Property assessors who usually help set business rates and council tax bands will start checking capacity limits in up to 5,000 schools from July.
“Net capacity assessment” (NCA) visits will take place in all secondary and special schools to get accurate figures of school size until about October 2025, as first revealed by Schools Week.
The visits follow our investigation that revealed the Department for Education does not collect capacity data for special schools, which instead falls to local authorities. It is beginning to collect this from councils this summer.
Government officials said property assessors who have worked on business rate and council tax will be trained to calculate the number of children a school can accommodate.
