The LEA Is Responsible for Planning and Reviewing the Supply of School Places to Ensure

Pupil Number Projections and School Place Planning in LEAs - Karen Osborne, GLA. Presented at BERA, September 2002.

Pupil Number Projections and School Place Planning in LEAs

Karen Osborne, GLA presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, University of Exeter, England, 12-14 September 2002

1 Abstract

2 Introduction

3

The LEA’s Responsibility for Planning of School Places

3.1

Statutory Requirements

3.1.1

DfES

3.1.2

Ofsted

3.1.3

Audit Commission

3.2

Surplus Place Return

3.3

Net Capacity Calculations

3.4

Projecting Pupil Numbers

3.5

School Organisation Plans

Issues for London

4.1

Cross Border Movement

4.2

Pupil Mobility

GLA School Roll Projection Model

5.1

Methodology

5.2

Application Options

5.3

Accuracy

Bibliography

Abstract

Each Local Education Authority (LEA) is statutorily responsible for planning and reviewing the supply of school places. Part of the demonstration of this responsibility is that LEAs are required each year to make a statistical return to the DfES on all schools in their area. They are asked to provide information that shows the volume of spare school places in the authority. LEAs are also asked to provide forecasts to show how the numbers could change in the future. To aid LEAs in planning the supply of sufficient school places for their area, each LEA must produce a School Organisation Plan (SOP). One function of this Plan is to explain how LEAs propose to remedy any excess or insufficiency of school places. The SOP provides the basis against which the School Organisation Committee (SOC) can consider subsequent proposals for changes to schools in the authority's area. These may include LEA proposals to enlarge or establish schools.

Pupil projections are not easy to calculate especially in a large city such as London. Movement of pupils across authority boundaries is very high and the population is volatile. This paper discusses the issues of accurately projecting pupil numbers and demonstrates a model developed by the Greater London Authority (GLA).

1Introduction

Local Education Authorities (LEAs) have a statutory duty to secure sufficient school places, and publish details of this within a School Organisation Plan (SOP). This is the only statutory plan that does not require DfES agreement – instead the local School Organisation Committee (SOC) agrees it. The LEA is responsible for planning and reviewing the supply of school places to ensure the needs of the community are met and that good quality education is provided in the most cost effective way. The authority proposes, in the light of its own circumstances, what action can be taken to remove surplus places, or increase places and support schools to improve standards. School organisation and place provision is a key issue in most LEAs.

LEAs have been under pressure to remove inefficient surplus places, but in practice the number removable varies between LEAs, being dependent on local circumstances, including social and demographic factors, the proximity of schools in neighbouring LEAs, and the protection from closure enjoyed by rural and church schools. Often parents live in one LEA but find they live closer to schools in a neighbouring authority. Parents in inner cities, particularly London, have long chosen schools across borough boundaries. Geographic and transport factors and individual school popularity, combine to ensure that cross-border movement of pupils forms a very significant feature of provision in London. Most London LEAs therefore (since the Greenwich Judgement) cannot base their school planning on the population living within their boundaries, as they have to provide places for, and therefore plan for, pupils resident in other authorities.

One LEA outside of London, and 19 London Boroughs use the School Roll Projections Project and therefore receive termly school roll projections from the Greater London Authority (GLA) by year group and Planning Area for ten years ahead. Each LEA has a different reason for their participation in the project and each uses the figures in a different way. The model used for projections therefore needs to be generic as well as being tailored to the specific needs of individual LEAs. The GLA uses population projections and actual school rolls in varying proportions to determine the future school rolls. The projections must be accurate to within 1% in order to comply with the Audit Commission’s requirements so the procedures have been refined over time in order to maximise the accuracy and value of the projections.

3The LEA’s Responsibility for Planning of School Places

3.1Statutory Requirements

Each Local Education Authority (LEA) has a statutory duty to secure sufficient school places, and to publish details of this within their School Organisation Plan (SOP). The LEA is responsible for planning and reviewing the supply of school places. This is necessary to ensure that the needs of the community are met and that good quality education is provided in the most cost effective way, thereby ensuring that every pupil has access to a good school place. LEAs are required to plan for future provision by projecting the number of pupils there will be in their area over coming years. The demographic context ranges between LEAs facing 20% fall in school rolls in the next five years, mainly in the Northeast, and those facing a 20% rise, mainly in the South and in new towns. However, these projections are expected to be accurate to within 1%.

