OXFORD’S rising birth rate will put added pressure on our struggling primary schools at a time when public spending is being slashed.

Headteachers already report that school places are “like gold dust”.

The county council says it has plans to create hundreds of new places to ensure kids have schools to go to.

But parents don’t just want a school, they want a good school.

And the county must also improve the achievement levels of city schools that lag embarrassingly behind the rest of the country.

The baby boom does not only raise questions over education, it hangs a huge question mark above the raft of cost-cutting measures that have been agreed by Oxfordshire councils.

In addition to rising birth rates, people will live longer and the numbers needing support for age-related illness will increase.

Schools, health and social services, youth centres, day care centres and transport services will have to respond to the often unpredictable pressures this will create.

On paper, the councils’ budgets stack up financially, even if there is not complete agreement on where savings should be made.

But will big cracks appear as the needs of the county change?