Reporting year 2025

National pupil projections

Data guidance

Published 17 July 2025

Description

This document describes the data included in the ‘National pupil projections: 2024 model, published July 2024’ Official Statistics release’s underlying data file. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in a new tab) (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab) (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.

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 - 2025 projections

• Filename: pupilprojprincipal_2025.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 2025
• Content:
  All data files associated with this release are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
establishment_type_group	type of school - school type
model_year	Year of actual or projected figures
population_measure	Flag for actual or projected years
pupil_age	single year of age or age group - age range
pupil_count	Number of pupils
pupil_status	Headcount or FTE - headcount or full time equivalent count

Pupil projections variants - 2025 projections

• Filename: pupilprojvariants_2025.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 2025
• Content:
  National pupils projection using ONS variant projection scenarios.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
age_range	Pupils aged up to and including 15 - age range (Primary: up to 10, Secondary: 11 to 15, Tota:l up to and including 15)
model_year	Year of actual or projected figures
population_measure	Flag for actual or projected years
projection_type	Type of alternative scenario - variant projection
pupil_count	Number of pupils