The following information may be useful to staff who are responsible for making projections of pupil numbers.

Falling rolls toolkit for primary schools

Many areas are facing a serious decline in their primary school population. Local authorities and primary schools faced with falling rolls need to take action to ensure they are equipped to deliver the best possible quality of education with the resources available to them. This guide and tool kit provides advice for schools and for local authorities on such issues as:

  • reorganising schools to remove surplus spaces
  • using revenue and capital finance more effectively
  • schools joining up as partners to offer the best opportunities for pupils.

Child benefit data as at November 2003

This website provides data on the number of families receiving child benefit and the ages of their children in five year bands:

  • table 1 has data for each county and each government regional office
  • table 2 has data for each local authority
  • table 3 has data for each parliamentary constituency.

Population estimates for mid 2001 & 2002 at ward level - (Released April 2005). Due to some methodology changes these mid-2001 and mid-2002 ward estimates by the ONS are being published as 'experimental statistics'. They are, however, useful detailed statistics about local populations.

2003 mid year population estimates (released Sept 2004) by local authority
Table 9 from this ONS data set shows the estimated resident population at mid-year 2003:

  • in five year age bands
  • split by gender
  • for local authorities in England and Wales.

Census data for 2001

The last completed census was 2001. All data from it including birth rate and fertility rate information about all parts of the country are available at this link.

Neighbourhood statistics

Detailed information about a particular local area can be obtained by simply giving the post code for the area. This data could be very useful when school reorganisation plans are being considered.

Tees Valley JSU Reports

Redcar and Cleveland is one of three case studies in this guide. The TVJSU provides projected pupil numbers to the authority. This link takes you to the reports page of the TVJSU web site. It demonstrates the wide range of planning data that it makes available to its constituent authorities including population projections to 2021.

The 2004/5 research into pupil projection methods by Hedra for the Department. This is a report of Hedra's findings from its research with 15 authorities in 2004/5. The report:

  • identifies the core tasks involved in making school projections
  • reports the results of accuracy tests on projections made by the sample of authorities
  • concludes with a summary of what existing practices can teach us about good practice.