to work out how many children will enrol in the coming years, it’s claimed.
Sudden, drastic, rises in the city’s school roll have left education bosses scratching their heads at how to forecast for the future.
An extra 1,000 pupils joined Aberdeen schools during the last academic year, as refugees fled war, international students arrived with their families and some youngsters withdrew from fee-paying schools.
And the influx is now being blamed for the prolonged efforts to produce a vital school rolls forecast and confusion over the future of Aberdeen’s Catholic schools.
Read on to find out more about:
- Where is the long-awaited schools roll forecast?
- A “schooling emergency” on par with Aberdeen’s housing crisis
- Classroom building plans at Cults Academy as children are turned away from their local school – and posing problems for people selling homes
- And yet, council planners ok MORE homes to be built using forecasts “grossly out of sync with reality”
- And there are fears Labour’s plan for VAT on private school fees will only make things worse
Huge increase in pupil numbers in Aberdeen
Council chiefs are still using school forecasts developed based on the number of pupils in Aberdeen in 2020.
Since then, hundreds of Ukrainian refugees have fled their homes for the city after Russian’s illegal invasion.
In the first three months of 2023, more than 230 youngsters joined schools in Aberdeen.
The August before, 30 children – enough to fill a whole class – enrolled at a single city school. Another 800 also arrived in Aberdeen at that time.
Changes to UK immigration law have curbed the number of children arriving with student parents since.
The number of children on the Aberdeen school roll was around 26,000 in September 2023.
Why are school roll forecasts important?
But the official numbers the council is bound to use officially are long out of date.
Consultations on closure-threatened schools in the Oldmachar and Northfield catchments were last year criticised for being based on the forecasts derived from the 2020 pupil numbers.
And the same outdated predictions are the basis of decision-making on where the cash-strapped council should expand schools, as well as determine the futures of emptier-looking schools.
However, councillors making those calls at least are afforded flexibility, and can take into account what they know is happening at packed schools across the city.
70 weeks ago: Out of date Aberdeen school roll forecasts are probed
The same can’t be said for the stricter world of planning.
There, decisions on whether to let homes be built or to ask developers to help to pay for new wings of schools as a result of families moving into the area are based on the published roll forecasts from 2020.
Yes, the ones that everyone knows are out of date.
The promise of revised figures being published were promised as early as May 2023.
Chief corporate landlord Stephen Booth built hopes up at that time, telling the city education committee: “We hope to be able to have the school roll forecasts in the next couple of weeks.”
Since, his property team has been whirlwinded into the council’s response to the unfolding Raac housing crisis.
64 weeks ago: Aberdeen school roll forecast ‘literally days away’
Another six weeks passed before Labour councillor Kate Blake raised the issue again, at the same committee.
This time the answer was flanked by families and communities executive director Eleanor Sheppard.
“My understanding is it is ready,” she said proudly.
“It is currently being worked on line-by-line for quality assurance… so it is literally days away.”
It wasn’t. And council chiefs were pressed on the data’s readiness for the rest of the year.
Then, this June. the ramifications of such tardy intel was made very clear.
Fast forward to a planning committee meeting, and despairing Lower Deeside councillor Marie Boulton urging all to side with her.
“Let’s look at the reality versus the forecast.”
“At the moment we really are hanging ourselves out to dry because the forecasts are grossly out of sync with reality.
“It’s giving us an absolute nightmare.”
‘Hanging ourselves out to dry’: School roll forecasts ‘grossly out of sync with reality’
Mrs Boulton couldn’t believe she was being asked to pile pressure on stretched Cults Academy and its feeder schools, as councillors were asked to permit
City planners, bound by the complicated legal web, recommended approval for proposals for another 19 homes to be packed into a site south of North Deeside Road in Milltimber.
What’s more, they said there was no basis to ask for money to make room at the much-vaunted Cults Academy.
The plans were refused, after Mrs Boulton was backed in her “realism” by the education convener.
“We have to match our aspirations to the environment in which we’re operating – and we do not have available the resource and the learning environments to accommodate this,” the “very worried” Martin Greig said.
14 weeks ago: New Aberdeen school roll forecasts due ‘in coming weeks’
Minutes later though, plans for another 19 homes on Culter House Road – again with no attached cash for Cults Academy or Culter School – were approved.
In the face of resistance, council services manager Andrew Jones reminded councillors of the rules of the game.
“It’s worth just mentioning that we are restricted how we can calculate contributions we can ask for,” he said.
“We have to go with what’s in our pupil roll forecast.
“My understanding is that we expect to see a new forecast in the coming weeks.”
Just how ‘out of sync’ are these pupil numbers?
