Falling rolls: The true cost of declining school populations

A declining child population is sparking community fallouts, job cuts and closures as schools struggle to adapt to falling rolls, Jessica Hill investigates…

Seven-year-old Kenzie was the third generation of her family to attend Churchill Gardens Primary School.

Her mum, Ellie, went to the school when the headteacher was Bob Brunning, a former Fleetwood Mac bass player.

And her grandmother recalled when girls had to play on the roof before a playground was built on an old bomb site.

But Kenzie was the last of her family to be taught there.

After more than a century filled with chattering children, the corridors of the school – just a short walk from the Houses of Parliament in Westminster – fell silent in July.

Despite Ellie’s campaign to rally the school’s community against the closure, its pupils have moved to Millbank Academy.

“It won’t be the same walking past and not hearing kids play. It’s the end of an era,” she says.

The decline of Churchill Gardens wasn’t down to reputation: just last year Ofsted rated it ‘good’ with ‘outstanding’ features.

Instead the primary is the victim of the falling rolls crisis, with declining birth rates now threatening the existence of many similar schools.

Not only is this causing heartache for communities, it also puts parents in conflict with schools, turns up the dial on competition for pupil recruitment, and has set councils on a collision course with academies.

The scale of the falling rolls problem

London has been particularly hard hit by falling numbers as a population bulge from a 2000s baby boom exits the education system.

The capital’s birth rate also dropped 17 per cent between 2012 and 2021, equivalent to 23,225 fewer children.

Last year almost 15 per cent of school places in the city were unfilled, a problem exacerbated by a post-Covid exodus of families taking advantage of flexible working.

Churchill Gardens was one of 17 state primaries to close in central London in the last year, Schools Week analysis shows.

Future Academies, the trust that ran Churchill Gardens and now has nine schools mostly in London, has places available in all its schools.

Phoenix Academy, in Hammersmith and Fulham, has a Progress 8 score that puts it in the country’s top 2 per cent – but it’s only two thirds full.

Future’s chief executive Lawrence Foley says: “It doesn’t matter how good the school is – the housing isn’t there for families to afford to live there.”

It’s not just London, either. 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, but the North East is close behind at 7.3 per cent.

Last year, 11 local authorities had 20 per cent or more unfilled places. By 2025-26 this will rise to 33 – a fifth of all councils.

Secondary schools will be on a declining trajectory by 2028 too. Timo Hannay, managing director of education data resource SchoolDash, warns of “rapid reversals in enrollment trends they might not be anticipating”.

The Education Policy Institute estimates falling rolls could mean schools get £1 billion less in five years.

And less income normally leads to cuts to balance the books.

Kulvarn Atwal, principal of Uphall primary school in Ilford, East London, has cut five assistant heads and a parent support officer due to having 130 pupils on roll and capacity for 150.

He says: “Even though they have a valuable role, you’ve got to prioritise having a teacher in front of the children.”

Lambeth Council says it removed 975 places, equivalent to 33 classes from primaries across the borough between 2016 and 2025, but it’s “still not enough to meet the financial challenge”.

Foley believes “none” of Westminster’s primaries are “financially viable”.

Haves and have nots

Schools in the poorest areas are more likely to be affected.

In the past four years, school occupancy rates fell 3.7 per cent in primary schools where more than a third of pupils were eligible for free school meals, compared to a 2.1 per cent drop in schools with fewer than a fifth, SchoolDash found.

Over half of Churchill Gardens’ pupils were eligible for free school meals.

In Brighton and Hove, the two primaries that closed amid falling rolls had similar numbers.

When there are objections from schools to admissions arrangements and proposed closures, the schools adjudicator makes the final call.

But Damian Jordan, headteacher of Fairlight Primary School in Brighton, says some heads fear recent adjudicator decisions favoured schools where “parental power is strong”.

These are usually in “more affluent areas” with “more vocal parents”, he says, adding: “Falling rolls closures will be about the haves and have nots, which isn’t something we’re comfortable with.”

Some recently closed schools also housed SEND support services.

Churchill Gardens had a speech and language resource base, which was moved to Pimlico Primary, while St Peter’s Community Primary in Portslade, Brighton, which closed in July, had a ‘hive unit’ for older SEND children.

Staff there posted a statement saying those children now had “no suitable provision”.

Meanwhile, small village schools – often anchors in their community – are more vulnerable because they cannot easily cut classes.

SchoolDash found that while large primaries’ occupancy rates dropped 1.9 per cent between 2019 and 2023, it was 5.8 per cent in small primaries.

David Whitehead, CEO of Our Community MAT which has 10 primaries in Kent, says falling rolls mean he’s had to slash class numbers in two of his “remote village schools”, Dymchurch and Lydd. But fluctuations in pupil movements, including families who “turn up at the start of term having forgotten to apply for a place”, make the number crunching trickier.

Meanwhile, a report produced by the Queen Street Group, a collection of 35 trusts, said some schools rocked by falling rolls increased the teaching time of leadership teams to mitigate issues.

Some MATs have also been subsidising primaries and sharing back-office functions with other trusts.

Community and council tensions around falling rolls

Foley admits there was a “lot of emotion” over the Churchill Gardens closure.

Future was accused of contributing to its demise by opening a new free school, Pimlico Academy, a five-minute walk away in 2013.

