When Randal Cremer Primary School opened in 1875, London’s population was just half what it is now. You might therefore expect that demand for pupil places would be higher than ever. But on Thursday the school will close after running out of its most precious resource: not money, not teachers, but children.
It’s a phenomenon that’s affecting many inner London boroughs. Randal Cremer is one of four primary school sites in Hackney shutting this month because they lack enough pupils, making them financially unviable. Another two are closing in nearby Islington for the same reason. Four have shut in Southwark in the last two years, where 16 more are at risk, and Camden lost its fourth school last summer.
In Lambeth, the number of primary pupils is forecast to drop by an astonishing 24.5 per cent in the space of six years by 2029, according to research by the Education Policy Institute (EPI). The borough’s secondary numbers will also drop 18.8 per cent.
This isn’t necessarily an education emergency; the remaining children will move to other good local schools, even if there are budget issues.
What makes the trend so alarming are its biggest causes: unaffordable housing, the cost of living crisis, and gentrification. Thousands of parents of young children, plus people who want to start families, are being pushed from central areas or out of the capital altogether.
The pattern is expected to continue for years. More primaries are sure to go and secondary schools will see the effects before long.
Many fear that school closures are a symptom of communities being destroyed in a city gradually robbed of its soul. Among them is Randal Cremer’s headteacher, Jo Riley. Taking a break from the “horrible” task of boxing up her office, she welcomes me into what used to be a classroom but is now a glorified store cupboard, full of old books, an electronic drum kit and equipment that will never be used again.
Riley first came to East London in 1998, moving to the capital from Cheltenham as a single mother to start her teaching career. “This part of Hackney, you wouldn’t have touched it at the time,” she recalls. “Nobody would come here. It was so run down.”
Things began to change when nearby Shoreditch “became the hipster, trendy place to be”, she explains. The pace increased when the local London Overground line opened in 2010 with several new stations, including Hoxton which is a four-minute walk from the school. It boosted the area’s accessibility but that helped inflate rents and property prices, as the district became more appealing for students, young professionals and middle-class families.
Each neighbourhood in each London borough has its own story, but there are universal themes. There’s too little social housing with councils’ depleted budgets overstretched, and with developers building too few homes, especially affordable ones big enough for families.
Paul Swinney, director of research and policy at the Centre for Cities think-tank, has noticed the citywide changes by studying demographic data, but he’s also seen the effects in his borough, Haringey. “Most of the schools here are under-subscribed,” he says. His child’s school has three forms in reception, “but there’s only 18 or 19 in each class, so unsurprisingly next year they’re merging them into two.”
Experts cite other factors which affect the rest of the UK, too: huge childcare costs, people typically having fewer children later in life, and Brexit encouraging some migrant families to leave the country.
This isn’t just a London problem: Two schools in Brighton and Hove are closing, plus village primaries in Hampshire, North Yorkshire and the Rhondda valleys of Wales. Another in Hertfordshire shut early in April.
But the problems are most serious in London, where the housing crisis is arguably the biggest cause. And Hackney is at its epicentre.
“This school has served the poorest part of the East End for nearly 150 years”
Jo Riley, headteacher
Riley became Randal Cremer’s head in 2013. A couple of years later, she noticed data about a decrease in children – which education experts call “falling rolls” – looming on the horizon. She wondered what it would mean for her school, but back then never imagined closure. “This school has served the poorest part of the East End for nearly 150 years.”
It originally catered for 460 pupils. When Hackney Council announced in March 2023 that it might shut, just 280 were attending.
For someone like me who attended a London primary school in the 1990s, the situation is hard to comprehend. My year at Raglan Junior School in Enfield had four very full classes. The year below mine had five forms; the year below that had six. To cope with the growing numbers, a cloakroom and our library were converted into classrooms, with books placed on shelves along the corridors instead.
Many Londoners have similar memories, and those without children at school now are often shocked to learn how things have changed across much of the city.
Randal Cremer’s closure was confirmed last December. By then, many parents had already moved their children to other schools nearby, worried that spare places would fill up. Only about 75 children will still be here for the final day. Most of them are in Year 6 and will start at secondary school in September, so they did not need to leave prematurely.
One Year 6 boy, Umut, tells me: “I love how caring the school is… I feel comfortable here, it’s like my second home.” His classmate Kyra agrees. It’s “really upsetting” to think no more children will come here, she says.
The last few months have been tough. “We’ve merged Years 1 and 2 together,” Riley reveals. “We’ve merged Years 3, 4 and 5 and there’s still only 12 or 13 kids in there. We’ve got one Year 5 left, bless her.” Wandering up to the top floor, I find it’s already long been locked shut, unused.
