来源：《每日电讯报》
原文刊登日期：2020年4月19日
Thousands of anxious parents find out this morning – National Offer Day – if their child has achieved a place at the family’s preferred primary school. Traditionally, today is a time of acute stress: places at high-performing schools are competitive and oversubscribed, especially in cities.
今天是全国录取日，早上的时候成千上万焦虑的父母会得知自己的孩子是否在家庭首选小学获得了入学资格。传统上，今天是一个压力很大的日子：高水平学校的名额竞争激烈，供不应求，尤其是在城市。
Yet, the annual scramble for a seat at an Ofsted-rated Outstanding desk – which has seen some parents move house in order to satisfy catchment requirements – may soon be a memory. Demand, it seems, no longer outstrips supply.
然而，每年一度的为了在英国教育标准局(ofsted)评定的“杰出”课桌争得一个席位的场面——一些家长为了满足入学要求而搬家——可能很快就会成为记忆。需求似乎不再超过供给。
Across London, and in other major British cities, primary schools are reporting a steep decline in requests for places. Applications for reception class places in London primaries for September 2021 were down almost seven percent on the year before. Applications in Birmingham and Bristol have also fallen, by 9.5 percent and 6.8 percent respectively.
在伦敦和英国其他主要城市，小学的入学申请急剧下降。伦敦2021年9月预选班的申请比前一年下降了近7%。伯明翰和布里斯托尔的申请人数也分别下降了9.5%和6.8%。
So what’s behind the change? Shrinking and even disappearing city schools can be partly explained by the birth rate, which has been falling for the past decade. But this long-term trend has been fuelled by Brexit – more than 200,000 European Union citizens left the country last year – and Covid, which prompted a flight from major cities to the suburbs and beyond.
那么，这种变化背后的原因是什么呢？城市学校的萎缩甚至消失可以部分解释为出生率的下降，在过去的十年中出生率一直在下降。但这一长期趋势受到了英国脱欧(去年有20多万欧盟公民离开英国)和新冠疫情的推动，新冠疫情促使人们从主要城市逃往郊区或更远的地方。
London leavers making a permanent move outside the capital bought 91,750 homes last year, 59 percent more than in 2020. This was due to an increase in flexible working and high London property prices. A lack of family homes being built in the capital and and parents’ desire to raise their children somewhere cleaner and greener are also factors.
去年，永久搬离伦敦的人购买了91750套住房，比2020年增加了59%。这是由于灵活工作制的增加和伦敦房地产价格的高企。首都缺乏家庭住宅，父母希望在更干净、更环保的地方抚养孩子，这些都是因素。
However with insufficient pupil numbers to fill London primaries, multiple schools shut down for good last year, while others reduced the number of forms in year groups, shrunk class sizes, or axed whole year groups altogether.
然而，由于学生数量不够填满伦敦小学，去年多所学校永久关闭，而其他学校则减少了年龄组中年级的数量，缩小了班级规模，或者干脆取消了整个年龄组。
There is also the worry that a bad Ofsted report can lead to a vicious cycle of decline in popularity and ultimately closure, a local deputy headteacher says. “Given how many schools there are here, parents can just send their child somewhere else nearby if their local primary is struggling,” says she. “This wouldn’t be as easy outside London.”
伦敦当地一名副校长说，人们还担心，一份糟糕的教育标准局报告可能会导致受欢迎程度下降的恶性循环，并最终导致学校关闭。她说：“考虑到伦敦有这么多学校，如果当地小学陷入困境，家长可以把孩子送到附近的其他地方。而在伦敦之外，换学校就不那么容易了。”
A mother from London whose daughter gained a surprising place at a normally oversubscribed school, believes the situation is partly due to families leaving the area to live outside London, but also to more parents going private. “because during the pandemic the private schools did a better job of providing home-schooling.”
一位来自伦敦的母亲，她的女儿出人意料地进入了一所通常超额报名的学校。她认为，这种情况的部分原因是有些家庭离开该地区去伦敦以外的地方生活，但也因更多的父母选择私立学校。“因为在疫情期间，私立学校在提供线上教育方面做得更好。”
Indeed, in July 2020, the Independent Schools Association reported an upswing in the number of parents of state school pupils seeking to move their children into private schools that September – due in part to the patchy provision of state home-schooling during the pandemic.
事实上，在2020年7月，独立学校协会报告称，9月份寻求将孩子转到私立学校就读的公立学校学生家长人数有所上升——部分原因是疫情期间公立学校线上教育做得不完善。
The deputy head says parents are following the “state till aged eight” trend and taking their children out of the older year groups in her primary school and putting them into private education “because there’s a fear the local secondary state schools aren’t good enough. During the pandemic, parents couldn’t go on tours around state secondary schools, so they assumed they were full of gangs and violence.”
副校长说，家长们都在追随“公立学校读到八岁”的趋势，在她所在的小学，孩子进入高年级后，家长就会让孩子去私立学校就读，“因为他们担心当地的公立中学不够好”。在疫情期间，家长们不能去公立中学参观，所以他们认为那里充满了帮派和暴力。”