Do we need a national policy on how local areas deal with falling school rolls? If so, who should decide? Local authorities – democratically elected, but with little power over academies and voluntary schools? Regional Directors – covering wide areas, and with no democratic accountability? CEOs advising the Board of Governance of MATs – unelected in both cases? Mayors, where they exist, but what about where they don’t?

My preference is for democracy, so, as regular reads might expect, I vote for local authorities, assisted by a committee from the other groups. However, some of those might not want to take challenging decisions, so they might need some guidelines for the DfE and the Labour government for them to work within.

I have looked at the ‘capacity’ and ‘number on roll’ in three councils with selective schools (Slough, Medway and London Borough of Barnet). In all three of these authorities, capacity exceeds rolls. Generally. However, selective schools exceed capacity more than they have spare places. In non-selective schools the picture is more mixed.

In pupil place planning for the future, whoever takes the decisions, there are some questions to answer, based on the evidence of the data about school rolls from schools in these three authorities.

Have all-thorough schools worked?

Has the extension of faith schools beyond a few Christian denominations and Jewish schools after 1997 worked?

What do parents think of single-sex education these days?

Have new forms of academies and free schools flourished?

What part can parental choice play in a falling rolls scenario?

What is both any economic cost, and any educational cost associated with doing nothing?

A final question. Why does the DfE not have admissions policies for three schools across the authorities; two in one authority?

As these are all urban/suburban areas, transport costs don’t matter very much for most families. I will look at selective schools in rural areas later in another post.

It is interesting that the London borough has a smaller capacity gap than either of the other unitary councils. However, the total in all three authorities conceals a wide range of outcomes. I referred to this issue in my post Are dashboards useful? | John Howson where I made clear that just looking at totals is rarely good enough. Measures of central tendency also need to be considered.

The data in this post has used ‘capacity’ and ‘numbers on roll’. Reviewing authorities will also have primary transfer numbers, and group sizes for predictions of future transfer numbers for the next 5-7 years.

If a Scrutiny Committee of an upper tier authority hasn’t considered pupil place planning in the authority recently, then I would suggest they put it on the agenda for a spring meeting, and ask for a detailed paper, even if it means going into confidential session. Not to do so, won’t make the issue go away.

Finally, why did I choose these three authorities? They are in London and South East, where there are a significant number of selective schools, and, the authorities were of a size where I could handle the data. Selective schools and falling rolls | John Howson

 I might next look at three more diverse areas (The South West, West Midlands and East of England regions spring to mind).