Almost 10,000 extra school places have been identified in schools that had previously predicted capacity shortfalls, government documents seen by Tes have revealed.
The places were identified by a pilot government-run scheme designed to assess whether schools had capacity for more students.
The Net Capacity Assessment (NCA) pilot, which got under way in 2022, warned of “growing disparities” between the capacity numbers provided by academies and local authorities (LAs) and those found by the government’s property assessors.
A summary of the Department for Education (DfE) pilot, seen by Tes. said it found 19,700 additional places in 150 schools.
Of those additional places, 9,000 were found in schools in areas with forecast shortfalls of places, data provided by the DfE after a freedom of information request by Tes showed.
The DfE said its pilot confirmed that “disparities” exist between the capacity figures recorded in the [annual school capacity survey] Scap and the actual capacity of schools.
The pilot was based on visits to a range of mainstream primary and secondary schools, and led to a rollout of visits to 4,500 secondary and special schools, which started last June and is expected to complete in September 2025.
The DfE said the scheme is designed to ensure existing schools are operating at optimal capacity and also help it to carry out better planning for the building of new schools, or closures, needed.
Visits involve Valuation Office Agency assessors measuring rooms and recording room types. They then use an NCA tool and methodology to calculate the number of students a school can accommodate, based on the size and use of spaces available.
Julia Harnden, funding specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, called for the data to be used alongside information regarding the “infrastructure and resources schools have available, to ensure they are in a position to adequately support additional pupils”.
She said there is “clearly a need for additional places to be created in some schools, particularly special schools that often run at or above capacity”, but warned that “the condition of buildings must be taken into account” where spare space is identified.
“Where a space needs to be refurbished or could be usefully repurposed, a flexible approach to the use of available capital funding must be taken,” she said, adding that schools or trusts involved will be “best placed to understand what is required to meet pupil needs”.
Academy funding consultant Tim Warneford said that the discrepancies in capacity numbers found by the pilot could be down to the way funding has been allocated to local authorities in the past to help them cope with expanding populations of students.
“There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that basic need funding, a formulaic funding allocation paid by the DfE to local authorities to help with expanding populations, has been manipulated to reflect the number of pupils the LA or school want admitted as opposed to the true capacity of the premises,” he said.
“If an LA or school claims to be at capacity it can attract further funding to help with pupil places,” he added.
Nationwide special-school capacity
The scheme is also designed to provide the first nationwide measurement of special-school capacity.
During a presentation on the NCA programme at the National Network of Special Schools for Business Professionals’ annual conference in Manchester this week, the DfE said that it aims to have visited all of the country’s special schools by September.
The DfE said it calculates that for special schools, a teaching space can only be used for 35 per cent of the number of pupils in a mainstream setting, and subsequent NCA reports to schools provide a maximum and minimum range for the number of pupils that is thought can be accommodated.
However, one senior leader from a special school in the South West said at today’s event that the school had been surveyed and was awaiting its report, “but not once were we asked about the needs of our children”.
She told the conference that the school served pupils with severe learning difficulties, some of whom require one-to-one staffing support and others who require three-to-one support.
Warning over failure to consider pupil needs
The senior leader added: “We are absolutely over capacity. How do you reflect that in your report when we haven’t been asked for that information?”
Speaking to Tes after the event, she said that she believed the DfE could end up overestimating special schools’ capacity because it has not considered pupil needs in its calculations.
The NCA reports are provided to local authorities, schools and their responsible bodies.
Findings from the programme are yet to be published, but the DfE said that it “hopes to publish the tools and methodology” for the NCA.
A spokesperson for the DfE said: “Where shortfalls are forecast, we help schools to cope with the impact of demographic growth.
“We have announced nearly £1.5 billion to support local authorities to create enough school places over the next three academic years, up to and including the academic year starting in September 2026. This funding is on top of our investment in the free schools programme.”
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