The capacity of Kenton Bar Primary School in Newcastle is 420, making it full at two classes of 30 from Reception to Year 6.

But, says Elaine Boardman, executive headteacher of the school as well as nearby Mountfield Primary - which are both part of Smart Multi Academy Trust - in recent years there has never been close to 420 pupils.

“We went from having just under 300 back in 2019 to, at one point in May 2023, near 350 pupils,” she explains. “And then it reduced again. We’re currently at 274” - or just 65 per cent full.

Falling rolls are of national concern.

Ben Kind, the cabinet member for children, young people and families at Lambeth Council in London, is also witnessing “a significant fall in the number of children starting primary school” in his borough.

“It’s more than 1,000 fewer pupils entering Reception compared to 10 years ago,” he says.

Meanwhile, in North Somerset, Tim Purser, headteacher of St Francis’ Catholic Primary School, part of the Cardinal Newman Catholic Educational Trust, says his capacity is 210. “But we’re at 150.”

The number of children in the English school system is decreasing. The latest official forecasts suggest there will be 400,000 fewer pupils by 2030, with primary numbers alone projected to fall by about 7 per cent from 2025 to the end of the decade.

In some regions the effects have already been apparent for a few years - particularly at primary, which, of course, experiences these demographic shifts first.

The issue is most acute in Inner London, whose primary population is expected to fall by a huge 12.2 per cent between 2023-24 and 2028-29, according to the latest data. In the primary phase across London as a whole, the decrease is expected to be 8 per cent, just exceeded by the North East at 8.1 per cent.

Meanwhile, at secondary the national school population is likely to have peaked this year, ahead of a decline as those smaller primary cohorts make their way up the system.

There are outliers. In the East Midlands, for example, pupil numbers are expected to increase by 3.9 per cent at primary and secondary until 2028-29, while in the West Midlands, the secondary population is set to grow by 6.6 per cent until 2030-31.

The cost of falling pupil rolls

As such, nuanced place-planning is essential. But nationally, the picture is of a downward trend - so much so that the Department for Education has said the average school won’t need to recruit any new teachers until 2029.

The reasons for the decline in pupil numbers are numerous, and specific to place.

“We’ve seen the general trend in falling birth rates,” says Kind in Lambeth, “as well as the cost-of-living crisis that means people make different decisions about starting a family. And we’ve seen a demographic shift following both Brexit - with EU citizens moving home and taking their families with them - and the pandemic, with people moving out of urban areas in favour of more rural areas.”

Whatever the reason, falling rolls are concerning news for schools, which are funded on a per-pupil basis.

Mark Chatley, CEO of Coppice Primary Partnership, a three-academy trust in Kent, explains that, while having “75 children across three forms is great for teaching and learning”, having five fewer children than expected per class means a school will be “running a deficit model” if this trend continues across multiple year groups.

“Obviously, you need teachers for all those classes. So your outgoings don’t change, but your income does, and your general annual grant funding that’s based on pupil numbers doesn’t then add up to the resource you need.”

This means that for schools with falling rolls, leaders are having to make difficult decisions to secure their settings’ futures.

For many, a first step is to seek permission from the local authority to reduce the published admission number (PAN).

This might seem counterintuitive because it means putting a cap on pupils when schools would really like more. But, explains Boardman, one of the most challenging parts of falling rolls is the instability in numbers.

She describes how last year just 64.8 per cent of pupils leaving Year 6 had started the school in Reception. “That makes financial planning very difficult,” she says, as the school simply can’t predict how many teachers will be needed in future years.

But reducing PAN to a number that a school can more confidently fill in the coming years - for example, going from two forms to one - mitigates in-year movement by making it more likely that a year group will be at capacity. This means there will be fewer gaps for short-term pupils to fill, leading to greater stability, which aids planning.

Staffing pressures

A reduction in PAN also tends to impact staff. Naturally, a school with fewer classes requires fewer adults, which brings an immediate financial saving. Making redundancies is not something to be taken lightly, but, in some cases, leaders say it is unavoidable.

“If the number of children drops, you have to restructure,” says Bola Soneye-Thomas, headteacher of Rokesly Infant and Junior Schools in North London, for whom falling rolls have led to staff redundancies. “Additional adults are the first ones to go, and then class teachers as well.”

Meanwhile, in Newcastle, while Boardman has not made redundancies, she has not always filled roles when existing staff members have left due to retirement or because they are moving from the area.

She is also looking more to temporary contracts, which give flexibility over whether to retain a member of staff should finances become more difficult in the future. While fixed-term contracts often receive criticism for their lack of stability, Boardman says “we don’t have issues” and that some applicants prefer this more flexible arrangement.

