Agenda item

Report from the Strategic Director of Children and Young People’s Services.

Recommendations:

1.    That approval is granted to the proposal to allocate £1.7m capital funding to increase capacity by 150 places (30 places per statutory aged year group) at Brinsworth Academy, subject to a successful planning application.   

Consideration was given to the report which detailed the proposal to allocate £1.7m of capital funding to increase capacity by 150 places (30 places per statutory year group) at Brinsworth Academy.

Brinsworth Academy was rated Good by Ofsted and was currently oversubscribed with the trend set to continue for future years. This would be further impacted upon by the higher cohort number of pupils applying for secondary education following the opening of the new Waverley Junior Academy in September 2020 as the Waverley development partly sits within the secondary catchment area of Brinsworth Academy.

Approval of the proposals would allow the Academy and Governing Board to plan for the expected increase in future years with the assurance that there would be sufficient space to continue to deliver the curriculum and enable more parents to access their first preference school for their child. This would therefore maintain or increase performance against that indicator on national offer day for entry to secondary phase education. Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council had a historic profile of satisfying 90%+ for parental first preferences for entry to secondary school education on national offer day. This was above the national average as verified by the Department for Education.

The option of maintaining capacity at the school at the current level had been rejected due to the fact the school was already over subscribed.

There had been consultation with governors, parents/carers, staff, Elected Members, the relevant Parish Councils, the Constituency MP, neighbouring schools and other interested parties. The consultation took place between 19th November and 17th December, 2021, and the responses were summarised in Appendix 1 to the report. There were 11 responses.

If approved it was expected that the additional capacity spaces would be available for the start of the 2023/24 academic year.

Resolved:-

That approval be granted to the proposal to allocate £1.7m capital funding to increase capacity by 150 places (30 places per statutory aged year group) at Brinsworth Academy, subject to a successful planning application.