London Councils are piling pressure on Michael Gove to tackle the growing school place crisis in the capital.

The group of local authorities called on the education secretary to bring forward an announcement on school funding after its statistics showed Barking and Dagenham had the biggest increase in the number of pupils in London between 2009 and 2012.

Barking and Dagenham education chiefs are now considering building schools in parks to deal with the shortage of places in primary schools.

The Department for Education is planning to make an announcement on funding to build new classrooms in late January.