Academic year 2023/24

School capacity

School places in primary and secondary state-funded schools including sixth form. Local authorities’ pupil forecasts and planned changes to school places.

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Data guidance

Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

Description

This document describes the data included in the ‘School Capacity: Academic Year 2023/24’ Official Statistics release’s underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data.

The methodology accompanying this release should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

A description of how the school place planning estimates have been derived and how to interpret them is also provided in technical guidance document accompanying this release. Users should read this technical guidance to understand the practical applications and limitations of the data.

Coverage

This release reports on school capacity information in state-funded primary and secondary schools in England in the academic year 2023/24, as of 1 May 2024. Data are as reported by local authorities in the annual School Capacity (SCAP) Survey.

Information is included on:

• The numbers of primary and secondary school places from 2009/10 to 2023/24 , including unfilled school places and pupils in places that exceed their school's capacity (2019/20 data is not available due to the cancellation of the 2020 SCAP survey due to Covid-19);

• Sixth form capacity in schools, where reported, from 2017/18 to 2023/24 (2019/20 data is not available due to the cancellation of the 2020 SCAP survey due to Covid-19);

• Local authorities’ pupil forecasts up to 2028/29  at primary level and 2030/31 at secondary level; including places to be funded through housing developer contributions (HDCs) and housing infrastructure fund (HIF)

• Local authority planned changes to school places to 2026/27, including additional, bulge (temporary additional places for large cohorts) and places to remove;

• The department ‘s modelled estimate’s of future number of places needed, up to 2028/29 at primary level and 2030/31 at secondary level.

This publication also includes Official Statistics in Development for special school capacity, the capacity of special educational needs (SEN) unit and resourced provision in mainstream schools, and local authority forecast demand for specialist provision. 

File formats and conventions

The following conventions are used throughout the underlying data.
‘z’ Not applicable.
‘x’ Not available.

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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about School capacity statistics and data:

Pupil Place Planning team

Email: SCAP.PPP@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Robert Miller

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Phone: 0370 000 2288

Opening times

Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5.30pm (closed on bank holidays)

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