The DfES, Ofsted and the Audit Commission each have guidelines and descriptions of the role of an LEA in planning school places:

3.1.1Department for Education and Skills (DfES)

“The School Standards and Framework Act 1998”1 introduced new arrangements for the consideration of future changes to the organisation of schools. From 1September 1999 new procedures came into force for planning school places. This strengthened local involvement in decisions about the pattern of school provision in the area. The Act specified that each LEA should prepare and consult on a School Organisation Plan (SOP) for their area and must prepare further such plans at such times as may be prescribed. It must set out how they propose to remedy any excess or shortfall in the number of primary and secondary school places in maintained schools in their area.

In October 2000, the DfES published a report on “The Role of the LEA in School Education”2. The report describes an LEA as having precise and limited functions; it is not the role of an LEA to run or intervene in the running of schools. Rather their job is described as providing certain specific planning and support functions, which are essential to guarantee adequate school provision. The report specifically highlights those “key strategic functions” that cannot and should not be discharged by individual schools.

For example:

Planning the supply of school places for a given area;
School Organisation Plans;
Admissions;
Taking account of population trends and transport patterns across Authority boundaries;
Making often contentious decisions about school closures or mergers; and
Making sure that every child has access to a suitable school place.

It would be uneconomic, for example, for home-to-school transport to be organised by each individual school. School place planning also involves assessment of the relative needs of different schools and the communities that they serve.

3.1.2The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted)

Ofsted published a revised “Framework for Inspection of LEAs effective from January 2002”3. The framework describes the key functions of an LEA, on which their performance is judged. In the aspects of the LEA’s work that relate to pupils’ access to schools and the provision of sufficient and suitable school premises, one area of inspection, focusing on Promoting Social Inclusion, considers the extent to which statutory requirements are met. The specific functions examined are the effectiveness of the LEA in relation to:

The provision of school places; and

School admissions.

The Ofsted publication on “Organisational Inspections of LEAs: Inspection Guidance”4 contains specific details on Required Inspection Judgement 34: The Effectiveness of the LEA in Relation to the Provision of School Places. The guidance determines that on inspection, Ofsted use the following statistics to indicate the impact of successful planning:

No significant surplus places across the LEA (below 10%);
No individual schools with over 25% surplus places;
No significant over-occupancy, e.g. 5% more pupils than capacity.

The inspection guidance also describes the aspects of clear and achievable strategy as that:

The LEA sets out to meet all statutory duties, to secure adequate places and to have no pupils without education provision;
In areas of population growth or loss, corporate strategy involves education working with housing and other bodies to improve planning and control overcrowding, and to secure planning deals for new schools;
The LEA has information systems to keep it in touch with cross-LEA pupil movement or population volatility, and liaises with the National Asylum Seekers Support Service and other bodies and agencies.

3.1.3The Audit Commission

As part of the LEA Ofsted inspection, the Audit Commission inspector normally investigatesthe planning and management of school organisation, the provision of school places, and admissions policy arrangements. The Guidance for Inspection details the Audit Commission role in the inspection of the Planning of places function. There should be an audit of school place planning, which should mainly be contained in the SOP, it should include:

Forecasting of school places (this should be accurate to 1%);
Processes to regularly report actual pupil numbers to Members;
Processes to review Standard Numbers and Admissions Limits; and
Detailed analysis of the issues underlying surplus places or over-crowding.

The Audit Commission published a report in 1996 on “Trading Places – The Supply and Allocation of School Places”5. It defines accurate forecasting as a requirement for effective planning. The report recommended that LEAs should:

Remove surplus places;
Manage the demand for places; and
Adopt good practice arrangements for forecasting pupil numbers.

The Audit Commission has recently reviewed the extent to which authorities have implemented these recommendations since 19966. Many LEAs have made good progress in removing unfilled places.

In December 2001, the Audit Commission published results of a survey of “schools’ views of their LEA”7. The report shows comparisons with the same survey in the academic year 1999/2000. In response to the question on the LEA ‘s performance in the function of planning school places, schools gave an average rating of 3.05 in 1999/2000 and 2.95 in 2000/01 where 1 is very good and 3 is satisfactory.

3.2Surplus Place Return

Since 1994, LEAs have been required each year to make a statistical return to the DfES on all Community, Foundation and Voluntary schools in their area. They are asked to provide information that shows how much actual surplus is in each school and the overall amount of surplus in the authority.

Surplus places in an LEA are defined as the number of ‘spare’ places. This is measured by:

Calculating the total capacity in each LEA maintained primary and secondary school, using a formula defined by DfES;
Counting the number of pupils on roll at each of these schools;
Adding the capacities to find the total capacity of the LEA;
Counting the number of spare places in schools where the capacity exceeds the number of pupils;
Expressing the total number of spare places in all maintained schools in the LEA as a percentage of the total capacity.

