We, the undersigned, petition Brighton and Hove City Council to reject the school admission proposals to reduce the published admission numbers (PAN) of the following seven primary schools:

Bevendean Primary School

Carden Primary School

Coldean Primary School

Queen’s Park Primary School

Rudyard Kipling Primary School

Saltdean Primary School

Woodingdean Primary School

All seven of these primary schools are thriving community schools, providing exceptional education for our children.

Reducing the PAN, reduces the number of children a school can accept, which reduces the funding that school receives, which leads to staff job losses and less money overall for the school. Therefore, these proposals place many of these schools on a downward trajectory to closure.

Reducing the PAN at these schools will mean many children are unable to attend their local school and will be forced to travel much further, probably by car, during a climate crisis.

Reducing the PAN will mean children in these catchment areas, many of whom are the most disadvantaged children in the whole of the city, are forced to cope in larger classes, affecting their mental well-being and educational attainment. Larger class sizes also detrimentally affect children with special educational needs (SEN), and if these proposals go ahead, many of these children are likely to either significantly struggle or no longer be able to access mainstream education at all.

Reducing the PAN means combining two year groups at many of these schools, doubling staff workloads and inevitably affecting the quality of teaching.

These school admission proposals are short-sighted and fail to properly consider the impact on our children, our staff, our families and our communities and we therefore insist the proposals are rejected. We believe a fairer school admissions policy should be explored which does not unfairly target children who are already at a significant disadvantage within our city.