Even since then, scores of houses have been built at Oldfold in the Cults Academy catchment meanwhile.
And the 2020-based roll forecast for the 2024-25 academic year at the esteemed school was 1,226 pupils.
However, on September 4, Aberdeen City Council confirmed there 1,322 attending Cults Academy.
That leaves the school 18 short of its 1,340-student capacity, while there were another 10 pupils going through residency checks as part of the enrolment process.
Another 22 are on waiting lists for spots in first and second year, which are completely full.
A whole new class had to been added in S1 last year to keep up with the hunger for places at the school (and all secondaries increased their first year intake again this academic year).
School owner NYOP, who built the secondary as part of the privately-financed scheme for 10 new schools in Aberdeen in the late 00s, is spending £105,000 to convert communal space into extra classrooms.
It comes as parents worry about the lack of space for kids to eat and need for more science rooms.
Is Aberdeen in the midst of a ‘schooling emergency’?
Independent councillor Boulton tells The P&J: “We keep hearing about a housing emergency… but I think we’re looking at a schooling emergency too.
“To say the forecasts are significantly out feels an understatement.
“The effective capacity at Cults Academy – in other words, using every nook and cranny – leaves us with around 10 places before we need to do major reconfiguration.
“And given it’s a 3R school, how would we factor in the cost of reconfiguring a whole school to be able to accommodate hundreds more kids?”
The 3R scheme brought NYOP in as a private financer for 10 Aberdeen City Council schools, including Cults Academy.
But the consortium’s ownership of the buildings poses for future expansion, with talks dragging on for years about an extension at fellow PFI school Bucksburn Academy, which is expected to hit its capacity this year.
Back in Lower Deeside, Cults Primary was 125 over capacity in June, Mrs Boulton said, with the spill over of pupils unable to secure a place sent to Milltimber.
That very new primary, opened in May 2o22, had 375 enrolled (around 60 short of capacity), while the 2020-based school roll forecast expected 317 pupils.
Homeowners unable to sell up amid schools ‘nightmare’
Mrs Boulton also raises the stress and cost parents are facing as they lug children to different schools, due to overflowing classrooms.#
All schools in the west of the city – in catchments for Aberdeen Grammar, Harlaw and soon-to-be-replaced Hazlehead – suffer similarly, though its worst felt at secondaries, Mrs Boulton tells us.
“This is even affecting people looking to sell their houses,” the Lower Deeside councillor adds.
“Potential buyers are paying a premium to be in zone for Cults Academy and they are being told it’s full, and that’s even with a policy of protecting places for kids in catchment.
“This is bad for the city and bad for the children and families of Aberdeen too.”
Education convener ‘very worried’ about Cults and surrounding schools
Education convener Martin Greig doesn’t agree there was a “schooling emergency” in Aberdeen – but is “frustrated” at the delay in updated figures.
It is essential to have reliable data as there has been considerable population movement in Aberdeen in recent years which I appreciate has made forecasting more of a challenge.
I think the school system is managing to accommodate pupils but for long-term planning, we need the updated forecasts.
We have made decisions based on the appropriate, robust available information.
But it is essential that we don’t find ourselves in a similar position to others, like Renfrewshire Council, who built a school significantly out of line with the required numbers.
I understand the challenges in forecasting at this time but it is important that we get the information to evaluate as quickly as possible.
The Cults catchment area already has significant pupil number so we need to ensure primaries and the academy are able to accommodate them.
More work needs to be done as our schools are under pressure.
School roll forecasting ‘challenges’ continue
Fast forward again to September, now 12 weeks after we were told to expect the updated school roll forecast “in the coming weeks”.
As the problems with the Bucksburn Academy extension project were laid bare, Aberdeen’s finance committee also questioned the sense in making multi-million-pound decisions about Aberdeen’s school estate based on four-year-old projections.
Quizzed, Andrew Jones admitted: “We are not quite as far ahead as we would like to have been with publishing a forecast. We have a draft.
“There are some anomalies which we are working through on that to reach a point where we feel confident and certain in the figures.
“Within the school estate plan there is nothing that causes any significant concern in terms of the roll forecasts we have at the moment.”
Parent demands: ‘We know its inaccurate… so what’s being done?’
The following week, Mr Jones’ bad news tour takes him to the education committee (13 weeks into the “coming weeks” for anyone keeping count).
On the agenda was the controversial review of Catholic schooling in Aberdeen.
A multi-million-pound community campus in Northfield, borne of the same review of primary schools that was criticised for its basis on 2020 numbers, was also approved.
Amid those headline grabbers, secondary school parent rep on the committee, Dr Alison Murray, succinctly laid out the problem.
“The school roll we know is inaccurate and that doesn’t impact on education, where we know it’s inaccurate.
