A trust has snubbed council plans to slash its admission numbers – but fears Labour reforms will give authorities hit by falling rolls more teeth to squeeze academy intakes in future.
Norfolk County Council wanted the Inspiration Trust to reduce places by up to a half across four of its schools, all of which are rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
While the MAT once run by children’s commissioner Rachel De Souza was able to rebuff the proposals, CEO Gareth Stevens believes the schools bill could force leaders into accepting such “absurd” strategies.
“My overarching concern is that the proposed bill would enable [similar] poorly judged decisions by local authorities to drive down educational standards by limiting the capacity of exceptional schools in an effort to sustain underperforming institutions,” he said.
‘Handing power to politicians’
Councils have statutory responsibilities relating to planning school places in their area. While councils can determine reductions in local authority-maintained schools, their powers do not extend to academies.
But the schools bill – which returned to the House of Commons this week for further debate – proposes a new duty for all schools and councils to co-operate on admissions, including over place planning. The education secretary “will be able to intervene” if relations break down.
It will also hand the schools adjudicator powers to set school intake numbers, including for academies, where an objection to a school’s arrangements is upheld.
This will give councils – which are able to lodge complaints to the adjudicator – “greater influence” to assist with their place-planning duties.
Speaking in the House of Commons this week, Conservative shadow schools minister Neil O’Brien said “schools will shut or shrink, whatever the rules are” where there are falling rolls.
“But, under parental choice, the places that shrink will be determined by parents voting with their feet. In contrast, under this schools bill, it will depend on the ideological and political views of local councillors. This bill is moving power from parents to politicians.”
Norfolk proposed to halve the 2026-27 intake of two Inspiration schools, Charles Darwin Primary and Stradbroke Primary, while entry numbers at the other two would have been reduced by up to a quarter. All four are rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
‘Absurd, nonsensical strategy’
Stevens said he knocked back the proposals, but fears that, if the schools bill is voted through, the council’s “absurd strategy would force us to reduce the number of places available in some of Norfolk’s highest-performing schools”.
The intake numbers “are neither financially nor operationally viable”, he said, adding that Stradbroke would have had to merge classes to remain sustainable.
Meanwhile, Charles Darwin Primary has a “substantial waiting list”, with attainment results “15 per cent above the national average”.
“Given that Norfolk as a whole ranks 141st out of 143 local authorities at key stage 2, it is entirely nonsensical to halve the number of available places at this ‘outstanding’ school.”
However, the council stressed it has put forward similar proposals to cut intakes at ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ maintained schools.
Penny Carpenter, the council’s cabinet member for children’s services, said they “consulted with all types of schools as we do each year, and proposed some reductions… in areas with overall falling rolls”.
This was “the only criteria we used in making suggested” intake cuts. This is because “schools can become financially unviable quite quickly if their admission number is much higher than their overall” roll.
“There is also a risk that more popular schools draw large numbers of pupils away from their local catchment school, which then can leave those other schools in the area without enough pupils, forcing them to close,” Carpenter added.
More tensions amid falling rolls
Sheffield Hallam University professor of education Mark Boylan believes the current policy has created “a two-tier system”, with authorities unable to carry out their place-planning responsibilities because “trusts have such autonomy”.
He described the idea of councils coming after academies as “misleading”, adding that their decisions were based on “meeting the needs of local people”.
“You can have situations [now] where successful schools are closing and academies that are much less successful and popular with parents staying open. It doesn’t make any sense at all,” he said.
Education Policy Institute analysis suggests a 4.5 per cent fall in primary pupil numbers nationally between 2022-23 and 2027-28. London is predicted to face the biggest drop of 7.8 per cent.
Councils have long asked for greater powers to manage places in academies. London Councils, a cross-party organisation representing the capital’s boroughs, urged the government to give councils the power to cut academy intakes, if there “is clear evidence of a significant drop in demand and a need to act to ensure a school remains viable”.
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