It’s a solution that Ray Lang, headteacher of St Katherine’s School in Kent, which is part of Coppice Primary Partnership, also looks to.

“We have made a conscious decision not to necessarily go straight to a permanent contract” with some new hires, he says, adding that “the majority of those fixed-term contracts we’ve made permanent because they’ve been good teachers who we’ve wanted to keep, and there has been movement somewhere else, with another teacher taking a promotion or retiring”.

Meanwhile, Kulvarn Atwal, executive headteacher of Highlands Primary School and Uphall Primary School in Redbridge, East London, says his schools hire some teaching assistants from agencies, which also provides much-needed flexibility.

In addition, Atwal says his schools take on student teachers - sometimes as many as 10 in one school. “It gives us extra people” at no cost to the school, he says, adding that the students always work closely with experienced staff to ensure that pupils receive a high standard of teaching.

But some in the sector are wary of the long-term effects of such staffing decisions on the school workforce.

“Falling rolls should not be a reason for schools to cut back on full-time staff,” says Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teaching union. “At a time of rising pupil need, the highest primary class sizes in Europe and the largest in secondary school since records began, government should embrace the idea of smaller class sizes and improve education quality for all children and young people.”

In fact, Kebede adds, “under the last Labour government, the pupil roll fell but the government chose to employ more teachers. That benefited a generation of children”.

Meanwhile, Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, insists “there are no easy answers” to the “huge challenge” of falling rolls. 

Where schools are making difficult decisions regarding staffing, “they will always prioritise the needs of their children and do their absolute best to ensure that teaching and the curriculum do not suffer as a result”, he says.

Extra responsibilities

But there is a feature of the current school system that helps with the staffing dilemma, says Atwal, explaining that because his schools work together in a federation, “rather than making a permanent appointment [at one setting], I can have people working across the two schools”. This allows further budget flexibility.

The multi-academy trust model enables this, too. Boardman, who is also an executive headteacher of two schools, says that part of why she has been able to avoid redundancies is because when a role is no longer viable at one school, she can often offer that staff member a role at her other setting.

As such - and following the government’s messaging in the recent schools White Paper that all schools should be in a trust - Soneye-Thomas says she expects falling rolls will lead to an “increase in the executive leadership and executive headship model”, with senior staff being shared across schools to save costs. 

But, she adds, “that is not a solution, because you’re asking leaders to take on even more responsibility”, further overloading already overworked staff.

At Cadbury Heath Primary School in Bristol, part of the Leaf Trust, staff already take on additional responsibilities, when previously there would have been extra personnel in those roles, says headteacher Matthew Hillier-Brown.

Because of the financial impact of falling rolls on his small school, “adults do more”, he says. “We’ve had people who might have been a lunch break supervisor, for example, becoming a TA,” while, as headteacher, “I’ll teach”, he adds.

Hillier-Brown believes this set-up brings a positive atmosphere. “People are chipping in - it’s a team effort,” he says. “We work even harder, just to do more with less.”

Others are less upbeat. “We’re exhausted,” says Soneye-Thomas, whose staff also take on additional responsibilities to make up for shortfalls.

What falling rolls mean for class size, however, can vary. While, in the short term, fewer pupils means smaller classes, eventually these are not financially viable, so classes might grow again.

Merging classes

When one teacher at Rokesly Junior School went on maternity leave, instead of replacing her, Soneye-Thomas made the decision to condense three small classes into two larger ones.

“We had 34 children in each class rather than 30,” she explains. This brought challenges. “We had to take some furniture out and rearrange, with long rows rather than group tables,” she says. “And I had a lot of talks with parents to make sure that they understood [why we were doing this].”

“I gave the teachers extra non-contact time to make up for having to mark more books and deliver to a bigger class,” she adds, explaining that this was temporary - for two terms - until the teacher returned from maternity leave.

Another option is for a school to merge year groups, saving staff costs.

This has been a solution for Purser in Somerset. “The current Reception and Year 1 are together,” he says. “Because it was a very low number [of pupils], we couldn’t justify having a full-time member of staff [per year].”

Purser has been able to support the teacher of the merged class thanks to the school being part of a multi-academy trust, he says. “That’s one of the benefits of working in partnership with other schools - we’ve got English leads and maths leads who offer support.”

Like Soneye-Thomas, he gives staff extra PPA time, “so they don’t feel overwhelmed that they’ve got two year groups to plan for”.

However, others are wary of mixing year groups.

The curriculum at Coppice Primary Partnership is chronological, and “if you’ve got a Year 3/Year 4 mix, someone’s getting taught [curriculum content] out of order, which is never ideal”, says Chatley, explaining why the trust has avoided merging classes.

