Low Birth Rate - how do I find out?

[bananainpjs]

I am in the process of finding schools to apply to for September 2023.
I like a look of a school, which distance wise is not far, however they have a small catchment area. I did ask on the phone if the accepted anyone from our village and she said they have in the past when there’s been a low birth rate.
How can I find that out if the year my DS was born the birth rate was low?
I don’t want risk choosing one of his options on a school he’s unlikely to get into.

I put as first choice for my little one school he was very unlikely to get in. Basically he was right at the bottom of criteria/priority list but he got in anyway. You don't know until you try. You can check the birth date online easily but how do you want to overlay this with your area?

My daughter started school this September and her intake year was supposedly a low birth year. The school we applied to had 60 places, 31 of these went to siblings. This sadly meant that friends of ours didn't get in because it went to a tiebreaker distance.

A low birth year will only tell you so much. You can't, unfortunately, know how many will be applying for a sibling place, which will be a greater priority than your application.

Try Googling 'birth rate in (your village/nearest town) 2019.

There's no way of knowing unfortunately as it so dependent on super localised factors in terms of who has moved into/out of an area and what family stage they are at, number of siblings etc.

Last year we wouldn't have got into 3 out of 4 local primary schools, this year we could have got into any of them. This is despite the area feeling full of young families.

I would recommend picking based purely on which schools you like the most first and see what happens rather than trying to predict the unpredictable.

I would look at the actual distances offered which will give you a much better idea than hearsay. Although they can change significantly from year to year. Your council / education authority should publish these on their website. That way you can make sure you put one school which is pretty much a dead cert.

Okay, thank you for the advice everyone. The open day is in November, I will ask more questions then and decided whether I do want to put it in as a choice.

Most (all?) councils publish details of the last admitted child for each school.

When we were applying (we were also moving house in the year prior to applying, so wanted to be sure we’d get in a school we loved!) I found the stats for the last two years on the council website. I also searched for old versions of the booklet and ended up with about 6 years of admissions data that I could use to look at the likelihood of getting in local schools. In my area it was 4 local schools and we only had the option to list 3 and wanted a safe choice.

The birth rate stuff I found was all on calendar year, not school year. Unless there is a massive trend up/down it’s not worth much. Also, in our area loads move to the area from the city as their kids are about to reach school age so the births didn’t mean too much!

You can look up population projections, including births, at local authority level on the ONS website. It's based on population estimates pre-census though, so I guess might be a bit off. I wouldn't personally try and do anything except try and get a rough idea of trends though. I used to work with someone whose job was to estimate demand for school placements and even though he was very experienced and skilled he still didn't always get it right! www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/datasets/componentsofchangebirthsdeathsandmigrationforregionsandlocalauthoritiesinenglandtable5
Some councils publish their school place planning calculations, so you could try having a look for that? I think the main thing to do is as PPs have said and look at the info on previous admissions. Our LA publishes the distance from the school of the address of first person on the waiting list over the last 5 years.
It's a stressful time, isn't it? Hope it all goes well.

I was literally about to write exactly the same! Daughter starting school this sept just praying it was a low birth rate in Thanet but how do you find out?!

Don’t just look at the birth rate. Compare the admissions policy for 24/25 with previous years as some schools will have expanded or reduced their Published Admission Number (PAN) and some may have the same PAN but take more children via bulge class arrangements.

Also, consider the pupil yield from new developments and changing patterns, e.g. people moving out of some central London boroughs to the Home Counties aided by hybrid working arrangements and other people new to the LA including those from abroad.