Why is the School Organisation Plan being updated? – draft School Organisation Plan 2025 to 2030
Consultation closed: Sunday 10 November 2024
Consultation opened: Monday 23 September 2024
The previous plan, which covered 2017 to 2022, needs refreshing to address current and future educational demands.
Population data shows there will be more primary school places than we need during the life of the plan (2025 to 2030), due to a population bulge created by the 2000s baby boom, which will increase by up to 140% in some areas of England. Those pupils will be moving into secondary schools during the life of the plan (2025 to 2030) and there will be lower numbers of children coming into primary schools. We will have to take action to reduce the number of empty classrooms, because it can affect whether a school remains financially viable.
School funding is, in part, on a per pupil basis, so the amount of funding a school gets depends on the number of pupils a school has.
Therefore, this can be a problem in very small schools. Also, there may also be difficulties in recruiting enough able governors from such a small constituency of parents and supporters of the school. For pupils, very small year groups may not provide sufficient peers of the same age for children to mix with.
As a minimum, it is preferable that there should be one class for each of Key Stage 1 (ages 5 to 7) and Key Stage 2 (ages 7 to 11), plus discrete part-time provision for children under 5. In this way, there are no more than 2 year groups in each class. In total this equates to 2.5 classes. With a class size of 25 to 30 pupils, which means a minimum school size of 60 to 75 pupils for a lower school (reception to year 4). For a primary school (reception to year 6), also with years 5 and 6 in Key Stage 2, this equates to 3.5 classes. With a class size of 25 to 30 pupils this means a minimum school size of 85 to 105 pupils.
The main impact of surplus places on schools is the resulting reduction in school finances. Since finances are driven by numbers of pupils on roll, a reduction in pupils will lead directly to a drop in income for affected schools. This will reduce the amount of money available to pay staff, purchase resources and meet pupil needs.
Some of the classrooms will be repurposed into new SEND provision to help meet the increasing demand for specialist school places.
Also, the last plan was based on nine principles that were adopted in 2013 and these need to be updated because some no longer reflect changes in national legislation, changes in provision with new types of academies – schools run independently of us – like free schools, the decision to move to two-tier education and our other priorities.