Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure that school admissions arrangements can better support schools experiencing falling pupil numbers and prevent significant declines in pupil numbers.

Schools’ admission authorities are responsible for setting their admission arrangements in the local context. Admission authorities can make changes to their published admission number (PAN) and oversubscription criteria, in line with the statutory School Admissions Code, to respond to changing local circumstances.

Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, the government has introduced new duties on schools and local authorities to co-operate on admissions and place planning matters. The Act will also enable the adjudicator to specify changes to a school‘s PAN where they uphold an objection to that PAN. The department intends to update the School Admissions Code and associated regulations to implement this change, which will help ensure decisions about the number of places offered by schools take account of local circumstances, demand for places and the impact on the wider local school system, as well as school quality and parental choice.