London could become a ‘childless city’ as pupil numbers fall, schools close and families move out due to spiralling costs of transport and housing, teachers claim.
It is also claimed that declining birth rates and new-build apartments taking the place of family homes are contributing to the decline, which began before Brexit and COVID but has since quickened.
National Association of Head Teachers vice-president Dave Woods told The Times there was ‘almost one thing on top of another’ contributing to the plunge in pupils.
He said: ‘It’s a phrase that is talked about in meetings – about London becoming a childless city. You’ve got high housing, high transport prices, a cost of living crisis.’
Mr Woods, headteacher of Beaconsfield Primary School in Southall, added that family homes were being replaced by smaller apartments in his area of West London.
He said the ‘continuous downward spiral’ in numbers began before Brexit, and many families who moved to the UK from Eastern Europe left permanently during COVID.
Families moving out of London and other cities to get more space for the same price have been a hot topic in online forums like Mumsnet in recent years.
Frankie Graddon, who writes a popular Substack column under the name Mumish, said that her social media feeds were ‘full of updates from work peers and friends of friends with young kids who have switched city living for The Good Life’.
It comes after the Education Policy Institute (EPI) revealed that nine of the ten local authorities seeing the biggest drops in primary school pupil numbers are in London.
The capital is expected to continue to see bigger falls than the rest of the country for the next five years, and researchers said strategies were required to adapt funding and provision to cope with falling numbers, which threaten the viability of schools.
There are set to be 400,000 fewer students at schools in England by 2030 than today, and primary pupil numbers have already dropped by 150,000 since 2019.
The EPI said Westminster saw a nearly 16 per cent fall in primary pupil numbers from 2020/21 to 2024/25 – but claimed London’s steeper decline cannot be explained by falling birth rates alone.
In Southwark, figures have dropped by more than 12 per cent in five years, and the number of primary schools has fallen by six.
In order, the ten local authority areas with the largest falls in primary pupil numbers over the last five years are Westminster, Lambeth, Southwark, Hackney, Camden, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Merton, Wandsworth, and Redcar and Cleveland.
Schools are financed on a per-pupil basis, which means falling registrations are a major problem, as big declines are associated with school closures.
An increasing number of students are leaving London, researchers found. About 17 per cent of primary pupils in reception in 2012/13 had left the city by Year 6, increasing to 20 per cent for students who began reception in 2017/18.
While declining birth rates play a critical role, London primary pupils are most likely to either move within the city or depart the state education system, findings indicate.
The South East and East of England have the biggest student influxes from London, according to local authorities.
Over the next five years, Islington, Lambeth and Southwark are expected to experience the biggest declines in student numbers from 14 per cent to 20 per cent.
A population bulge in England has been moving into secondary schools, but the Department for Education said in July that it expected pupil numbers to peak in 2026/27.
Earlier this year, a former education secretary called for school funding to no longer be considered on a per-pupil basis due to declining enrollment.
Conservative MP Damian Hinds said the decline in the number of children in schools meant the per-pupil basis was no longer a good reflection of whether funding was increasing or decreasing.
A Department for Education spokesperson told the Daily Mail today: ‘We recognise the pressures caused by demographic changes which some schools in inner London are facing.
‘Our system is designed to give schools more certainty over funding levels so they can plan ahead. Per-pupil funding for schools is currently at record levels, increasing to £69.5 billion by 2028-29.
‘As part of our wider work to give children the best start in life, we have awarded 300 primary schools £37 million to repurpose their spare space, with schools now providing over 5,000 new childcare places, as part of our school-based nurseries roll out.’
White people can’t afford to have children, but migrants don’t appear to have a problem breeding like rabbits – I wonder why?
London won’t become childless, but it will definitely become ‘white childless’ because the Muslim community is outbreeding us, but that is their master plan, and it’s not just about spiralling prices. London resembles a third-world country in some places. Who wants to bring their children up in filth and with the danger of being stabbed if they go out with their friends?
Sadiq Khan has created an absolute cesspit of a capital, and that remains the biggest reason people want to get out of our once great capital.
Welcome to Khan’s London, where it’s all going to plan, and quicker than he could have ever imagined, but it won’t matter to him when London is filled with the right kind of Londoners!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 