Teachers here admit to being worried about joining other schools that could close within a few years. Some younger children may also go through the same experience a second time.
The UK’s declining numbers of children
- Although the problems are most acute and advanced in areas of inner London, the number of children is falling in many parts of the UK. By 2030, this could lead to a £1bn reduction in English school funding which is linked to pupil numbers, the EPI has warned.
- For primary schools, the North East of England is expected to see the biggest regional drop, down 12.7 per cent between 2022/23 and 28/29, according to EPI projections using ONS data. Among local authorities, the Isle of Wight, Brighton and Hove, Torbay and York will all see drops of more than 20 per cent.
- The birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in England and Wales since records began in 1939. It dropped to 1.49 children per woman in 2022, according to ONS data released in January – with just 400 more births than deaths last year. The birth rate in Scotland is even lower, just 1.37 in 2021.
- Robbie Cruikshanks, author of the EPI study, believes that the large and unavoidable expense of being a parent in the UK is a major factor nationally. “There is a correlation between countries with higher childcare costs and fertility rates,” he tells i. Although housing costs are generally a less severe issue outside of London, broader impacts in the cost of living crisis have hit poorer communities across the country, he believes.
- In contrast, big rises will be seen in Central Bedfordshire (12.5 per cent) Cambridgeshire (8.2 per cent). Cruikshanks says “they are going to face a different challenge with schools overfilled”.
A divided capital
Randal Cremer’s red-brick building looks as grand as ever today, its four storeys crowned by a white Victorian bell tower. Originally called Shap Street School, it consisted of separate institutions for boys, girls and infants. A dusty yearbook shows that on opening it was allocated £186 and seven shillings for “books, maps and apparatus”.
The institution was renamed in 1937 in honour of the pacifist Sir William Randal Cremer, who had been a local MP and was the first British person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. (Although Riley, a proud feminist, was disappointed to learn that Cremer was firmly against women’s suffrage.)
Walking up a stairwell, I discover its view of the City of London skyline over Hoxton’s trees and chimneys. Generations of schoolchildren will have seen the Gherkin, the Scalpel and other skyscrapers being built in the distance, symbols of the fortunes being made so near yet so far from them.
The contrast is obvious if you look in the other direction. A short distance away stands 62-162 Fellows Court, a tower block run by Hackney Council where many flats are social housing. Residents there had to go days without central heating over the winter following a leak, with some telling a local newspaper that the building was in “poor disrepair”, prompting a council apology.
Virtually all the children at Randal Cremer live in social housing, according to Riley. But the council’s waiting list for accommodation with two or more bedrooms is now at least 11 years.
“I’m not going to be able to afford to raise a family here”
Allysha Jandu, Year 2 teacher
Riley believes one factor behind her school’s dwindling numbers is that some middle-class parents are put off by its thoroughly working-class community, leading them to apply for places at a local “free school” instead.
Free schools were established by David Cameron, allowing parents to open new schools funded by the taxpayer even in areas where there are already sufficient school places (even now, more are planned in London). Like Tony Blair-era academies, which many comprehensives have become, they are not controlled by local authorities. This has made it even harder for councils like Hackney to manage and mitigate falling rolls in traditional schools. “The council’s hands are tied,” says Riley.
Many pupils at Randal Cremer have hardships at home. “We regularly have children come in unclean because they haven’t had a bath,” says Year 2 teacher Allysha Jandu. “Hot water is a premium for some people with bills so expensive, it’s horrible for them.”
Staff are glad that London Mayor Sadiq Khan has recently extended free school meals to every child in the capital’s primary schools, but families are still struggling. “Children come in telling us they’re hungry,” says Jandu. “We have a food bank at the end of most days here, giving out bread, fruit and pastries.”
More than 3,700 children in Hackney are homeless, enough to fill eight primary schools, according to the council. Usually their families are given somewhere to live locally, at least for a few months on an emergency basis. But lacking the housing stock they need more permanently, Hackney is among several councils that sometimes end up placing them in other boroughs, even in towns or cities hundreds of miles away – further reducing the numbers of children in London schools.
One teacher at another Hackney school site that’s about to close says they have known of pupils being moved as far away as Manchester.
Riley says the two-child benefit cap, which Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is refusing to scrap, and limits on the local housing allowance have also put pressure on the community.
“We regularly have children come in unclean because they haven’t had a bath”
Allysha Jandu, Year 2 teacher
Although some staff in Hackney schools have gripes about how their council decided which school sites should close, they accept the situation had become unsustainable. Class sizes below 30 are generally seen as a good thing, but teachers say they can become too small, with children becoming overly attached to adults and stressed by bigger groups.
