The Government is allocating £300m to fund an extra 15,000 primary school places in England to cope with severe shortages caused by the baby boom and the recession. But while the funding pledge from children's secretary Ed Balls was £100m more than had been anticipated, hard-pressed councils have already warned that the award is nowhere near enough.
London Councils, the umbrella group for the capital's authorities, says that on the latest estimates there will be a shortfall of more than 50,000 places in London alone over the next seven years. Accommodating all these children in permanent classrooms would cost about £880m.
Councils are coping by using temporary classrooms or 'bulging' classes - allocating more than 30 children to a class with an extra teacher. Early years specialists worry that these stop-gap solutions could impact on the Early Years Foundation Stage, as children might have insufficient space to learn through play.
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