AFTER setbacks such as the Building Schools for the Future scheme being dropped, Ilkley Grammar School could have done with some help to increase provision on its Cowpasture Road site.

Schools, and indeed many other services everywhere, are fighting over increasingly small pots of public money, but there is a very good chance that all those bidding for help do in fact need it. On paper, Ilkley Grammar School is highly successful, and with the commitment of local students and parents, as well as teachers and governors, it’s unlikely it will become a failing school on the back of a lack of space, even if that must seriously constrain school life.

But education services really must serve the whole community, and that means having enough capacity to cope with the numbers already expected based on local primary school figures - before getting into the issue of more families moving in and more houses being built. The upshot is unlikely to be a school which performs poorly - but an education system which fails to provide for all local children looks a real danger.

Ilkley Grammar may not tick all the boxes that other schools, presumably those with near-critical building problems, do. However, there will soon be too little space to take in all local children. The answer cannot simply be ‘families should choose other areas to settle in’ or ‘we’ll do something about it when it becomes a more serious problem’.

By the time planning gain from new housing developments is translated to school building cash, and school planning applications are passed, new houses will already have been built, and children will be being shipped out of Wharfedale by the busload because there simply are not enough secondary education places for them in this area.