The baby boom of the early 2000s created a large demographic bulge in the number of pupils in English state schools. Over the last 15 years, this has meant that school leaders have been focused on increasing places and growing capacity.
However, the picture for the next decade is very different. A steady decline in pupil numbers is projected, which will be felt first in the primary phase before flowing through to the secondary phase. In this article, we explore what the latest data tells us about how different parts of the system are set to be affected and what the implications for schools are likely to be.
The number of pupils in state-funded primary schools has declined by around 70,000 pupils (or 1.5%) since its peak in 2018/19. As shown in Figure 1, primary schools in London have seen by far the sharpest decline at 4.8% between 2018/19 and 2021/22, followed by Yorkshire and The Humber (2.2%) and the North East (1.8%).
Every July, the Department for Education publishes projections for how pupil numbers are likely to change over the following decade (the farther into the future it is, the more uncertain the projection). Figure 2 shows that the number of pupils in state-funded primaries is set to continue to fall steadily over the next decade, with numbers set to fall by almost a fifth (16.6%) by 2032.
