The School Organisation Team is responsible for ensuring that there are sufficient and appropriate school places available to create a school system that is sustainable into the future. We work with all schools and stakeholders to ensure that the Local Authority is meeting its statutory duty to provide sufficient school places across Warrington.
The statutory duty is set out in the Education Act 1996, added to by Section 2 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to secure sufficient primary and secondary school places.
Our team complete the mandatory School Capacity Collection (SCAP Return) for the Department of Education annually. This provides school level data for every school in the borough, including Number on Roll (NOR), Published Admission Number (PAN), Net Capacity and Pupil Projections. All of this data and information is used to determine where school places are needed.
We review all primary and secondary school places. We identify areas of shortfall and surplus to enable appropriate places to be commissioned, ensuring we provide sufficient places.
To achieve this, we use several data sources to improve our understanding of the provision required and how it will develop over time. Our forecasting model incorporates live birth data, new housing developments, cross-border movement, admissions preferences and transition and migration rates.
School Organisation Strategy
There are three key themes happening in schools across Warrington:
- The birth rate in Warrington has fallen significantly which will lead to schools having surplus places in Reception and infant classes during the coming years.
- The movement of families into Warrington has increased significantly, meaning primary schools are often over capacity in Key Stage Two.
- The total secondary school population is expected to swell significantly over the next six years due to large primary school populations moving into secondary schools, migration into Warrington and popularity with families living outside the borough.
We have produced a School Organisation Strategy that gives further detail on these trends and how we plan to address them: