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  • In 2016, schools in England had seen 10 years of unbroken year-on-year growth in cohort sizes. But by 2018, new cohorts had begun to decline in size and they have fallen ever since. Recent birth rates indicate that this overall trend will continue for at least another few years and possibly much longer. The result is that currently declining primary school enrolments will continue to fall.
  • As these cohorts grow older, secondary school intakes will also start to reduce in size. For the time being, the total secondary school population will continue to rise as the graduating cohorts remain smaller than the incoming ones, but in the next four years or so this balance will tip and overall secondary school numbers will also start to fall.
  • Crucially, the effects of these macro trends do not impact all schools equally. For example, the decline in primary school enrolments since 2019 has disproportionately affected poorer schools, smaller schools and those with lower Ofsted ratings. Some regions (eg, London and the South West) have also been affected more than others. These same schools also tended to start with lower occupancy rates and are therefore at even at greater risk of becoming unviable.
  • Though secondary schools in those same groups (poor, low-rated etc.) have shown particularly strong growth while overall headcounts have been rising, the coming decline in numbers seems likely to affect them disproportionately too, resulting in rapid reversals in enrolment trends that they might not be anticipating.
  • At the same time, the proportion of pupils in England attending an independent school have been in gradual decline, albeit from very different starting points in different parts of the country.
  • Whilst local situations obviously vary, and this analysis looks only at numbers of school places, not their quality or suitability, it suggests that the greatest demographic challenge for schools in England is not too many children, but too few. This is particularly true when, as now, funding is tight and tied directly to pupil numbers.

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