Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data on unfilled school capacity by 2024 parliamentary constituency she plans to publish before the Finance Bill is introduced.

The department publishes annual statistics on the capacity and pupils on roll in schools, including unfilled places, each spring. This is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity. Statistics publications are pre-announced on the GOV.UK website, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/search/research-and-statistics?content_store_document_type=upcoming_statistics&organisations%5B%5D=department-for-education&order=updated-newest. This is done in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics (the Code), which can be found here: https://code.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/. The department currently has no plan to change this publication schedule. The scheduling ensures that statistics are released as soon as they are ready while abiding by standards set by the Code in terms of trustworthiness, quality and value. Where statistics were published prior to the changes in parliamentary constituency boundaries, they will be updated to reflect the new boundaries in the next publication of statistics. This is expected to be in March 2025 for school capacity statistics.

School capacity data is published at school level. This can be combined with information from ‘Get Information About Schools’ (GIAS) to identify parliamentary constituency. GIAS currently reflects the changes made following the general election parliamentary constituency changes, and can be accessed using the following link: https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/. Updates to geographical data are made on a quarterly basis using data published by the Office for National Statistics.