“But there are matters like planning, where they have to work on the schools roll forecast without considering its inaccuracies… So what’s being done?”
Long-awaited Aberdeen school roll forecast could be ready by November
Those in the room said Mr Jones’ answer made executive director Eleanor Sheppard wince with an “unconvinced” face.
“We have been working away over the summer on the school roll forecasts,” Mr Jones informed.
“There are some anomalies in the draft we are keen to iron out just to make sure we are 100% confident” – he chuckled nervously, catching himself overpromising – “well 100% would be nice… but as confident as we can be in the accuracy of the forecast.
“What we would like to do is compare the forecast we have from the summer for the 2024 school roll with the actual numbers we will get shortly for an additional level of confidence.
“It would be our desire to publish it by November. But until we see the figures and are able to compare the forecast to the actuals, it’s hard to say for sure when we will be in a position to publish them.”
That would be at least 75 weeks after being promised by property chief Mr Booth.
Why is it so difficult to forecast pupil numbers in Aberdeen?
The sudden surge in population didn’t just pose placement problems at the time.
“Challenges” continue as the council’s data team looks at long term forecasting too.
Schools with dwindling rolls suddenly saw pupil lists soared – and bosses say this is particularly true at the three Catholic primaries.
In a recent report, Mr Booth – who promised the updated school roll forecasts nearly 500 days ago – wrote: “Our school roll forecasts rely on trends in actual pupil enrolments over recent years to predict the likely pupil numbers in future years.
“So there is a concern the latest forecast figures will be subject to a greater margin of error than would normally be expected, as the data calculations will have been influenced by short-term factors, which may not actually be at play in the future.
“Whilst it may be the case that pupil numbers will decline, it is not possible to confirm at this stage whether that will happen, or when.”
VAT on private school fees could drive another 300 pupils into city-run schools
And the council property boss threw another risk into the mix.
Labour’s proposed imposition of VAT on UK private school fees is an “emerging issue” that may drive up future pupil numbers at council-run schools in the next couple of years.
There are around 3,100 independent school pupils in Aberdeen, with perhaps 300 thought to be at risk of being driven out by the tax hike.
Conservative councillor Ken McLeod said parents and the head of one of Aberdeen private schools had told him about concerns at the new charge.
“I sit on the schools placement, exclusion and appeals committee and almost without exception the appeals are for placements in a small number of schools in Aberdeen,” he shared.
“And it’s fair to say the reason for these appeals being rejected is because there’s no room in the schools asked for in all levels, without extra accommodation or teachers being provided.”
Aberdeen primary schools stretched too
Council chiefs have been in talks with the leadership of the private schools too – and reckon that most of the children that might leave because of VAT will be primary-aged.
That’s better news for the bursting at the seams secondaries.
However, Mr McLeod said it was “unfair” to suggest there was space at all primary schools.
“There is capacity at lots, but the Aberdeen Grammar and Harlaw catchment areas are at capacity and have waiting lists.
“We have Cults primary with limited spaces. If you live in Cults and are told you can’t go to the local school, you have to go somewhere else miles away… that’s not a help.
“My only concern is for the welfare of those children who are going to be quite traumatised having to leave independent schools and go into state schools with total disrupting of their education.”
He suggested the city might sponsor private school pupils so they could stay put, in the short term to ease strain on the city schools.
‘Scaremongering’ over impact of private school VAT charge on Aberdeen schools
However, his calls for action were nullified by Labour councillors. They’ll go no further.
“There’s a fine line between raising a legit issue and scare mongering,” Labour councillor Ross Grant said, highlighting the £150 million the government expects the policy to raise for Scotland.
Fellow Labour councillor Kate Blake added: “Let’s be clear: private schools are businesses and VAT is being applied to the businesses, not the parents.
“And evidence from the last decade shows that changing fees has a marginal impact on private school recruitment.”
After the city coped with an addition of 1,000 pupils last year, Ms Blake – who has led efforts to hasten publication of the school roll data – said another 300 would be manageable.
For months and months she has been pressing for an update to the forecasting, not least because public consultations on the potential closure, merging or building of Aberdeen schools are being rooted in the long out of date 2020-based figures.
The updated Aberdeen City Council school rolls forecast could be published in the coming weeks?
Read more:
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- How full is your school? Harlaw Academy one of four chock-a-block
- Bucksburn Academy: Inside the nightmare red tape wrangle threatening £21m extension at packed Aberdeen school
- Catholics ‘choosing not to move to Aberdeen’ as pleas for talks on new secondary school snubbed
- Leavers’ ball at top-performing Cults Academy axed after head ‘egged’ by pupils
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