How far do the pupil numbers need to fall before a school is closed?

[Teaandflapjack]

This is in relation to a one form entry primary school, no nursery. So there should be 210 pupils in total. 30 in each of the 7 classes. Currently about 177. One year only has 21. There will be 24 in my son's class in September if no one new joins. Just wondering. Numbers would have been even lower but we absorbed a fair few from another fairly local primary school that closed

Our local village school has 70 pupils but isn't the smallest school in the area

I have only heard of schools actually closing when there’s less than 20 pupils total

a school nearby me was in a similar situation to yours and they ended up closing one class, so most of the other classes ended up being mixed ages eg yr1/2 and y2/3

i wouldn’t worry about your school closing completely, where on earth would all the kids go? I doubt there’s 177 extra places locally. Unless a bigger replacement school for the area is planned.

There will probably be 177 places locally.
Schools with similar numbers to 177 have been closed in London in the past 2 years.

Hard to tell as once the process starts then children leave before it is agreed.

25 per class is broadly the viability number for a primary longer term- below that it is an increasing deficit usually.

But it will be financially subsidised through the schools forum

The school is more likely to reduce the number of classes and have mixed year groups. It is unlikely to close completely.

Have a look online for minutes of local council meetings, there will be a record of what is planned. It wasn't easy to find but now I'm keeping an eye on it

Is it rural or urban? It is harder to close a rural school.

Camden, London.

Where I live, schools have been over subscribed for years. Just 5 years ago people weren’t always getting their first choice.

Now birth rates have dropped dramatically and it’s showing. Looking at the numbers from the council, there are SO many schools who take in 30/60/90 kids per year and the 30s are now about 20. Our school has 60 intake but has about 40 children. The 90 school down the road has 75. It’s unheard of.

It seemed to start with the current year 1s and it’s getting smaller each year.

What’s worrying is when they have say 18/19 kids per class so they need to pay 2 teachers but will only have funding for 38 children.
I don’t think all these schools will close but I do wonder what will happen in say 5 years time. Will they combine years maybe.

Thank you - I hadn't thought of the mixed year groups. I actually like that in a school.

I wasn't worried about it closing anytime soon just wondered what is the trigger point eg 75% capacity but the mixed ability could mean 50% and still going.

This one closing in Hampshire had only 20 students in February 2024. Your school has a long way to go before getting that small. https://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/news/24212625.ampfield-primary-school-close-following-consultations/#

thank you so much for this. Yes it is year 2 and below, the year 4 with only 21 is an anomaly. My son is year 1 and althoughtl there has been kids leaving and joining and leaving I don't think they have ever had 30.

The type of school and how it's funded will make a difference for the appetite to keep school with falling rolls open.

LA schools are funded through the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG). The DfE allocated money to LAs and they distribute it to the schools they run according to their own, local formula. Money is tight and each LAs have to plan how to meet the changing needs of a lowered birth rate.

Most state funded schools outside of LA control sit within multi academy trusts (MATS). They are funded through the General Annual Grant (GAG). MATS distribute their GAG differently. Some will distribute it to all their schools in line with the number of pupils the have. If they do this, they may well choose to close school with falling rolls. Some MATS pool all the money and distribute it unevenly and in line with issues arising. In this case, they may keep a school with a falling roll open for longer.

If the school is a single academy or free school I expect it'll either close very soon or be taken in to a MAT - in order to survive.

I expect I may be boring you with this level of detail, but it might help to highlight how the answer is context dependent not only on the type of school but the LA or MAT's formula/approach to distributing per pupil funding across schools

I've heard our local authority will have to close some schools because of finances and falling birth rates.I gather it won't necessarily be the ones with least pupils, but ones which are not in some kind of federation with other schools .
Although having fewer pupils would be something they would be taking into account when deciding where the axe would fall.
There could be other deciding factors, for example if there were other schools nearby or not.
But I think most London authorities will be closing some schools.