Trust bosses have also had to face accusations which they say are unfair of having a desire to save money over the needs of the children. Grace Rose, a reception teacher who no longer works for the trust, accused them of seeing Churchill Gardens “as a business, rather than a school”.

The trust said merging the schools was an educational decision, and suggesting otherwise is “completely incorrect. We seek to use every available resource to enhance all the great things that happen in our classrooms by providing the broadest curriculum and best support.”

Schools are also at the centre of a national policy flaw.

While local authorities have a legal duty to oversee place planning, they have no power to reduce numbers in academies which are their own admission authorities.

Bromley council recently objected to a decision by Harris Federation academy trust to downsize entry at its Orpington school next year from 180 to 120. The school said planning a curriculum for so many children “when less than 100 are present” was causing “significant financial challenges”.

The council told the admissions adjudicator the reduction did “not align” with its school place planning strategy, but its appeal was dismissed.

Meanwhile, schools are choosing to academise to avoid closure.

The Diocese of Westminster told schools a “key reason” for academising was to ensure “closure or amalgamation [decisions] would be solely” in its hands.

The issue has also ended up in the courts. Islington Council lost a high court challenge last month against a Department for Education decision to academise a failing school.

The council had planned to close the school amid falling rolls. But the move meant it would instead be “forced” to close a “high-performing school nearby” instead.

Others are taking a more cooperative approach.

Haringey’s secondaries are working closely with their council to avoid any having to shut, says Highgate Wood School headteacher Patrick Cozier.

“The view is that we all take a bit of a hit and share the pain of it. We’re on the edge of a precipice and nobody knows how it will pan out.”

Brighton and Hove Council is trying to put its maintained schools on a firmer financial footing by making itself a ‘city of federated schools’ – clusters of schools run by executive heads and joint governing bodies.

Power of marketing

With fewer pupils comes more competition.

Some schools are ramping up their marketing efforts to woo families, with glitzy promotional videos across social media.

Whitehall Park School, in Islington, “feels like a private school in its ethos, structure and facilities, but without the price tag,” its website states.

The school also offers free yoga classes for parents and babies.

It’s no longer enough for a school to provide “a strong offer”, they’ve “got to get that message out to parents”, says Mark Greatrex, chief executive of Bellevue Place Education Trust, which runs the school.

Kyrstie Stubbs, principal of Boothroyd Primary Academy in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, says one of her “most important roles” now is to “moonlight as chief marketer and promoter”.

She advises schools add a “virtual tour” to their website, create leaflets for prospective parents, and find out if any parents are marketing professionals who can help write press releases.

Schools are also expanding how they offer open days.

Greatrex says many of his schools provide up to 15 to “give as much opportunity as possible for parents to see what it’s like in the classroom”.

School space opportunities

If schools are shut, government approval is needed for using buildings for anything other than education.

Churchill Gardens will be used by Future as a head office and teacher training facility.

But since locals have to travel across the borough for most mental health, financial and medical services, the trust is in discussion with Westminster City Council about hosting services there.

Some former schools have been repurposed into special needs units and inclusion hubs. With little money around for capital projects, spare space could be a silver lining of this crisis.

Isle of Wight Council is converting a former studio school, closed in 2019 amid low numbers, to provide satellite provision for St George’s, a nearby special school currently overwhelmed by demand.

But Cities of London & Westminster MP Rachel Blake is concerned about areas “losing whole school buildings that you can’t then re-establish as schools, creating pressure down the line for local authorities” should numbers rise again.

Some schools with spare classrooms recoup some of the lost pupil revenue by hiring out space.

Whitehall Park hires rooms using facilities firm School Hire, which says numbers of schools on its books have doubled since 2021 to around 1,000.

And Ark Evelyn Grace secondary school in Lambeth, South London, which is less than half full, rents out much of its award winning Zaha Hadid designed building to community and sports groups. Ark made £1.7 million from hiring facilities in 2022-23, compared to £1.3 million the previous year.

Finding them young

Schools are also reopening shuttered buildings as nurseries, partly to secure a steadier pipeline of children.

DfE data shows the number of primary schools with provision for under-fives increased nine per cent from 7,364 schools in 2018 to 8,008 in 2024.

Labour has pledged to spend £140 million converting spare primary classrooms into 3,000 nurseries.

Greenwood Academies Trust is looking to develop nursery provision where it doesn’t exist – it took the “brave and financially risky” decision to open a nursery at Ingoldmells Academy in Lincolnshire in 2022, partly to help plug falling rolls; the school last year had 100 on roll and capacity for 140.

But nurseries don’t always help. Future’s school nurseries are also struggling with surplus places.

And Whitehead is mulling using his empty classrooms in Kent as nurseries but is concerned what will happen if “pupil numbers suddenly go up” and space is needed again.

Many sector leaders are calling on the government to maintain current school funding in cash terms. As numbers drop, this would increase funding per-pupil – without the government essentially putting in any more cash.

Meanwhile, former Churchill Gardens pupils are settling into life at the newly rebranded Millbank Gardens school (formerly Millbank Academy).

A new name was chosen so they didn’t “feel like guests in someone else’s home”, says Foley.

Millbank’s parents are pleased their kids aren’t “rattling around in a big old half full building” anymore.

But a Westminster council report highlights a “sustainability challenge for a number of small schools” in the area.

Foley says: “Bluntly, there just aren’t young families moving into central London anymore.”