Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Prime Minister's oral contribution of 10 February 2016, Official Report, column 1576, what the evidential basis is for the statement that there are 47,500 fewer pupils in overcrowded schools than in 2010.

The department collects information from each local authority on the number of schools, the number of places in those schools and the number of pupils on roll through the annual school capacity survey (SCAP). The data is published annually, and the main tables contain national and local authority level data. The latest published data, relating to the position as reported by local authorities at May 2014, can be found on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-capacity-academic-year-2013-to-2014

Previous years are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-capacity

In both the 2014 and 2010 data publications, the table below shows capacity in state funded primary and secondary schools. In 2010 there were a total of 97,230 primary and secondary pupils in excess of capacity. In 2014 this had reduced to 49,717, meaning that 47,513 fewer pupils were excess of capacity in 2014 than in 2010.