Brighton council final vote closes two city schools

As a result of the votes, St Peter’s Community Primary School and Nursery, in Portslade, and St Bartholomew’s Church of England (CofE) Primary School, in Brighton, are due to close in August.

The decision to close the two schools followed nearly two hours of debate at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting at Hove Town Hall on Monday.

Labour councillor Alan Robins abstained when it came to the two votes. He represents South Portslade on the council and went to St Peter’s as a boy.

At a special meeting of the full council, newly elected Labour councillor Josh Guilmant, who also represents South Portslade, abstained on the vote on the future of St Peter’s.

Before the debate, St Bart’s headteacher Katie Blood and parents from St Peter’s urged councillors to think again.

St Peter’s parent, Kirsty Moore, whose daughter has special needs, said that she had had to cope with her daughter’s “sadness that won’t go away”.

Mrs Moore said: “You haven’t had six months of sleepless nights, six months of tears, anger, aggression and extreme anxiety like my family have had.

“You can’t say you understand when you really haven’t the faintest idea of what we are going through.

“Every morning my daughter, age seven, wakes up and crosses the days off the calendar to the school closure. It’s heartbreaking.”

Mrs Blood said that she would fight on – and the board of governors at St Bartholomew’s are understood to be considering an appeal to the schools adjudicator.

She said: “We have offered alternative ideas, all of which have been dismissed, perhaps because we have not been given the opportunity to discuss them in detail with those in power.

“While we don’t agree with the dismissal of these ideas, we recognise the council find themselves in a challenging situation, so we have made it clear we would consider a conversation about school closure over a longer period.

“In return for this compromise, we would hope leaders who make the decisions would listen to and trust the professionals who know our children best.”

The two Labour councillors who co-chair the council’s children, families and schools committee, Lucy Helliwell and Jacob Taylor, both cited a need to reduce Reception class numbers.

Without action, infant and primary schools across Brighton and Hove would have more than 800 unfilled Reception places by 2027.

Most funding is per pupil. Falling rolls in Brighton and Hove have left the area with England’s largest percentage of primary schools in deficit – 29 out of 48.

Councillor Taylor said that the closures were not about saving the council money although the council could end up funding some schools’ deficits.

He said: “This is about a system that is structurally underfunded. And that’s what head teachers told me in a letter last year when we took office.

“They said that the only way to set viable budgets was by ‘stripping out swathes of support staff’ and that doing so ‘is having a direct impact on what we are offering our children’.”

Councillor Helliwell said that the school where she teaches was merging and reducing its published admission number because of the falling birth rate nationally.

She said: “I hear the concerns of parents that we have not listened and that we don’t care but I became a councillor to make a difference and improve the lives of residents of the city and sometimes this means making those tough decisions for the right reason for the city as a whole.

“It is our responsibility to ensure a quality education for the children in Brighton and our schools can only do this by having sufficient children in a classroom.”

The Green opposition leader Steve Davis urged Labour councillors to put people before party and to put their “grown-up pants” on and vote against closing the schools.

Councillor Davis said: “Please be prepared to explain why we continue to receive emails from school parents and staff who continue to state how deeply, deeply disappointed they are in how Labour has conducted this entire process.

“You should at least acknowledge that you could and must do better, particularly as the delicate and sensitive matter of transfer of pupils to other schools will now be in this council’s hands.”

Conservative leader Alistair McNair said that the council should accept Mrs Blood’s proposal to close St Bartholomew’s over a number of years.

Councillor McNair said: “Today is a dark day for Brighton and Hove’s schools … (The closure) would result in the reduction of 30 places across the city which needs to cut hundreds of places.

“I predict we will be back here this time next year with other schools facing closure. What we need are short, mid and long-term solutions to attract families to the city, not ways of managing decline.”

Thirty-two Labour councillors voted to close St Bartholomew’s. Seven Greens and three Conservatives voted against and Councillor Robins abstained.

Thirty-one Labour councillors voted to close St Peter’s. Again, seven Greens and three Conservatives voted against. Councillor Robins and his newly elected ward colleague Councillor Guilmant abstained.