Falling pupil numbers into the next decade: impacts, thoughts?

[greenteafiend]

(Apologies if there is already a thread about this)

The number of births in the UK seems to be on a gentle decline which started from about 2009 (as the financial crisis hit) and never really recovered. I think this is likely to continue, as all the trends causing people to reduce/delay kids seem to be ongoing, and immigrants increasingly seem to adopt similar fertility patterns to locals quite quickly these days (as opposed to a couple of decades ago, when foreign-born mothers seemed to have a lot more kids than local-born mothers). We've just had a "bulge year" for secondary intake, but it's likely that secondary numbers will start to go down quite soon.

There is no dramatic falloff across the whole of the UK, but I am guessing that the fall will be uneven, with some areas seeing steady or slightly-increasing numbers of kids entering school, while a few areas see significant falls.

I'm wondering what people in some areas are starting to see already, and what impacts this could potentially have in term of school choice, funding, the level of demand for private or selective schools, and possibly even mergers/closures in certain areas.

If the Government are thinking of changing ratios in nursery maybe they will change class cap for KS1

Locally the primary school told me they used to have apx 60 per year and now it's 45.
I know of a secondary school that's had funding issues because they didn't plan ahead for a drop in numbers and therefore reduced funding.
Loads of new builds going up round us so we hoped they'd be more young children but doesn't seem to be working out that way.

In Japan, where I am, one solution that has been used in cases of falling numbers is to amalgamate elementary schools (6yo-12yo) with local junior high schools (12yo-15yo), actually within the same building. Not sure if something like that might work in the UK. Or, use primary schools for providing nursery facilities as well?

Yeah wishful thinking!

We are seeing huge impacts of school number reductions already. All our local primary schools are not full in Year R. The cohort starting in September 2023 is the same.

This is a document from Hamsphire documents.hants.gov.uk/education/HampshireSchoolPlacePlan.pdf

You can see a lot of areas will have a 20% surplus forecasted in 2027.

If you look at the document I linked, on page 3 there is a graph on primary and secondary intakes. It shows clearly what the overall prediction is. But you can also see district wise, there are very uneven distributions. Like on page 10, the Basingstoke & Deane district, there is a area with 34.8% surplus predicted and another two with 22% and 23% shortage.

I have been banging on about this for about 10 years - I was a governor of a small rural primary school that struggled with numbers and is now really hard up against it because of the stark link between bums on seats and funding. The "big" years here are the current Y5/6/7 and then numbers shrink quite significantly.

The problem in our area is made worse by education being a county council responsibility, and planning being a district council. Our village would be transformed by about 30 family houses, yet the parish and district council will not consider any development in small villages, which are limited to max 8 houses, unless they are exception sites. The parish council is generally inhabited by NIMBYs who are well past family age; it took a determined and long campaign to get them to understand that no development = no sustainable school.

Our county council is already closing a small village primary due to lack of catchment children. Losing a village school will rip the heart out of the village.

Planning is done by local authorities. Every area has someone responsible for this. Local directors for school place planning have to justify their forecasts to the DfE. The DfE even publishes "score cards" on the accuracy of the forecasts in each area: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/local-authority-school-places-scorecards-2021

@remonstrations that website is very helpful, thanks!

DCs previously very oversubscribed school isn't full in reception this year and won't be next year. Neither is the school just up the road - they both have about 80 for next year so imagine one will lose a class soon.
Conversely DS is in year 6 and there was a noticeable drop in catchment at every high school on results day.

If you google the name of your local authority and the words School Place Planning Strategy you'll find out what's going on in your local area. Local authority websites are a rich source of information if you delve into them, so its worth looking if you're worried.

Our LA recently had a 2 hour committee meeting to scrutinise its 85 page strategy in detail, and the recording is available online. So it's easy actually very easy to be informed about these things.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I know there is planning done but it never seems very strategic - ie, very short term thinking, not considering how numbers could fluctuate. Schools being knocked down and then more schools built a few years later, rather than temporarily repurposing.

Of course it might just be my area that is shite. Another thought - now there are so many MATs, are they involved in strategic planning? Could a MAT choose to close a school it doesn't seem viable without consultation with the local authority? Or expand a school?

MATs and individidual academy trusts can't reduce intake without a formal admissions policy consultation. They can increase their intake (without consultation), so long as they let the LA know in good time before places are allocated. They can't unilaterally close a school - they have a funding agreement with the DfE - but if they were struggling to balance the books, the DfE could serve notice on them and either hand the reigns over to another trust or shut the school down.

One possible way, if one is thinking far ahead, is to close schools year by year, rather than closing the entire school all at once, so that kids are aging out of the school cohort by cohort rather than experiencing disruption. But of course, nobody wants to close a school, so it is tempting to sort of ignore the warning signs and keep a school going until the red light is flashing and the school has to be closed rapidly to avoid a budgetary black hole. Just saw that the Economist had an article about this this week, in the America section. Of course, the situation in the States is much more serious, due to the flight from public schools during and since the pandemic, which has not happened in the UK.

That's one of the titan primaries that expanded to cope with demand?

This with bells on

This happened when I was going to school in the 80s, they shut a range of schools and then built housing developments on the land. Roll forward and they were trying to find locations for new schools about 15 years ago. One school that had been turned in the 80s to an adult education centre reverted to a school, other schools were expanded, others were new builds.

We've just had a "bulge year" for secondary intake, but it's likely that secondary numbers will start to go down quite soon.

I think the bulge is still coming through for at least another year.

The issue with falling rolls is that funding is based on headcount.

I'm in London & there are primaries with catchments that used to be tiny now with spare spaces. I think its going to make the good schools even more desirable tbh.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/hackney-school-closing-randal-cremer-primary-education-b1126958.html We’re seeing this in a big way in London now.

Long term though the lower birth rate bodes well for future housing.

Plus a lot more parents are choosing home education.

I work in our local primary. A previously oversubscribed school now has up to 10 vacancies per class.
Finances dire and struggling as running a 3 form entry school with one third empty. (huge amount of SEN without EHCPs thus without funding)
Amalgamating classes next year and dropping to 2 form entry. Further redundancies on the cards.

A lot of smaller rural schools have been closed because of this.

It's a lot easier and affordable.