So you'd have thought that moving to a new housing development with a brand new school, you'd be certain of a place there for your kids?

Well, may be not entirely! Whilst the school build was sized based on the initially anticipated occupation numbers on Arbury Park, there are no restrictions who can be given a place - it's all down to first come first served, whether you live on Arbury Park or not.

And with the school's annual funding formula based on the number of children in attendance at the school, it's certainly not in the school's interest to discourage applications. So much so, that if you want your child in reception at your local school from this coming September, then you need to have applied yesterday to get one of the last couple of reception places!

 

Heaven help those families who move on to Arbury Park in the next 15 months as their reception age kids will probably have to go to school elsewhere!

And surely the reception year is just the start - other years must be likely to follow as statistically, you'd expect each year to fill up roughly equally. And of course from Sept 2010 we now know that year 1 (at least) will be full.

Let's do the maths (something your kids may not be able to at their local school!)...

There are currently just over 300 homes occupied, which means another 600 yet to be occupied (possibly another 900 if the additional planning applications are approved).

So for every one of the 15(?) children in next year's reception class, we could expect another 2 or 3 will move on to Arbury Park and have to go to school elsewhere. Worst case scenario is that all next year's reception children are from Arbury Park, which means we could expect something between 30 & 45 more reception age children to move on to Arbury Park when all the homes are occupied.

And that's just the reception year, never mind years 1 to 6!!

Of course there is room to build about another three classrooms, but that will need funding by Cambridgeshire County Council and will only happen if there are no suitable spaces in other local primary schools...something that is likely to happen only after the residents have suffered enormously.

And of course the ostriches with their heads in the ground will say that this is merely scare mongering and that the school isn't over-subscribed yet, and probably won't be. Well let's hope that sheer optimism wins through!

So who did the thinking here...someone who didn't realise that more people would continue to be moving on to Arbury Park? Someone who couldn't work out how to plan for a slow start with school numbers? Someone who wanted the easiest short term solution without worrying about the long term consequences?

Am I surprised? Not at all! Am I disappointed and dis-heartened? Abso-blooming-lutely!

Just to be clear...this is Cambridge County's planning policy and nothing to do with either South Cambs District Council (or Impington Council), but despite that once again it's the Arbury Parkers that are getting the raw deal, short measured, short changed, done over, shafted, screwed!!!

"The Man" is once again raining on our parade...