Understanding the forecasts for schools in your area

The current pupil numbers and school place numbers are provided by planning area within Cumberland. Each section provides information relevant to the individual planning area and includes projections illustrating how pupil numbers are expected to change, as well as what general changes in school organisation and Published Admission Numbers (PAN) are needed to meet the changing pupil population.   

This information will be of interest to school governors, head teachers and parents/pupils. The analysis is presented in 17 planning area sections and a District overview for primary schools and three planning area sections and a District overview for secondary schools.  

When looking at the projections in each of the planning area sections it is important to note that whilst the Council will seek to meet parental preferences, projections are primarily concerned with the number of available school places in the area.  It may be the case that there are some schools in an area that are consistently oversubscribed due to parental preferences.  In school place planning terms, and for the calculation of Basic Need capital funding, oversubscription in one or more schools in any planning area is not equivalent to a shortage of places.  The DfE considers all the available capacity in any planning area to determine whether a shortage of places exists.  The pattern of parental preferences gives an indication as to where parents would prefer their children to go to school, but is not an indicator of a shortage of school places.   

The Council’s aim is to predict and respond to any surplus or shortfall of places in reception and year 7 (and ultimately, beyond), based on the number of children due to start school and the ongoing impact of any growth or reduction in pupil numbers. The actual need for places may be distributed evenly across all areas, or may be concentrated.  To enable the Council to meet the demand for places of families moving into an area, and to account for mobility related to parental preference, the aim is to retain spare capacity of around 5% to ensure that children are placed into schools as soon as possible.  This would ideally be the case in each primary and secondary school planning area.  This is not to say that when spare capacity falls below 5%, the Council will seek to provide additional places.  A long-term view must be taken, and the availability of capital funding will ultimately determine what we can do.