The primary schools facing closure as Britain’s birth rate plummets

“Buildings that were once full of life … begin to feel empty,” a headteacher explains. The school leader, who has asked not to be named for fear of unduly worrying parents, is on the frontline of a crisis unfolding in slow motion – the disappearance of the country’s children. Running a state primary school in a well-heeled enclave of central London, the primary head is grappling with an education problem that she barely expected to encounter when she embarked on her career – how to respond to a dramatic fall in pupil numbers. Declining school rolls in the primary sector are the first tangible signs of the declining birth rate in the UK and pose a significant political and public policy dilemma for Andy Burnham. Shorts According to official estimates, by 2035 there will be roughly one million fewer primary school children in England than there were in 2019, and even that could be an underestimate. The fall in the country’s fertility rate from 1.9 per woman in 2010 to 1.4 per woman by 2024 is well below what is deemed to be the necessary replacement rate of 2.1 to maintain the current level of population. The drop in the birth rate is an issue that barely features in public policy debate, but schools are now at the vanguard of the problem and, as yet, there is very little known about the impacts of declining pupil numbers and the school closures it brings about on existing children and wider communities. Fertility rates in the UK have been declining for more than a decade “A neighbouring school closed its doors this term due to falling rolls, displacing families and requiring children to find places elsewhere,” the headteacher said. “When a school shrinks, the impact reaches far beyond the budget. It becomes increasingly difficult to offer the same breadth of provision and opportunities that families have come to expect.” School funding in England is largely delivered per pupil, meaning the number of pupils a school takes in each year sets its budget for the academic year to come. Should a school see a drop of five or so pupils, like the primary in the relatively affluent part of London, it means they will lose around £30,000 to £35,000 in their annual coffers, a huge amount for a small school to manage. This inevitably has an impact on the quality of education a school can provide. “Teachers are expected to take on greater responsibility with no additional reward, while support staff numbers have been reduced substantially,” the head said. “We can now only afford to deploy support staff to children with the highest levels of need, meaning valuable academic intervention programmes have had to be scaled back. Despite the dedication of our staff, there will be an inevitable impact on the support we can provide and, ultimately, on pupils’ progress.” Dozens of schools closing London is at the epicentre of the problem as a combination of factors has seen a stark decline in the number of children living, particularly in the inner boroughs of the capital. The cost of living crisis, the lack of family homes, the sharp drop in immigration and the flight of families to commuter towns during the pandemic have all contributed to London being emptied of children. But it is by no means a problem limited to London. The capital may have seen the steepest decline of around 11 per cent in recent years, but areas such as the north-east and the Yorkshire and Humber have each seen falls in primary pupils of around 6 and 7 per cent. “It’s a very significant, slow-moving challenge,” Luke Sibieta said, a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who has done extensive research on the issue. “Year-on-year, things aren’t changing that much – it’s about a 1 per cent fall in the pupil population every year – but gradually, it’s making schools financially unsustainable.” In the last academic year alone, 31 schools in England closed their gates for good with schools in deprived areas far more likely to be affected. Jon Andrews, director at the Education Policy Institute, said disadvantaged pupils attract greater funding and often have additional needs, so the loss of such pupils has a greater impact on budgets. Schools are also in competition with each other for pupils, and parents are more likely to send their children to schools with better Ofsted ratings and exam results, leaving schools in more deprived areas to wither on the vine. School closures hurting local businesses and communities Remarkably, very little research has been done on the impacts of a school closing on children, families and wider communities. Alice Bradbury, Professor of Sociology of Education at University College London, is examining the fallout of school closures in their local areas and the policy implications it creates for the local authority and central government. Bradbury references one case from her research, where she described the “whole community falling apart” as a result of their local primary school closing. “So it’s not just about the building,” she said. “Obviously there’s the major impact on the children, but it’s also the community groups that use the school. It’s about the food bank that the school also runs, or the language classes that the school used to do for parents.” But the fallout goes even beyond those immediately connected to the school, Bradbury said, adding: “Local businesses are affected because people aren’t walking down that street anymore. There are all of these kind of knock-on effects because the school is very much a place where different generations, different members of the community interact. “And once you’ve lost that, and people are all sort of scattered into different places, the kind of centre of the community can be lost.” The dilemma for Burnham This creates a series of policy challenges for local and central government, such as whether the type of housing is suitable to sustain the local population, whether the transport links are sufficient for parents to take their children to school, whether it will add to their costs, and whether that will then impact the wider economy, she says. It also presents Burnham, who has already placed significant emphasis on education in his first few weeks as Prime Minister, with a major dilemma: whether to maintain school spending at current levels or use the drop in pupil numbers as an excuse to cut spending and allocate money elsewhere. Andy Burnham with Sir Keir Starmer visiting a primary school in Greater Manchester (Photo: Paul Ellis/Getty) In the 1970s and 1980s, during a similar period of pupil decline, the Government chose to cut education spending, leading to a decline in teacher numbers and coinciding with a period of lower academic outcomes. During a drop in numbers in the 2000s, the Government of the day chose to maintain spending levels, with teacher numbers increasing, and schools remaining open with smaller class sizes. But Burnham and his Chancellor John Healey have not inherited the economic landscape of the early 2000s, when the Treasury was overseeing a budget surplus over several years. “The Government could choose to not close any schools,” Sibieta said. “It’s just that it’s a costly thing to do, especially in a fiscal environment that’s incredibly tight. There’s loads of demand for other spending on things like defence.” Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, is under no illusion as to which way Burnham should go. “Where schools are facing falling rolls they need support,” he said. “Trends can change over time, and protecting their funding would allow them to maintain existing staffing levels, offer smaller classes, and provide more targeted help for pupils who need it.” But his is just one voice of many demanding a slice of the Government’s already diminishing pie.Burnham now faces a choice if he is to deliver on his pledge to improve the life chances of the country’s young people and spread “hope in every heart” as he has promised. But he should remember that for every school that is lost, a bit of the community goes with it.