25 Jul 2024
Beaumont parents have welcomed the news that County Hall has agreed to permanently increase the school’s intake.
Back in March the St Albans Times exclusively revealed how families who had moved into the catchment area for Beaumont School were shocked to find the boundaries drastically reduced for next year’s intake of secondary school pupils.
On instruction from Herts county council, the hugely popular ‘Outstanding’ school had reduced its intake from eight back down to seven forms following a couple of years taking the larger cohort, meaning the catchment has shrunk by 336m, a situation compounded by the building of two new housing estates on former school land.
This left pupils who would have normally expected to attend the school in Year 7 being allocated places at single-sex and faith schools far from their homes.
Although Beaumont wanted to permanently increase its Published Admissions Number (PAN), including offering a substantial contribution from their own funds to the building work which will be taking place over the next few years at the school under the auspices of the Department for Education’s School Rebuilding Programme, HCC rejected the offer.
Following our news coverage, and pressure from St Albans MP Daisy Cooper and local Lib Dem county councillors Chris White and Anthony Rowlands, HCC made a major U-turn and agreed to maintain the eight-form entry for the next academic year.
Now after months of uncertainty about the long-term future of the school’s intake, and vigorous campaigning by the MP and county councillors, HCC has agreed that the higher pupil numbers will be permanently maintained.
Daisy Cooper said: “The Beaumont School place fiasco should never have happened in the first place. The breakdown in communication between the Conservative-controlled Hertfordshire County Council and the Department for Education caused an understandable storm of anger from residents.
“We are very pleased that our calls for the permanent expansion of Beaumont School have been accepted.”
Cllr Anthony Rowlands ( St Albans East Division) added: “Herts county council should and could have prevented the Beaumont School place fiasco.
“We are delighted that the Beaumont School expansion will be permanent. This overdue decision will allay the concerns of many parents.”
The decision has been met with a sigh of relief from those families who feared they would miss out on a place.
Pete Duddles said: “I was delighted that after the group effort from many parents (and in particular Henry Gregg) that we were able to secure the additional class at Beaumont and the icing on the cake was when it was agreed for the extra class to be made permanent. It meant that our son, who had missed out on a place by 30 metres did comfortably get into Beaumont for this September.
“Obviously it was a stressful time and I feel that with better communication between Herts County council and St Albans local council this could well have all been avoided. Saying that I was very impressed with the work of Daisy Cooper and our local councillors who went into battle for us.
“Although this has offered a temporary reprieve on school places – I am still very concerned about the impact of the new housing developments and Labour’s proposed VAT on private school fees causing more demand for state school places in our area, with no spare capacity being available. I will be writing to Daisy Cooper to ask what can be done about this.”
Alix Artus added: “We, as a family, feel incredibly lucky of the permanent increase. Indeed, my daughter has directly benefited from the opening of the new class. We have two boys after her who will also be able to follow at Beaumont.”
