Yesterday saw the publication of the Department for Education’s Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics statistics.

This includes, inter alia, data on pupil numbers in schools in England in January 2025.

There has been a drop of 11,000 in the number of pupils attending independent schools since last year, and since the introduction of VAT on school fees at the start of the year.

Much coverage, including that on the BBC website, seems to put this down to pupils leaving the independent sector.

But is that really the case?

Pupil numbers in independent schools

The first thing to say is that the age-profile of pupils in independent schools has historically been skewed towards older pupils.

In the chart below, we show the number of full-time pupils by academic age in independent schools in 2024. We concentrate on those of compulsory school age (4 to 15).

This shows a “stepped” pattern. There are more 15 year olds than 14 year olds, more 14 year olds than 13 year olds and so on.

How age cohorts increase in size

Now we look at age cohorts. For example, 4 year olds in 2024 were 5 year olds in 2025 and so on.

The chart also implies that age cohorts increase in size over time.

In the table below, we again show the number of full-time pupils on roll in independent schools by age, but this time for 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The first thing that is noticeable is that there are generally fewer pupils of each age in 2025, with the exception of 13 and 14 year olds. For example, there were 23,307 5 year olds in 2025 and 24,511 5 year olds in 2024.

But in the final two columns, we show the proportional size of increase in the age cohort compared to the previous year. For example, there were 23307 5 year olds in 2025 compared to 22280 4 year olds in 2024, an increase of 4.6%.

All the age cohorts increased in number in 2025. That in itself is not surprising, the same thing happened the previous year. In other words, more pupils tend to join the independent sector (either from the state sector or from overseas) than leave between the ages of 4 and 15. This is particularly the case between the ages of 10 and 11.

However, all of the age cohorts increased by a smaller proportion in 2025 than in 2024.

Summing up

There were fewer pupils on roll in independent schools in January 2025 than the previous year.

However, the fact that pupil numbers are lower this year does not necessarily mean that there has been an “exodus” from the independent sector.

First of all, some of this is to be expected given the overall decline in pupil numbers in England. As older, larger cohorts leave school, they are replaced by younger, smaller cohorts.

Secondly, it also ignores how age cohorts in independent schools increase in size over time as a result of pupils moving into the sector.

This opens the possibility that the decline in pupil numbers may be less to do with pupils leaving and more to do with fewer pupils joining.

However, we are unable to test this hypothesis further. Without pupil-level data for independent schools we cannot measure flows into and out of the sector.

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