Reporting year 2023

National pupil projections

Data guidance

Published 19 October 2023

Description

This document describes the data included in the ‘National pupil projections – future trends in pupil numbers: 2023 model, published October 2023’ Official Statistics release’s underlying data file. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab).

The methodology document for this subject should be referenced alongside this release. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality and how the data is produced.

Coverage

This publication contains actual and projected figures for the pupil population up to the age of 15 (at the start of the academic year) for most school types within England. 

Figures from the main (principal) projection are provided by the school types of:

• Maintained nursery
• State primary
• State secondary
• State special
• AP settings
• Independent
• Non maintain special

For the under 5 age group figures are provided as the full time equivalent (FTE) and headcount due to the number of part time pupils. All other ages, or age groups as appropriate, are provided as FTE only. 

File formats and conventions

Rounding

Figures in the variant projection data file are provided, and rounded, to the nearest thousand. 

Conventions

The following convention is used throughout the underlying data.

‘c’         Suppressed (under 500) 

‘z’         Not applicable.

Data files

All data files associated with this releases are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.

Pupil projections - 2023 projection

• Filename: pupilprojprincipal_2023.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 2023
• Content:

  Actual and projected pupil projection by school type, pupil status and age or age group

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
2010_actual	actual population in 2010
2011_actual	actual population in 2011
2012_actual	actual population in 2012
2013_actual	actual population in 2013
2014_actual	actual population in 2014
2015_actual	actual population in 2015
2016_actual	actual population in 2016
2017_actual	actual population in 2017
2018_actual	actual population in 2018
2019_actual	actual population in 2019
2020_actual	actual population in 2020
2021_actual	actual population in 2021
2022_actual	actual population in 2022
2023_actual	actual population in 2023
2024_projection	projection for 2024
2025_projection	projection for 2025
2026_projection	projection for 2026
2027_projection	projection for 2027
2028_projection	projection for 2028
2029_projection	projection for 2029
2030_projection	projection for 2030
2031_projection	projection for 2031
2032_projection	projection for 2032
pupil_age	single year of age or age group - age range
pupil_status	Headcount or FTE - headcount or full time equivalent count
school_type	type of school - school type