Predicting school places – the big challenge for local authorities

Families in many areas are reportedly facing the worrying prospect of a shortage of primary school places. According to the National Audit Office, a quarter of a million extra school places will be needed by autumn 2014 to meet rising demand.

With one in five English primary schools already full or near capacity, there is a pressing need for local authorities to make more accurate predictions of the future demand for school places in their area.

This has rarely been a simple task. Fluctuating birth rates and varying levels of migration have always tested the expertise of forecasters, but the effects of the tough economic climate have created an even greater challenge.

Some councils are seeing a rise in crisis-led relocations or more families with housing difficulties moving into temporary accommodation. Even regions which had previously been stable in population terms are now witnessing changes.

With more factors than ever in the mix, what can councils do to ensure they have the insight they need to provide school places for all children in their community in the years ahead?

Many authorities use technology that allows them to collect data from a range of sources. This can support the effective forecasting of provision for school places and other public services. Systems exist that enable a complex matrix of information to be built to monitor the shifts that take place in a local area.

Planning departments can provide valuable information about a school’s catchment area, for example. Having the right IT system in place can add another layer of intelligence by applying additional weighting factors using local knowledge, such as the expansion or loss of a major employer in the region.

Data gathered from early years settings and children’s centres play an essential part in informing the possible future demand for school places too. It is also important for authorities to be able to track trends in the popularity of schools as parents’ attitudes can change in response to a new head teacher or a favourable Ofsted report. Technology can help factor influences like this in alongside year-on-year trends in school place gains and losses.

The opening of academies and free schools has changed the educational landscape in many areas, often in a relatively short time, and their impact on the maintained sector is another area that can be measured with more accuracy using an IT-based approach.  

The opportunity exists for local authorities to use the information provided by planning and children’s services departments to its full effect using technology. Not only will predictions be more accurate, the task will be simpler for council staff to carry out if they have a single view of the information available to them.

Local authorities need to take the guesswork out of school place prediction. This is key to targeting resources where they are needed to ensure more families are successful in securing a place for their child in their first choice school.

Phil Neal is managing director at Capita Children's Services