Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Nash on 27 January concerning the shortfall of school places by 2023 (HL4305), whether the Department for Education has taken account of the net immigration figures between 1997 and 2014 in its planning for future school provision; and if not, why not.

Local authorities are responsible for securing sufficient school places in their area. They are responsible for planning the number of places they will need in the future and they consider a number of factors when planning the number of places needed including rising birth rates, housing development, trends in internal migration and migration to England from elsewhere in the United Kingdom and from overseas. The Department for Education allocates funding to local authorities based on these forecasts.

The Department considers national population estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in its planning assumptions about the number of new school places that will be needed in the years beyond those for which there are local authority level forecasts - these include estimates of net migration. The ONS’s population estimates are available at:

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/snpp/sub-national-population-projections/2012-based-projections/stb-2012-based-snpp.html#tab-Introduction