This school in Islington has closed this summer with 70 ish places out of 210 filled. A catholic school so I expect the funding is different?

www.letstalk.islington.gov.uk/blessed-sacrament

No the funding is the same except to capital (buildings)
It may have some kind of ancient endowment but that would be unusual

Our village school has a PAN of 13 and it's in no danger of closing. At least half the schools round here have PAN of 15. So I wouldn't worry about a school with a one form intake closing any time soon.

Our village accepts c.20 children into each year group with some flexibility. Reception and 1/2 Y1 together, then other half of Y1 and Y2. Ditto 2 classes for 3,4 and 5 and 1 class for Y6. So about 140 children in total across 5 classrooms.

That is a very naive view

large schools subsidise small schools at a local level trough the funding model

as more large schools and more schools become academies it becomes more of a challenge

it is why the Church of England has a crisis with primary academisation

look at North Yorkshire as an example and how many if their small schools have closed in past 15 years

It depends what other schools are nearby, whether the school meets a specific need (religious, travellers etc) and projected birthrates. Also political influences - several oversubscribed one-class entry schools near me have been intermittently under threat simply due to a political preference for larger schools. There is an undersubscribed large school (perfectly good, just an extra few hundred metres walk) and closing two tiny schools to fill that one would look good on paper. The land the small schools occupy would be worth millions.

If the school is also a community school, there may also be pressure for it to be absorbed into an academy, which seems to be preferred by many boroughs.

Camden generally has a falling birthrate (something like second lowest in the country) so it’s not unlikely that some schools will be closed / merged in the next few years (in addition to a few that have already in Camden and Islington)

Probably depends a lot on location. Things will be very different in urban areas to rural. Our village school has a PAN of 10 and it isn't particularly uncommon to have year groups where there's only 5 or 6. But some children are already travelling significant distances to get there as it is and the next nearest school would be several miles further. Plus all the other schools in the area are similar sizes so would struggle to accomodate the extra pupils. Some would end up with very long journeys. There have been threats of closure to ours and other similar schools over the years when numbers have dropped very low but they've all survived to date because of the distances involved.
I would imagine that in urban areas our school would be deemed non viable even when more or less full. It's a completely different kettle of fish if there are lots of other schools close by with spaces. A physically small rural school which only has a few staff anyway might also be a different proposition financially than one with large premises and quite a lot of staff but insufficient pupil numbers. I wouldn't think there will be a definite number of pupils that triggers closure but it will be a balance of factors, not least how easy it would be for the LEA to place the pupils elsewhere.

Back in the 90s and 00s when my children were going through the school system there was a shortage of school places in London and all the pressure was to open new schools. I was a school governor at the time and went to one governors' forum meeting with the LEA where it was explained that only a few years earlier, as the birth rate fell after the end of the post-war baby boom, there had been great pressure on LEAs to close schools with surplus places, transfer the children to other schools, and sell the sites off. Now that more places were needed again a major obstacle was the lack of suitable sites!

I hope lessons may have been learned from this, but frankly given how short-sighted most politicians are I'm not holding my breath that in a few years when the birth rate inevitably rises again there will be enough capacity in the school system to cope with the increased demand.

I thinks it's generally about continued low entry numbers in relation to the PAN. My children go to a school with 102 children, which can take 105. In the current reception there are only 8 children (PAN 15), but the incoming year is full and oversubscribed. (The overall number of children is higher than current reception suggests because Some KS2 years have taken additional children.

In contrast, a local primary closed when they consistently had only about half the number of places taken. This was over a period of years, and as a result, it merged with another village school.

It’s definitely possible if you’re in London so other schools nearby and especially if you’re in an area with a falling birth rate so there will be available spaces elsewhere. But I’d hope that proposals would go out for consultation first. Lambeth which had had the biggest fall of primary admissions of anywhere in the country are proposing mergers and closures of schools but residents have been asked to give feedback.