§ Mr. Hooleyasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what techniques are used for monitoring the effect of birth rate trends on future school populations (a) primary and (b) secondary.
§ Miss Margaret JacksonMy Department receives regular advice on births and population trends from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. Fresh projections of school population are carried out, usually at least twice during the year, on the basis of the latest such information. The statistical procedure adopted is the same for both primary and secondary schools and is applied through the Department's own computer: to investigate the effects of possible variations in future births, high and low alternative assumptions are periodically tested. A description of the then-current projections was published last June in DES Report on Education Number 92 "School Population in the 1980s", available from the Department, a copy of which was placed in the Library.
§ Mr. Hooleyasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what revised calculations of the total of primary school children in 1983–84 have been made in the light of the rise in the birth rate in 1978 and the 10 per cent. rise in the first weeks of the current year over the 1978 figures.
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§ Miss Margaret JacksonThere were broadly 20,000 more births in 1978 than anticipated by the projection of pupil numbers in England and Wales made last year. These additional children will enter the age range of primary education in 1983–84, when the number of 5–10s in primary schools will have fallen overall by some 900,000 compared with 1978–79. The revision is not, therefore, very substantial. One of the variant projections described in the Report on Education, to which I have referred, investigates the longer term effects of rapidly increasing births. A new calculation incorporating revised birth rate assumptions for 1979 and subsequent years will be made late this year.