PARENTS in Southampton have been warned to expect overcrowded secondary schools for several more years because of a pupil population “bulge”.

The admission came after the city was placed on a list of areas facing a “school places crisis” because one quarter of its secondaries are “over capacity”.

According to a Freedom of Information response, three of the city’s 12 secondary schools have too many pupils, while just one has spare places.

Councillor Dan Jeffery, Southampton’s Cabinet member for education, said the council was taking action, but warned there was no quick solution.

He told the Daily Echo: “We are planning a big investment in expanding places at secondary schools, but we need funding to do that.”

Asked if that meant it would be some years before the overcrowding problems were conquered, Cllr Jeffery replied: “Yes it will.”

In Hampshire education bosses are also warning of the need to expand secondary schools to cope with the extra numbers.

While the authority has already launched its biggest ever capital funding programme for schools to meet the demand at primary level, education boss Cllr Peter Edgar said a continued partnership approach with central government was needed to ensure sufficient places at secondary schools.

Cllr Edgar said: “The Government has acknowledged and praised Hampshire’s forward planning in how we recognised the increasing numbers and acted by providing the capital programme required to meet this demand.

“In 2013, we put into place a long-term strategy to provide 11,000 new primary school places by 2018, because we want to ensure there is a space for every child in Hampshire to meet the huge increase in demand “We would want our partnership approach with whatever Government is in place after the election to continue to address that surge in numbers coming into secondary schools. There is no doubt that it will be a massive challenge.”

According to the Labour party, Southampton is among 52 areas with a secondary “school places crisis”, while 56 have the same problem at primary level.

Cllr Jeffery said the first problem was that Government money had been diverted away from local councils to fund ‘free schools’ mostly sponsored by the charitable arms of private firms.

Second, more and more schools were independent academies, which made their own decisions on school size and could not be compelled to expand.

Cllr Jeffery said Bitterne Park was earmarked as the first school to expand and the city council hoped to create extra places at four others.

A consultation is already under way to expand capacity from 1,500 to 1,800.

But David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools minister, insisted the coalition had been “considerably more generous than our predecessors”

in funding new school places.

He told MPs, last month: “We are now allocating basic need funding for new school places for three years. In January, we will make another announcement of funding for basic need for 2017-18.”