Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools closed in England in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020 and (d) 2021.

This data has been taken from Get Information about Schools, the department’s register of schools[1]. The data shows all types of mainstream local authority-maintained schools, academies, and free schools. The data excludes closures of schools where they become an academy as a result of intervention following an inadequate Ofsted judgement or acquire a new unique reference number on transfer between trusts.

There are a variety of reasons for closing a school. These include where there are surplus places elsewhere in the local area, where provision has been rationalised, for example where an infant and a junior school have been amalgamated to form a primary school, or if a school is no longer financially viable.

The table below shows the numbers of schools that have opened between 2018 and 2021.

[1] Responsibility for updating GIAS is shared between the department, schools, and local authorities and therefore we cannot guarantee the accuracy of this data.