Sustainable Schools Policy and Area Planning

Part of Ministerial Statement – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 4:00 pm on 17 October 2016.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Peter Weir Peter Weir DUP 4:00, 17 October 2016

I thank the Member for the speech he gave there.

[Laughter.]

I said that there is something radical about this in terms of the pace of movement. For the first time, we have all the key players around the table. What I am saying is that the concept of area planning has been there before. The fact that there is likely to be an overall reduction in the number of schools has been ongoing. One of the things that perhaps has not been noted is that, in the last 10 years, roughly speaking, there has been an overall reduction of about 110 schools across the sectors.

The Member asked specifically about the number of school places. Excluding superannuated places that do not count towards the total, the gap is around 65,000.

Once you add in those who are there on the basis of special needs, you find that the difference between the number of overall places and the number of children in the system is around 51,000, and that has been reducing.

I think that part of the purpose of this — I am very cognisant of the Audit Office report — is to be able to deliver the best educational outcomes for our children. Having that level of capacity is not particularly good. The Audit Office report talks about wanting a situation where the spare capacity in each sector is no greater than 10%. I will give the Member a breakdown of the concentration of spare capacity. At present, while there is still some work to be done on it, in the post-primary situation it is around 8%, and in primary schools it is around 18%. In some cases, that reflects a historic assessment of what potential enrolment figures should be, which is unrealistic in that regard. I think that development proposals will be needed, in some cases, to take those down. There is a desire across the board to grasp this in a mature fashion, to see change to the overall provision and to try to make sure that our resources are put into children, not buildings.