The recent Comprehensive Spending Review looks set to have major implications for families with school-aged children, particularly if they are relocating. Fiona Leney reports.

It is becoming clear, as the dust settles around the October 2010 public spending review, that things will not be as rosy for education as the government’s pledge to increase funding for schools suggested.

While the schools resource budget, which covers day-to-day running costs, will grow, the rise in the number of pupils will mean that spending per pupil actually falls. In addition, most schools will also have their budgets cut, unless they have an unusually high number of disadvantaged children, entitling them to claim the ‘pupil premium’ for each child eligible for free school meals.

Ironically, the pressures on the schools’ budget will be increased by Education Secretary Michael Gove’s plan to allow new schools to be created by private groups such as teachers or parents – the ‘free schools’ plan.

The policy of setting up the new schools requires the government to pay for new school buildings – just when money is short. It is becoming clear that the money simply isn’t there to deliver the 26,000 free school places each year which was originally intended. This is a problem for government and parents alike – especially relocating parents who want to come back in to the state system from abroad, or move around within it.

What has become screamingly obvious over the last few months, with the publication of new data, is that there are simply not enough school places – and the situation will become worse.

Last year, Re:locate reported that a study by the think-tank London Councils had found shortages of primary-school places already in London and warned that more than 18,000 extra reception places would be needed by 2014. The total school population is forecast to rise by almost 3% over the next five years, and any spare places that there are in the school system tend to be in the wrong parts of the country. Spare places in the South East, for example, tend to be concentrated in weaker schools.

Again, for the relocating parent, the somewhat worrying conclusion has to be that, if a school you’re considering has several empty places, you should look very carefully at why this might be. An obvious place to start would be the school’s position in the league tables, and although they should be taken with a pinch of salt, a report just out does suggest that league tables which are made public do help raise school standards.

The Bristol University Centre for Market and Public Organisation compared schools in Wales, which does not publish league tables, with those in England. After taking into account all other factors, the study found that students at the schools with published league tables achieved, on average, two GCSE grades better than those without.

More grammar schools to be created?

For parents of able children who wish to remain in the state sector, Mr Gove has offered a glimmer of hope that existing grammars will be able to create more places, but also, crucially, could be given permission to build new premises and start ‘satellite’ schools.

This is a significant shift for David Cameron, who, before the election, controversially ruled out building new grammar schools. But ministers now accept that Mr Gove’s free-schools policy has made it well-nigh impossible to prevent the expansion, or even the creation, of new grammar schools.

In effect, the free-school policy means that government can hardly tell would-be free-school projects, “You can start any sort of school you like, as long as it isn’t a grammar.” A senior government source has confirmed that where there was demand from parents in areas of population growth, existing grammars would be able to expand places.

There’s only one problem. If there is less money in the education pot for capital projects, how will the costs be met?