Others have tried it and changed their minds.

Boardman says that before she joined Kenton Bar, falling rolls led the leadership to merge year groups. “And within that summer term, they had lost 54 children from the whole school because parents were just not wanting their children to be in mixed classes,” she explains, adding that the school quickly reverted to single-year classes to avoid numbers plummeting further.

Purser, meanwhile, says he has not had any concerns from parents. And while he knows that “parents often like smaller classes”, he sees a positive in merging classes in that it gives children the opportunity to work with peers of different ages, which he has seen aid social development. “There are benefits,” he says.

What’s more, many small schools have long mixed year groups in single classes, showing that the task is not an impossible one - and providing an expertise base for bigger schools looking to understand how it might work most effectively.

Extra space in schools

For the most part, falling rolls present a swathe of problems for schools to navigate. But do they bring any advantages? In terms of space, many leaders think so.

“We have a spare classroom, which is now our Rainbow Room,” Purser says, describing an “absolutely amazing sensory room for our children with SEND”, which includes specialist lighting and furniture.

He believes “there are silver linings” to falling rolls, then. “I couldn’t provide that space if we needed it for a class.”

Similarly, Hillier-Brown has used an empty classroom to develop what the school calls its Kingfisher Space, a breakout room for children who are “finding the classroom environment tough”.

Meanwhile, in Redbridge, Atwal’s empty classrooms have allowed the nursery, which was in a separate building, to come on-site. “Another room has been turned into a professional learning lab for staff,” he adds, “and others are used as a music room and an intervention room.”

In some schools, empty space is even being used to benefit children in other settings, with a particular focus on specialist provision, for which there is a dire need for more places nationwide.

In Kent, St Katherine’s rents out empty classrooms to a local specialist school, meaning that setting has increased its capacity.

Lang says this arrangement brings in much-needed extra income to St Katherine’s, as well as benefiting the children. “It’s a real benefit to us from an inclusive point of view. The [specialist pupils] bring so much to the school, and we involve them in assemblies, theme days and sports days.”

Meanwhile, the specialist school pupils have a local place they might not otherwise have been granted and can make the most of the St Katherine’s facilities, which include a forest school and swimming pool. “It’s giving back as much as we take,” Lang says.

But while many schools with falling rolls are fighting to stay open, in some areas closures are already underway.

In Hackney, East London, “we were conscious that there was a need for more specialist places”, says Caroline Woodley, the borough’s mayor. “Then the concurrent situation of having either empty or soon-to-be-empty school sites seemed to provide a potential solution.”

Decreasing pupil numbers led to the closure of Baden Powell Primary, in the west of the borough, in 2024. The local authority solicited responses from special schools interested in expanding their sites, and, after a consultation process, it was announced that Ickburgh School would expand on to the former mainstream site, providing 48 new specialist places for its students, who have a wide variety of needs. The renovation has been made possible thanks to capital funding.

“I don’t want to make light of what a grim backdrop there is,” says Woodley, referring to the devastation that a school closure can cause a community. “But you always have to try to find opportunity in a crisis.”

Similar work is underway in Lambeth, where a mainstream school merger has allowed a special school to expand. This helps to “reduce reliance on expensive and disruptive out-of-borough placement”, says Kind, adding that “what’s important is keeping those buildings in education” rather than allowing them to be sold off elsewhere.

Of course, all schools hope that closure will be avoided. For settings battling falling rolls, the causes are largely out of leaders’ hands. But those who are well versed in grappling with these challenges have learned how schools can mitigate the impact on children’s education.

The key is to make sure that “relationships with your local authority and local schools are really strong”, says Chatley, adding that he has worked with neighbouring settings to ensure that pupils are shared out appropriately.

“Does it not make sense for us both to be full?” he asked the council when he learned that St Katherine’s was due to be four pupils over capacity and another was due to be four under. “That’s financially sustainable for everybody.” Thanks to a long-standing good relationship, “they were able to facilitate that”, he says.

Kind agrees that collaboration should be at the heart of place-planning. “Rather than allowing individual schools to drift into crisis in isolation, we plan with a whole-borough approach.”

Above anything else, schools must ensure that the financial challenges brought on by having fewer pupils don’t negatively impact the pupils they do have.

“It’s jolly hard work,” says Purser. “But we prioritise our core purpose: academic standards remain at the heart of everything we do.”

Soneye-Thomas agrees. “We do what we need to do to make sure the children still get a good-quality education,” she says. “I don’t think it’s fair for the children to feel, ‘Oh, we were at school at a time when numbers dropped.’ We must keep their education stable.”

Ellen Peirson-Hagger is a freelance writer