Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many of the 55 Education Investment Areas have surplus school places.

The department publishes school place planning estimates as part of the school capacity official statistics publication, available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity.

This contains estimates of future school place shortfalls and surpluses. This data was last published in May 2019 and covered the place planning estimates for mainstream school places in year groups from reception to year 11. The department will be publishing updated school capacity official statistics at the end of March 2022.

Identification of forecast need is carried out at planning area level. This means that within a local authority there may be planning areas forecasting a surplus and others forecasting a need for additional places. Based on the data published in May 2019, an estimated 53,000 primary places and 77,000 secondary places were needed across England to meet demand for academic year 2023/24. Around 17,000 of these primary places and 25,000 of these secondary places are in Education Investment Areas.

The need for places will be an important consideration in determining whether new free schools will be approved and opened. The department will set out more details on the future free school programme in due course.