The DfE has released its annual update to pupil projections. This is of immediate interest both to ITT providers and those responsible for planning school finances going forward into the medium term. The publication and associated tables can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-pupil-projections-july-2021

Actual (2020) and projected pupil numbers by school type, England
		2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
State-funded nursery & primary schools	4,647	4,635	4,597	4,531	4,454	4,395	4,345
	year on year change		-12	-38	-66	-77	-59	-50
State-funded secondary schools	3,003	3,072	3,133	3,193	3,231	3,228	3,216
	year on year change		69	61	60	38	-3	-12
State-funded special schools	113	117	119	120	121	120	119
	year on year change		4	2	1	1	-1	-1
Alternative provision settings	15	16	17	17	18	18	18
	year on year change		1	1	0	1	0	0
Total state-funded schools	7,778	7,839	7,865	7,862	7,824	7,761	7,699
	year on year change		61	26	-3	-38	-63	-62

The DfE make the following important point about the numbers:

This year only a simple update to the 2020 model has been created with the addition of newly available 2019 national population estimates and births from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The reasons for this are:

• There are no new ONS national projections giving new estimates of the future overall population
• The 2021 school census data shows notable decreases in enrolment in nursery and primary schools and alternative provision compared to previous years. These are expected to be temporary, as a result of the pandemic, rather than long-term changes. However, using this data results in decreases across future years which are not considered to be realistic estimates of the pupil population over the next ten years.

The new 2019 ONS data provides additional information on factors such as whether birth figures have continued the drop seen since late 2016. Therefore feeding this data into the existing model provides a useful update on expected future pupil numbers. 

The various views on whether or not the fall is temporary must be of great importance. A loss of 300,000 primary school pupils in six years with the current funding formula for schools in place will have significant implications.

For those preparing primary schools teachers for entry into teaching the implications could come as soon as this autumn if entry targets for 2022 announced by the DfE using the Teacher Supply Model take account of the start of the reduction in pupil numbers.

For the secondary sector, there are probably a couple more years at present levels for teacher preparation courses before reductions in popular and fully subscribed subjects along with recruitment controls come into force once again.

Of course, with the DfE controlling the application process it will be interesting to see how the different parts of the DfE interact with each other, especially in view of the recent ITT Market Review.

The years of relative planet are going to be followed by some years of belt tightening across the education sector. The announcement on pay may not be unrelated to these figures on pupil numbers.