This definition of surplus can be a little misleading. The comparison of number on roll to net capacity does not specify which year group the available places are in. Thus a pupil may not be offered a place even if a school is deemed to have surplus places. It is also possible for an LEA to have both overcrowded schools and schools with surplus places, even if for the LEA as a whole the number of places matches the total number of pupils. This could arise if the places are in the wrong location for the population, or if some schools are perceived to be popular, while others are unpopular.

The results of the return are reported each year to both DfES and the Audit Commission. The survey enables the DfES to monitor the situation on surplus school places throughout the country and determine what action is being taken by LEAs to remove surplus. The information on surplus places is also required by Audit Commission as part of the collection of Best Value Performance Indicators. The Audit Commission publication “1999/2000 Local Authority Performance Indicators in England”8 shows the following for the education Performance Indicators relating to surplus places:

ALL ENGLAND / K3a: % of unfilled places
in primary schools / K3b: % of unfilled places in
secondary schools
Average / 9.3% / 8.2%
Median / 9.0% / 7.8%
75th percentile / 11.4% / 10.1%
25th percentile / 6.8% / 5.9%

In 2002, Ofsted and Audit Commission produced a joint report on “Local Education Authority support for schools in Inner-London”9. The report aimed to bring together the results of Ofsted reports for each of the Inner London boroughs. The report investigated the performance of LEAs in relation to planning of school places. The results were that over Inner-London as a whole, surplus places were not excessive. At the time of the report, most LEAs had fewer than 10% surplus places. Although a small minority of schools had more than 25% spare capacity, these were often schools in special measures or with serious weaknesses.

3.3Net Capacity Calculations

The capacity of a school is the number of pupil places available. From June 2002, the net capacity assessment method10 replaced all previous methods of assessing the capacity of maintained mainstream schools in England. Until then, two different methods for calculating capacity of a school were used:

More Open Enrolment (MOE): a formula developed by the DfES, is calculated using the physical accommodation, teaching spaces and physical size of the school.
Standard Number (SN): this is the greater of either a number derived from the MOE calculation, or the actual number of pupils admitted to the school in a given year. Sometimes a school will have different Standard Numbers for different year groups.

The Net Capacity calculations were introduced to reduce the burden on LEAs. From June 2001 the DfES organised and contracted directly with independent surveyors to measure all schools' capacities and collate the information. The results were then given to each LEA to confirm, by June 2002, the net capacity for use, from the schedule of useable workplaces.

In Autumn 2002 surplus places information will be published based on a revised analysis using the net capacity measurements. DfES anticipate that this will “mop-up” some surplus places. Net capacity is intended to provide a single, robust and consistent method of assessing the capacity of schools. By comparison with the number on roll, it can indicate the number of surplus places or additional places that are needed in a school. It can be used to indicate the admission number for the school. LEAs are responsible for assessing the net capacity of all maintained mainstream schools in the Authority. If the number of pupils on roll at a school is less than the net capacity then the school is deemed to have surplus places.

3.4Projecting Pupil Numbers

LEAs have been under pressure to remove inefficient surplus places so as not to waste resources. But in practice the number removable varies between LEAs, being dependent on local circumstances, including social and demographic factors, the proximity of schools in neighbouring LEAs, and the protection from closure enjoyed by rural and church schools. For instance the demographic context ranges between LEAs facing 20% fall in school rolls in the next five years, mainly in the Northeast, and those facing a 20% rise, mainly in the South and in new towns.

As part of the Surplus Place Return, LEAs are asked to provide forecasts to show how the numbers could change in the future. Projections are required for the next four years for primary schools, and for the next seven years for secondary schools. In January 2002, the Audit Commission’s review of progress since the publication of the Trading Places report stipulated that pupil projections should be accurate to within 1% of the actual pupil numbers realised over the four and seven year periods. The report defines accurate forecasting as a requirement for effective planning and contained results of a survey to determine the extent by which LEAs have implemented the recommendations in the Trading Places report. The review identified that:

Three-quarters of LEAs had made good progress in removing unfilled places in secondary schools; and
45 percent of LEAs had done the same in primary schools;
64 per cent of LEAs had reduced the level of overcrowding in primary schools; and
54 percent had reduced their number of small secondary schools;
The number of LEAs that accurately forecast pupil numbers one year ahead had increased slightly

3.5School Organisation Plans (SOPs)