Nevertheless, plenty of the parents are dismayed at what’s happening to Randal Cremer, which has been rated as Good in both of its Ofsted assessments in the last eight years.
“This school has done so much for my two boys,” says James Mahon, a 49-year-old carpenter who grew up in the borough. His younger son, Finlay, is about to leave for secondary school and Mahon is sad that more children won’t replace him here.
He says: “I talk a bit Cockney, a bit lazy. I’ve only got myself to compare them to, but their abilities for English, Maths, every subject, has outshone me when I was their age. I’m gobsmacked sometimes. I’ve got so much gratitude towards the school and the staff.”
“This school has done so much for my two boys”
James Mahon, parent
Key workers pushed out
Like so many key workers – from nurses to waste collectors, from cleaners to police officers – many school staff are having to commute ever greater distances to keep public services running in inner London.
Reception teacher Marcus Gibson has already left the capital. He’s moved out to Hertfordshire, staying with his partner’s parents to save money to buy their first home. “Obviously that won’t be in London,” he says. “There’s no way we could be renting now, I wouldn’t be able to put money away. The cost is crazy.”
At least his morning commute isn’t much more than an hour. Some teachers travel in from Thurrock in Essex, a 90-minute journey.
Iain Bollan cheerily introduces himself as “the premises manager, the caretaker, the bloke who cleans up the sick”. He grew up around here, “but now I live south of the river in Deptford”. That’s purely down to housing costs going “through the roof”, he says. “The level of gentrification here is nuts.”
Jandu is paying £2,000 a month together with her partner for a one-bedroom flat just up the A10 in Dalston. She loves London life, but asked about the future, she says: “Staying here won’t be an option, I’m not going to be able to afford to raise a family here.”
Their rent is still below the Hackney average: £2,332 in May. That went up 12.2 per cent in just a year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Its figures for sales are even more intimidating. The average price in the borough was £611,000 in April, with even first-time buyers typically forking out £575,000.
Hackney councillors have become concerned about the rise of housing being used for holiday lets via platfoms like Airbnb – which is legal in London for up to 90 days a year – and have called for this to be licensed. The previous Government passed a law last year requiring them to be registered, but a system for this is yet to be set up.
All these issues place greater pressures on outer boroughs, where more families from central areas seem to be moving to, because they’re cheaper to live in. Analysis by London Councils, which represents local authorities across the capital, predicted in January that pupil numbers in Havering, for example, will go up 8.1 per cent in the five years up to 2027. Barking and Dagenham, and Kingston upon Thames, will also experience sizeable increases.
“There’s no way we could be renting now… The cost is crazy”
Marcus Gibson, reception teacher
Few people have a clearer perspective of how Hackney has changed than Emma Garnett, who’s worked at Randal Cremer for 19 years. The learning support assistant, who helps children with special educational needs and disabilities, was born less than a mile away in Bethnal Green. She became homeless in the late 1990s but eventually got a council home.
“I had to fight and fight to get that, it was a nightmare,” says Garnett, 59. “Eventually they gave me something, but it was an absolute pigsty.” Still, she’s done it up, and is grateful to have lived there ever since. “I wouldn’t have got it these days, absolutely no hope.” Her daughter has moved to Kent because she couldn’t afford to stay in her hometown.
Garnett largely blames that on Margaret Thatcher’s enduring Right to Buy scheme, which she says was a “great idea” in allowing council tenants to buy their homes at discounted prices, but has led to a decline in social housing availability “and is the catalyst for today’s problems”.
“The people aren’t the problem – it’s the system,” she says. “A vast number of flats in my block are now owned and rented out privately. That’s not what it was built for. We’ve got a lot of student lets. Some are even Airbnbs.”
Another flat that was rented out had bunk beds in the living room to allow 10 men to live there at once. In contrast, she says, some newcomers who bought and moved into ground-floor flats are wealthy enough to have built offices in their gardens during the pandemic.
“The level of gentrification here is nuts”
Iain Bollan, caretaker
Hackney Council says it has been working hard to increase its social housing stock. More than half of all the new homes built or approved in recent years have been for social rent, shared ownership or regulated rents that are lower than private costs.
But the waiting list for social homes has hit 8,500 households, with only 500 places available annually. Blaming years of austerity funding cuts, the local authority has prioritised people with the most extreme needs, including those “who are homeless, have a significant medical need or a threat to their life”.
“I know people who have got two teenage boys and a girl at secondary school in a two-bedroom place,” says Garnett, “but they’re not even allowed to bid for a council home.” Many school staff are living in “really overcrowded conditions”, she adds. “It’s wrong.”
