Swindon Borough Council school Place Planning

In recent years there has been a major growth in new housing in Swindon.  In addition to this regeneration, the Local Authority’s vision is to improve the Borough’s whole environment – increasing the opportunities that are offered for young people in Swindon and creating the conditions for increasing the opportunities for, and attainment of, those young people. 

Cambridge Education was jointly commissioned by the Directors of Environment and Regeneration, and Children’s Services to carry out a study of the range of education-related children’s services expected to be needed in Swindon over the next 20 years. 

The study reflected the Council’s ambition of effectively responding to community needs, looking beyond its traditional statutory duties to build an agenda for success as expressed in its Community Strategy. The study was also required to respond to the contemporary agenda within children’s services – such as meeting the Every Child Matters outcomes – and to take into account the role of the Local Authority as a ‘commissioner’ of educational provision (and not necessarily a provider).  

The work was carried out in the period December 2008 to March 2009.  A feature of the review was engaging with the Swindon education community and other stakeholders to elicit their views of educational provision in Swindon now and into the future.  Much of the work was necessarily of a ‘technical’ nature, working with Swindon Local Authority, neighbouring Authorities, central government agencies and the Local Authority’s social infrastructure advisers to assess population and school-roll forecasting methods to assess the demand for school places in the future.

The outcome of this exercise was a more refined model of forecasting for use by the Local Authority that in turn helped to determine how many school places and other educational provision were needed across the Borough.  An analysis of supply and demand for school places in each of the geographical areas of the Borough was provided.  Borough-wide issues and the need for change in post-16 provision, extended schools, early years, special educational needs, admissions arrangements and provision in localities were also analysed.

The Cambridge Education report provided the Local Authority with a comprehensive picture of the future need for school places, the number and types of schools needed in the future as a key component of the Borough’s strategic development plan.