In 1977, Haringey council’s Chief Education Officer produced a plan to deal with falling school rolls: it was to cost him his job. His mistake was to be too far ahead of public opinion, for in 1980, school closures, and a reorganisation as a result of fewer pupil numbers became inevitable in Haringey. Among the changes was the closure of the secondary school in Tottenham where I had worked from 1971 to 1977.

This example from history is important for two reasons: firstly, we are living through another period of declining pupil numbers, and secondly, the mechanism for system planning is much weaker today than it was in the 1970s.

In the 1970s, education was often described as a ‘national system locally administered’. Boroughs, such as Haringey, had within the past decade received approval from the government at Westminster to introduce a comprehensive form of secondary schooling. Local planning ratified by government could be seen as normal practice, although not all schools were maintained schools and churches, city livery companies such as the Drapers and the Stationers, as well as other charities had a strong interest in the running of schooling in the borough. However, the ability of the local council to determine how schooling was managed across the borough was not really in question.

How different the world is today, a rump of maintained schools sits alongside the remaining voluntary schools and the block of academies, whether stand-alone of gathered together in Trusts or Committees in local authorities many facing an uncertain future.

Local authorities notionally still have responsibility for pupil place planning, but devolved budgets, powerful Schools Forums and the differing policies of academies and their trust leaders mitigate against local authorities being able to successfully plan the local school system, especially when for the past decade the focus has been on opening new schools.

Overlaying the weak position of local government is another difference from that faced by Haringey’s Chief Education Officer in the 1970s: parental choice: first enshrined in Section 6 of the 1980 Education Act, and now taken for granted.

To view the current  position, I have taken a random sample of secondary schools that have so far this school-year advertised for either a new headteacher or a teacher of music. In both cases, I have looked at DfE data on the notional roll and the actual roll, as shown on the DfE’s public website on 6^th October 2026.

The results are interesting.

region	capacity	roll	difference
SE	1440	759	-681
L	1150	795	-355
WM	785	445	-340
NW	700	364	-336
SW	1050	714	-336
L	1330	1092	-238
NW	1200	1023	-177
SE	1560	1409	-151
NE	1350	1201	-149
L	1260	1115	-145
EM	625	486	-139
YH	1750	1616	-134
EE	1210	1084	-126
NW	750	661	-89
SW	1050	990	-60
L	315	272	-43
L	455	436	-19
WM	1100	1084	-16
EM	860	847	-13
YH	710	699	-11
L	1007	1000	-7
NW	900	894	-6
L	1450	1445	-5
L	1213	1214	1
SE	480	482	2
L	1164	1191	27
WM	604	632	28
L	990	1028	38
WM	1253	1306	53
EM	1383	1454	71
L	1200	1302	102
WM	1414	1524	110
L	1140	1271	131
SE	1219	1354	135
NW	989	1157	168
EM	1332	1809	477

There are some very large differences between the ‘capacity’ as shown on the DfE site and the number on roll shown on the same site. There are 13 schools with more than 100 empty places, only three in London.

On the other hand, there are six schools with more than 100 over capacity, two of which are in London.

This was a random sample, so I wondered what might be the implications in selective systems if selective schools were taking more than their ‘capacity’ on other schools and their budgets. I will do a bit of research to find out and report back.

However, it does seem that there is a serious question around effective pupil place planning and the consequences of not doing anything on some children’s learning in the future, if schools are losing income while others are still over-capacity.