The influx of wealthier residents has led to the mix of local businesses changing, too. “There were bakers who had been in business for 100 years but they’ve been priced out. Now I can’t afford to buy a loaf of bread around here because it’s all special sourdough and it costs about six quid.”
She worries about the city as a whole. “We’re going back to the days of the really poor and the really rich,” she says. “What is London going to look like in the future? Is it just going to be this constantly transient population: short rent, job, gone? Is it going to become a childless society and only for the middle classes?”
“When I was a child, the National Front used to march through here. The more that people feel aggrieved, I can see this area going back to how I remember it as a child, and it wasn’t nice. I can feel the shift in the world – and in my community – going further to the extreme right. It scares the living shit out of me.”
“What is London going to look like in the future? Is it going to become a childless society?”
Emma Garnett, learning support assistant
Will anything stop the decline?
Many of the pressures felt by the Randal Cremer community are also problems for London’s so-called squeezed middle. They have more financial leeway than lower-income households, but seeing how expensive the city is becoming for families, they are also joining the exodus.
Among my friendship group over the last couple of years, for example, four couples in their mid-thirties who have called London home for 15 years, who all lived further to the east in Leytonstone, have either moved away already or are about to go.
One of the couples – a nurse and a fellow journalist, who have two young children – have found a much bigger house in West Yorkshire for far less money than their current terraced home. They currently pay £1,000 a month on “super expensive” childcare just for their youngest child, even with the benefit of both working shifts which help them take turns in parenting duties. Childcare will still be pricey up north, but they will save thousands every year.
Paul Swinney of the Centre for Cities says that parents in their thirties have been leaving the capital for reasons like these for decades. But he wonders if people are now moving away earlier in their lives, before they have children. “If London becomes ever more expensive,” he adds, “then when does it start to not be a choice to move here in the first place?”
The Government says it wants to tackle the problems inner London has been experiencing by redeveloping “brown belt” land such as old factories and “grey belt” property like disused car parks and garages.
In its manifesto, Labour committed to delivering 1.5 million new homes across the country by the end of this Parliament, including “the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation’’. For renters, it intends to ban “no fault” evictions and introduce protections against unreasonable increases in charges.
Aiming to give people “first dibs” to new developments in their community, Housing minister Jim McMahon said last week: “People need local housing and want to ensure that the next generation is able to live in the places they were born and raised instead of being priced out or finding low availability.”
“If London becomes ever more expensive, when does it start to not be a choice to move here in the first place?”
Paul Swinney, Centre for Cities
The Mayor of Hackney, Caroline Woodley, tells i: “Hackney’s schools are among the best in the country, so I’m deeply frustrated that we find ourselves in a situation where we have no choice but to close or merge four of our schools.
“A combination of factors, including the national housing crisis, the effects of benefit changes, and the impact of families leaving after Brexit mean that some schools are now unviable as class sizes across the capital fall, with schools’ running costs far exceeding their funding.
“We have a track record of building genuinely affordable council homes to help address the housing crisis in Hackney. We have reaffirmed our commitment to building more council housing and buying back properties to mitigate some of the pressures. However, until the wider factors causing pupil numbers in London to fall are confronted, this trend is likely to continue – as we have seen already in other parts of the capital.” The council has no plans to close or merge secondary schools at this time.
A spokesperson for Sadiq Khan says the city’s population “has always fluctuated” but acknowledges the reasons for declining numbers of children is concerning.
They tell i: “The Mayor has been doing all he can to support families with the spiralling cost of living, including building more new homes for Londoners than any time since the 1930s and funding free school meals to all state primary school children. Sadiq is looking forward to working hand in hand with the new Government to build a better London for everyone.”
Khan has previously urged councils “not to take decisions which later on they regret” by closing schools, as it would be hard to expand capacity again if the situation rebounds.
Swinney says he would be “very surprised” if the number of children in the capital starts going up again in the foreseeable future. His organisation estimates the country has a deficit of 4.3 million homes, so even if Starmer delivers his target, big problems will still exist. He is pleased the Government seems to be serious about reforming the planning system, though he thinks “the words sound radical but the policies are not”.
Riley isn’t sure what she’ll do next. “I need a couple of months to recharge and rethink what the future is,” she says. The closure process has been particularly exhausting coming so soon after the pandemic. “People think we had two years of holiday, but we didn’t. I’ve never worked so hard.” Before that, she adds, came austerity. “There’s only so much you can do before you start to break.”
And what of the building? It feels cruel to say this to Riley, but surely it will become luxury flats. “I’ve been predicting that for eight years,” she replies. “I don’t know what else it could be.” It’s a beautiful structure, she adds, but it will be expensive to convert. “They won’t be flats for my kids, will they?”