Patten aims to cut surplus school places

UP TO 900,000 surplus school places in England will be eliminated in the next three or four years, John Patten, Secretary of State for Education, said yesterday, writes Donald MacLeod.

The Government's Education Bill proposes sweeping new powers for the Secretary of State to direct local authorities to close or reorganise schools if he judges there are excess school places and to bring forward his own proposals if they fail to do so.

In his first BBC television interview since taking up his present Cabinet post eight months ago, Mr Patten said that there were an estimated 1.5 million surplus places in English classrooms, costing pounds 320m a year in premises-related costs. He said that his target was to eliminate 750,000 to 900,000 of those places.

Mr Patten, who is already under attack from the Conservative press as well as teachers and parents, accepted he would make himself unpopular over the issue but said it had to be tackled.