‘Where am I going to send my children?’: anguish as schools close across England

Sonia Tann says she has woken in tears every morning since parents were informed that her local school, St Pancras Catholic primary in Lewes, East Sussex, could be forced to close next year.

A final decision will not be taken until the autumn, but with a daughter in year two and a son due to start at the school in September, she now faces the agonising decision of whether, and when, to move them elsewhere.

She says: “Where am I going to send my children? Do I pull them out now? Do I wait for the official decision in November? But then I will have started my child for one term, and then relocated him.”

The letter parents received in mid-May kicked off a three-month consultation period. But closure appears to be the only option for the one-form entry school – and she and fellow mother Caroline Clark say it is symptomatic of the changing character of the picturesque Sussex town.

“I used to run [local restaurant] Bill’s, and life changes, and I’m now currently a single parent of two children on benefits – and you can’t afford to live in Lewes,” says Tann, who has also run a local food bank in recent years.

Birthrates have declined across the UK in the past decade; but in Lewes the number of reception-age children enrolling at state schools has fallen by more than a third, from 212 in 2014-15 to 138 in 2022-23.

Clark, a writer and translator, grew up in the town, attending St Pancras herself, and had always hoped to return with her children. But when she was looking to return 10 years ago, she says: “For all my dreams of coming back, I suddenly realised what Lewes had become.”

She and her husband just managed to buy a home on the edge of town – but, she says: “We would never be able to afford it now, and I just know my children will never be able to afford it.”

Both women – who are governors at the school, but spoke to the Guardian in a personal capacity – say parents are being driven out by a lack of affordable places to live.

“Lewes is really community spirited, but what can you do to fight the rising prices?” says Clark. “Families go to Eastbourne, families go to Seaford.”

“There won’t be anything left except the people who are commuting through,” says Tann, who lives with her children in a council flat next to the school. “They’ve maybe got some work in Brighton for a couple of days so they’ll Airbnb in Lewes. You’ve got Glyndebourne, they’ll go and enjoy that.”

A quick search of home rental site reveals more than 130 Airbnb properties for rent in the desirable South Downs town, which is just over an hour from London by train.

The consultation document issued to parents said: “St Pancras has a high level of surplus provision. Preferences for the school have fallen acutely in the last few years” – adding that it had been under-subscribed for the last seven.

It also pointed to guidance from the Department for Education suggesting new schools should aim for at least two-form entry – taking in 60 pupils a year – to be financially viable. In recent years it had already had to teach children from more than one year group in some classes.

Clark and Tann argue that the small scale of St Pancras is a significant part of its appeal, as well as the fact it has a diverse socioeconomic mix. “There are some children that need to be in a small school,” says Tann.

A spokesperson for the diocese of Arundel and Brighton said the diocese and East Sussex county council had “taken every possible measure to ensure the viability and flourishing of the school”.

The anguish of St Pancras parents is being repeated across the UK as councils wrestle with declining pupil numbers – most pressingly in London, where, as in Lewes, the issue is exacerbated by eye-watering house prices.

The Guardian spoke to a reader whose nine-year-old son’s school, St Dominic’s in Camden, north London – also a Catholic primary – is closing this summer.

A resident of nearby social housing, she did not want to be named, but echoed some of the sentiments encountered in Lewes.

“We got a letter home in the book bags on Friday to say they were planning to close the school. People were literally opening up the letters and standing there with looks of astonishment on their faces,” she said. “It was a consultation with only one option.

“We and other parents had to make a really terrible decision: once we realised that there was no option but closure, everybody started to leave because a scramble for places began.”

Her son has now found a place at another primary, a mile away, but his friends have been scattered across the borough.

“He loved his school. The day that he left and a couple of his other friends were leaving, the headmistress was in tears, the caretaker was in tears, the music teacher was in tears,” she said. Like other central boroughs including Hackney, Camden is in the process of closing several schools as pupil numbers drop.

For Catholic schools, the slowdown in arrivals from Catholic countries such as Poland after Brexit may be a factor, though data is scarce as yet.

Back in Lewes, Tann and Clark accept that it is too late for St Pancras – though they believe parents could have worked together to launch a recruitment drive, if they had realised how perilous its situation had become.

When Clark told her eight-year-old daughter about the school’s impending closure, she said: “But it’s my home. I feel safe there.”