e-petitions - Expand Langford Village Academy

We the undersigned petition the council to expand the site at, or build a supplementary site for, Langford Village Academy to ensure that there are enough school places for ALL children living in the village.

Supporting details

This year, for the first time ever, children who live in Langford are being denied a place at Langford Village Academy because the school is over-subscribed. These 4-year-olds have been allocated places at schools in Biggleswade, effectively disenfranchising certain parts of the village from the community to which they belong. This issue stands to get much worse in the coming years.

In the last 5 years, approximately 250 new homes have been built in Langford, with a further 287 currently in the planning or building phase. No money has been spent on expanding the lower school to allow for more classes.
Central Bedfordshire Council’s own Pupil Yield Ratio states that, for every 100 new houses built in Central Bedfordshire, 6 new school places should be made available in every year group in the local school. This means that, by the time the developments behind Tithe Farm Close and off Cambridge Road are complete, Langford Village Academy will require 30 new places (or an entire new class) in each year group.

Central Bedfordshire Council instead took the decision this year to reduce the intake of Reception children at Langford Village Academy from 45 to 30.

This year, the first child refused a place in the school lived on Kingsley Manor. This cut-off point will only move closer to the school as more new houses are built.

This issue will be compounded further by Year 5 and 6 classes being resident in the school as the district moves to a two-tier education system. This will create a higher volume of siblings, who take priority in the school’s admissions policy, which means that families who are sending their first child to LVA are less-and-less likely to be allocated a place.
Money for the necessary building work is available through the S106 monies that were allocated to our village in the planning process.

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