England Is Heading for a School Places Crisis

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Many a VICE reader won't yet be concerning themselves with the various stresses of bringing children up in this modern world of Tinder and Ben 10. But when you do choose to reproduce, there are costs that need addressing before the fruit of your generous loins pops forth from their nine-month incubation period. And they're not all financial in nature.

Every child in England must attend compulsory education between the ages of five and 17. Back in my day you could sod off out of the system as soon as you'd failed your GSCE exams, assuming you even showed up to them, but nowadays kids have to stay sitting upright and facing forwards until they're of legal drinking age, or close enough. And this is a complementary service, costs covered by the nation's taxpayers.

But, much like getting oneself on the property ladder in a baby boomer-overrun market, negotiating the very first steps into education for your pride and joy can be a horrifically stressful process. On Thursday, parents across England received word of where their September starters would be going. Everyone registering a kid for state-funded primary school education will have submitted a list outlining preferred choices, determined by both Ofsted reports on local institutions and their proximity to your own front door—and trust me, the closer the school, the better, when your child would rather strip down to their underpants five minutes from classes commencing than put their bloody shoes on. (This morning, it took son #1 17 minutes to get suitably booted. Seventeen minutes, and he's still in Velcro.)

Every parent will have a preferred school for their son or daughter to start at—but while this year's results for who-got-where-and-why is far from the university clearing scrum that rocks the press every summertime, photos of glum teens staring out from the pages of discarded freesheets, not everyone will have got their number one choice. And when it's not your first kid who's going through the (what honestly feels like a) lottery for places, this can present some logistical nightmares.

A Manchester area mother has been left "crushed" this week, as her daughter missed out on a place at the same school her older brothers attend. "I don't know what I'm going to do," the distraught mom told the Manchester Evening News; "I can't split myself in half and be at two schools at once." I can sympathize with her position, as I've had family experience of the exact same thing.

My brother-in-law used to live in a Hampshire village called Bishopstoke—somewhere I know back-of-my-hand well, as I lived in the area myself from birth until I buggered off to university in the English northwest, for nights out at Liverpool's Krazyhouse and hungover mornings poking about Birchwood's Asda for greasy revival. He's got three daughters, two of whom breezed into the local infant school. But his third daughter was not so lucky, and for the past year he's had to pay a child-minder to ferry her back and forth, between home and a different school a mile up the road, while his wife does the daily run to the closer site. This September will see the situation change, as all three daughters will finally be attending schools roughly in the same place.

There could have been further headaches, though. This September, his son will begin school, but a recent house move has positioned the family within a different catchment area. His wife, my sister-in-law, only listed the same school his sisters attended in her options for where he was to go, offering no alternatives, and she's got lucky—the sibling connection has proved telling this time around, and he won't have to begin his education over three miles away from where he "should" be. If he'd have been told to go elsewhere, an appeal could have been lodged—your local council will have these forms available.

Not that complaining will always lead to results—I know of moms who I went to school with in the 1990s who now have to race between different locations to deliver their children each morning, regularly facing the wrath of frustrated teachers for their lateness. It must drive them out of their mind to work so hard just to get their kids to class of a morning, racking up the miles when, surely, there must be some way to sensibly school said siblings together.

My son's got his—well, our—first choice: an Ofsted-approved school that's, quite literally, a stone's thrown from our house. But we planned it this way—when we moved to the place we live in now, right beside the basin of Shoreham Port, we did our homework and researched the local schools. At the time my son was only one, but we felt it'd pay to be prepared—so we moved as close to the best one that we could without compromising our chances of a suitable second-choice option (not quite as good, but still just one road of significant traffic away). Nevertheless, when crunch time came there were no guarantees.

Yesterday, I saw my wife post on Facebook: "Does anyone know what time I should get the email about school admissions? Haven't heard yet." This was at about 11AM. At ten to three that afternoon, she sends me a text: "Still not heard about the school." Now even I'm starting to panic, slightly. "Might have to home school, aaarrrggg!" is the next message. But then, salvation in the shape of a succinct confirmation: son #1 will be where we wanted him to be. I'm already fairly greying, but I could feel a fair few more hairs have their color drained over that little discourse.

Over 100 parents put their kids down for a place—be that as first, second, or third choice—at what'll now be "our" school. Only 30 would be successful. I feel lucky, somewhat. Relieved, certainly. While we're so close to our first choice that you could run a cricket wicket between its entrance gate and our doorstep—well, not quite, but you get what I mean—there's no part of the country with a 100 percent success rate of number one option provision. The BBC reports that, in Birmingham for example, one in 20 pupils-to-be didn't get a school that was any of their choices, with over 500 kids offered schooling beyond the city limits. To not put too fine a point on said shitty scenario: fuck that.

However, while it's all stress-soothing sunshine for the vast majority of parents right now, the next couple of years are going to put the squeeze on the primary schools admission process like never before. The same BBC report states that two in five local authorities claim they'll have too few spaces for new pupils as early as September 2016, and that this pinch is being felt most painfully in places like Leicester and London, Reading and Peterborough. This is something the next government will need to turn its attention to right away, and while the incumbent Conservative Party is keen to highlight the 400,000 additional school places it has created since 2010, the demand is far greater.

England needs to find seats in its primary classrooms for almost a million more pupils by the end of this decade, at a cost predicted to stretch to £12 billion [$18 billion]. A spokesperson for the Local Government Association, David Simmons, has bluntly posited that we are "facing a national crisis." My eldest son's place at infant school is assured, and I couldn't be happier—but son #2 will be in the same position three years from now, and I'm acutely aware that there's every chance he'll have to attend somewhere other than where his brother is. That's a concern that can't wait until the last minute, and this is a problem that no amount of good news in the short term can paper over.

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