More than half of England’s local authorities are at risk of not being able to meet the demand for secondary school places in the next five years.
It means that around 134,000 children face missing out on a secondary school place by 2023/24, according to an analysis by the Local Government Association (LGA).
However, the LGA says that councils are powerless to act given that so many secondary schools are now academies and outside of their control. Councils cannot direct academies to expand and are not allowed to open new maintained schools.
The LGA forecast is based on an analysis of 135 of 152 local authorities in England with education responsibilities. It uses data from the Department for Education’s School Capacity Survey, which covers numbers of school places and forecasts of pupil numbers until 2023/24 for each local authority.
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