Expanding our secondary schools

10.58.00am GMT Tue 16th Mar 2010

• Cllr Malcolm Eady* writes: 'FOLLOWING the recent significant increase in demand and capacity at our primary schools, we will in the medium term need to increase the number of places available in our secondary schools. We have eight secondary schools in the borough, of which six are now oversubscribed . . '

'We have been very successful in improving their performance, and this, together with the effects of the recession, has meant that we have received more applications than would have been expected for places next September. I would expect their popularity to increase. With the existing spare capacity and the priority given to local children by our link school system, ALL our primary school pupils will be offered places for the next few years, but the problem starts in 2014 and increases significantly post 2018.

Our Academies programme gave us an early opportunity to build in some extra capacity, rather than wait for the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. We have added extra places at the Hampton and Twickenham Academies and will do so at the proposed academy at Shene if it goes ahead. We will also be providing more places at Teddington School as a result of its rebuild. We announced last November that officers have once again been looking at the potential of a Catholic secondary school, but this requires some very detailed discussions with the diocesan boards of education, which I hope can have a positive outcome.

As with our primary school programme, the two main problems are lack of money and the lack of suitable locations for new schools. We have been investigating a number of options, but these have all been held on a confidential basis. We are also looking at expanding some of our other existing schools, but, with money for capital programmes being very tight, this highlights just how irresponsible the Conservative policy of using these scarce resources for unnecessary sixth forms would be. I can assure people that just as we have been successful in providing primary school places we will do the same for secondary."

• Cabinet Member with responsibility for Children's Services and Education