School closures are an alarming symptom of Britain’s shrinking birthrate. Several factors have contributed to falling enrolment, but the most significant is that people are having fewer children. Declining pupil numbers could be an excuse to free up spending for an ageing population. Instead, the government should see this as an opportunity to improve the quality of provision for young people.
The fall has been most acute in inner London, where 90 schools have shut since 2021. In Southwark, where the number of children born each year has dropped by more than a third since 2010, eight primary schools have closed in the past six years. As London’s councils have observed, high living costs are pricing families out of the centre and dissuading people from having children. It is no surprise that Islington and Westminster, two of the most expensive places to live in Britain, also have among the lowest fertility rates in England and Wales.
Declining enrolment shapes the quality of education that schools can provide. They receive funding for each child they enrol, which is currently £7,000 per primary-age pupil in England. Schools with fewer pupils are forced to make their funding stretch further, cutting teachers, merging classes, and losing extracurricular activities. Official forecasts have previously overestimated the future number of young people, making it harder for local authorities to plan. They have not been helped by the promotion of free schools, which have created a surplus of school places, or the expansion of academies, which decide their own admissions and can entice pupils away to neighbouring areas. The government has recently given local authorities greater powers to object to academy expansion, which should help them plan more effectively.
The Treasury may be tempted to recycle savings from falling pupil numbers towards rising demand for health and social care. Over the past seven years, for example, as primary school pupil numbers in England fell by 5%, the number of teachers and classes shrank by 4%. But treating this development as a justification for cutting spending on education would be a mistake. Lucy Powell, the education secretary, has promised expanded enrichment activities and earlier intervention for children with special educational needs. Falling pupil numbers offer an opportunity to deliver these ambitions, provided the government retains the resources to do so. The gap between private school fees and state school spending per pupil has more than doubled over the past decade, and spending more on state school pupils would help narrow this inequality.
The closure of a school shapes an area. “Without this school it’s all just tourists, isn’t it?” one parent recently said of Soho’s last remaining primary school, which is at risk of imminent closure. Fewer schools make areas less attractive to families, particularly in rural places where alternatives may be miles away. Yet if people continue having fewer children, more schools will probably have to close. In some cases, this may be unavoidable.
Schools that have large numbers of unfilled places tend to perform worse on average, but closing them won’t necessarily improve results. Local authorities, which have excelled at selling off public assets, should be required to keep hold of shuttered schools. Empty classrooms could be repurposed as youth clubs, turned over to nurseries, or transformed into Sure Start centres. The focus should be on managing resources to improve education and opportunities for young people in an increasingly old society.
