Emergency funds made available to ease crisis in primary school admissions, but are too late for this September’s intake

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, will today announce an emergency £200m plan to build hundreds of new classrooms and ease a growing crisis in the primary school admissions system.

The funding comes amid claims by councils that the recession is forcing up demand for state school places. One in five local authorities say they face exceptional rises in demand for primary places as parents chose state instead of private schools to save money and fewer move house when their child starts school. The survey, by the Local Government Association, also revealed a hike in demand for free school meals in 15% of local authorities, which are worst affected by the recession.

Ministers will make the announcement in parliament today, but it will not be in time to ease the crisis in places for this September. Councils will be expected to bid for their share of the £200m funding, setting out their need and explaining why they could not foresee the problem when birthrates began to rise a few years ago.

Official figures show a rise in the number of reception-aged pupils between January 2008 and January 2009 in 126 local authorities – with a 3.3% increase nationally. A recent report by London Councils, which represents local authorities in the capital, said 25 out of the city’s 33 authorities had capacity problems, with a total shortfall of 5,000 places expected next year. In Camden, north London, the council announced last week it is to rent a church hall to teach 90 pupils from September due to the shortage.

Other areas with problems include Sheffield, Bradford, Bristol and Hove. But it is a patchwork problem with about half a million surplus places in the system overall after several years of falling numbers.

The government has insisted that local authorities should be able to predict changes in population rates but a spokesperson for the LGA said that the recession brought exceptional circumstances which they could not have anticipated.

The LGA survey of council bosses found that just under 20% of local authorities had already witnessed a rise in demand for places, which they attributed to the recession and another 13% are predicting future rises.

Les Lawrence, the chairman of the LGA’s children’s board, said: “Predicting how many school places will be needed from year to year is a complex issue. Councils do their best to produce accurate calculations on how many children will be starting in their schools, but it is not an exact science and will vary from area to area.

“In the short-term, councils will be working with schools to help them find extra capacity and draft in extra teachers and support staff, but there also needs to be an emphasis on improving methods of forecasting for the future.”

A cross party group of MPs, called Balanced Immigration, claimed that immigration is compounding the problem in some areas of England, where the proportion of births to foreign-born women has risen from 17.1% in 2001 to 24.0 per cent in 2007, increasing the birthrate overall in some areas.

Frank Field and Nicholas Soames, co-chairmen of the group, said: “The need to increase funding for primary schools is a direct result of mass immigration feeding into our population. The number of births to foreign mothers has risen by 65% since 2001 while the number of births to UK-born mothers has only risen by 6.4%.

“This is a major reason for the pressure on our primary schools, but the government remain in denial about the consequences of their losing control of our borders. Instead they refer to “local circumstances”. This is deliberately misleading.”