How is the planning system addressing the shortage of school places in London?

The example of the London Borough of Bromley

David KingmanPhD Researcher, The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL

Introduction“…a combination of rising pupil populations, spiraling building costs and lack of available land is putting increasing pressure on London boroughs to provide places for pupils”

London Councils (2014)

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 20240

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

4,500

3,302

3,993

2,8843,282

Projected number of pupils at state-funded primary and secondary schools in England, 2009-2024, thousands

Primary Pupils Secondary Pupils

Theoretical Framework – “New Institutionalism”

Key concept: The “Organisational Field” – a complex problem affecting multiple stakeholders to which they each bring different beliefs, approaches and goals (Hoffman, 1999) Powell (2008) argued that the explanations for how different actors within an organisational field behave can be sorted into three groups: • Coercive – i.e. based on formal rules and laws; • Normative – i.e. based on dominant attitudes and patterns

of behaviour within each institution, and; • Cultural – i.e. instilled by the fundamental design or

purpose of an institutional structure.

Institution Function Policies

Central Government – The Department for Education

• (Pre-2010) Distributes funding to LEAs; formulates national education policy

• (Post-2010) Provides direct funding for new schools and school places; approves or rejects proposals for new schools; supplies land and buildings for new schools

• 2010 Academies Act• 2011 Education Act• Permitted Development (PD) rights allowing the

conversion of almost any other type of building into a free school for its first academic year, and permanent conversions of offices, hotels, residential institutions and community facilities into permeant free schools without full planning applications

Local Education Authorities (LEAs)

• (Pre-2010) Legal duty to provide a school place for each child; responsible for day-today funding and operation of most schools; directly builds new schools

• (Post-2010) Legal duty to provide a school place for each child; no formal role in approving or running free schools or academies

• Differing degrees of acceptance towards the Academies and free schools agenda

Local Planning Authorities (LPAs)

• (Pre-2010) Plans for social infrastructure within local area by creating a Local Plan; grants planning permission for new schools and school expansion

• (Post-2010) Same functions as previously, but authority is constrained by central government permitted development rights

• Set out local development policies in the Local Plans covering each area, including allocating sites for schools

Education Providers

• (Pre-2010) Day-to-day running of individual schools, mostly under direct control of local authorities

• (Post-2010) Many schools freed from local authority control; encouraged to be entrepreneurial

• Almost 4,500 existing schools convert to academy status by 2015

• 318 new Free Schools created by 2015

Literature Review: “laisse-faire localism?” (Hodgson and Spours, 2012)

Maps showing the administrative geography of Regional Schools Commissioners (left) and Local Education Authorities (right)

Methodology• 8 semi-structured, face-to-face qualitative interviews with key

individuals in the main case study area

• Expert or “elite” interviews (Dexter, 1970) - 8 individuals were all representatives of the 4 key institutions who comprised the organisational field

• Data from interviews were coded in accordance with Powell (2008)’s classification of factors which explain institutional behavior

• Methodological triangulation (Bryman, 2011) was employed by assessing what the interviewees said against my analysis of a set of official documents and datasets to test its degree of subjectivity

Case Study: The London Borough of Bromley

Maps showing the Bromley’s position in relation to the rest of the UK and London (left) and the area of Bromley which is covered by either Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land (right)

Results/Analysis

Conclusions/Recommendations• Post-2010 planning and education reforms contain several fundamental tensions which

have led to increased conflicts between different institutional actors:1. Between central government control of creating new schools and local government

control of spatial planning;

2. Between the idea of comprehensive spatial planning which predominates within LPAs and the normative belief in improving public services through competition which predominates in central government;

3. Between local governments’ statutory duty to provide school places and central government’s monopoly on approving new schools

4. Between the idea of decentralising power over running schools to local communities and the way that this has been achieved by increasing the powers of central government and markets at the expense of elected local governments.

• The case study of Bromley suggested that LEAs are finding new ways of working with other institutions to fulfill their statutory duties, but the division of responsibilities and resources between central and local government needs to be better balanced in order to prevent a shortage of school places from occurring.

• Bryman, A. (2011) “Triangulation” In: Lewis-Beck, M., Bryman, A. and Liao, T. (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Social Science Research Methods Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications

• Clarke, N. and Cochrane, A. (2013) “Geographies and politics of localism: The localism of the United Kingdom's coalition government” Political Geography, 34, 10–23

• Dexter, L.A. (1970) Elite and Specialized Interviewing Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press • Education Select Committee (2015) Academies and free schools: Fourth Report of Session 2014-15 London: House

of Commons • Feigin, J. R., Orum, A. M., and Sjoberg, G. (1991) A case for case study Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina

Press • Hodgson, A. and Spours, K. (2012) “Three versions of ‘localism’: implications for upper secondary education and

lifelong learning in the UK” Journal of Education Policy, 27, 2, 193– 210 • Hoffman, A. (1999) “Institutional Evolution and Change: Environmentalism and the U.S. Chemical Industry” The

Academy of Management Journal, 42, 4, 351-371 • London Councils (2014) Do the Maths 2014 London: London Councils • March, J. and Olsen, J. (1984) “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life” The American

Political Science Review, 78, 3, 734–749 • Powell, W. (2008) “The New Institutionalism” In: Clegg, S. and Bailey, J. (eds.) International Encyclopaedia of

Organization Studies London: Sage, 977–978• Rodriguez-Pose, A. and Gill, N. (2003) “The global trend towards devolution and its implications” Environment and

Planning C: Government and Policy, 23, 333351• Schoolsweek (2015) Regional Schools Commissioners: your guide to who, what and where... London: Schoolsweek • Servillo, L.A. and Broeck, P. (2012) “The Social Construction of Planning Systems: A Strategic- Relational

Institutionalist Approach” Planning Practice & Research 27, 1, 41-61

References