Quick answer: Every primary school in England attracts at least £5,115 per pupil in 2026–27. So one empty Reception place costs your school £5,115 in the first year — and because primary cohorts almost never refill in later year groups, it costs roughly the same again every year until that child would have left. That's about £35,800 per empty place across a full primary journey. Five empty places is around £179,000. Our analysis of DfE data found the median under-filled primary in England has 51 empty places, worth about £261,000 a year.
Most heads know their roll is down. Fewer have done the seven-year arithmetic, and it is worse than it looks in a single budget.
The number itself
School funding follows pupils. Under the National Funding Formula, every primary school in England attracts a minimum of £5,115 per pupil in 2026–27, up from £4,955 the year before. Many schools attract more, once deprivation, English as an additional language, low prior attainment and other factors are added.
So the first year of one empty Reception place is straightforward: £5,115 you don't receive.
That's the bit everyone gets. The next bit is the one that quietly ruins budget planning.
Why it isn't a one-year problem
Reception is where a primary school's roll is set. Almost all applications arrive in the year of entry — that's how the admissions system works, and it's when families are actively choosing. In-year admissions happen, but they're a trickle, not a mechanism, and they very rarely fill a gap that opened at the start.
So a class that starts light stays light. It moves up the school year by year, carrying its shortfall with it, until it leaves seven years later.
That turns one empty place into:
Annual | Across the journey | |
|---|---|---|
1 empty place | £5,115 | £35,805 |
3 empty places | £15,345 | £107,415 |
5 empty places | £25,575 | £179,025 |
10 empty places | £51,150 | £358,050 |
And if the following year's intake is also short, the two shortfalls run alongside each other. Three consecutive under-filled intakes and a school is carrying three depleted cohorts at once — which is the point at which staffing decisions stop being about improvement and start being about survival.
What that looks like nationally
We analysed DfE establishment and census data for all 11,893 established state-funded mainstream primaries in England — excluding schools opened since 2018, which are still filling up by design, and sponsor-led academies.
42.5% of them are below 90% occupancy, with 339,214 empty places between them.
The median under-filled school has 51 empty places. At £5,115 each, that's roughly £261,000 a year of funding not reaching that school. The full analysis, method and local authority tables are published here.
Which is why the sums on fixing it look odd at first
Here is the part that surprises finance committees.
The campaign we published in full in 2019 spent £1,059 on advertising across a whole admissions season. Applications went from 53 to 97, and Reception filled.
Set that against the table above. One additional pupil is worth £5,115 in the first year alone — roughly five times the entire advertising budget of that campaign, and about £35,800 across their time at the school. That's an enormous amount of money and it's why we think that any and all efforts to market your reception is worth every penny.
It's the reason we price our own work the way we do: our fee for a first-year campaign is a little more than what one extra pupil brings in. One child covers it. Everything after that is return, repeated every year those children are on the roll. How the Fill Your Class Funnel works.
The caveats worth stating
Funding isn't profit. An extra pupil brings £5,115 and also brings a child who needs teaching, feeding and looking after. The point isn't that pupils are income — it's that your fixed costs don't fall when your roll does. The heating, the building, the leadership team and most of the teaching establishment cost the same at 26 pupils as at 30. Empty places don't reduce your costs; they reduce your ability to cover them.
Not every shortfall is fixable. If there simply aren't enough children in your area, no campaign conjures them. Our analysis found that schools with no other primary within 2km have the highest rate of under-occupancy — that's demographic, and marketing isn't the answer.
But most empty places aren't in those schools. 59% of under-filled primaries have three or more other primaries within 2km, and those schools hold 71% of the country's empty places. In London it's 99%. In those areas there are children; they're going somewhere else.
That's a different problem with a different answer — and it's the one we've spent since 2018 solving.
What to do with this
If you're building a budget against a smaller roll, do the seven-year sum rather than the one-year one. It changes what a marketing budget looks like — not as a cost against this year's squeezed position, but against a shortfall you'll otherwise carry until 2033.
And if you want to know which kind of problem you have — demographic or competitive — that's exactly what our Marketing Health Check answers, before you spend anything.
Sources
GOV.UK — Schools block funding formulae 2026 to 2027 (minimum per-pupil funding levels)
DfE — Get Information About Schools (occupancy analysis)
London Councils — Sharp decline in London pupil numbers, February 2026
Frequently asked questions
How much funding does a school lose for each empty place?
At least £5,115 per pupil per year in 2026–27, which is the minimum per-pupil funding level for primary schools in England under the National Funding Formula. Many schools attract more once additional needs factors are included.
Does an empty Reception place cost a school more than one year of funding?
Yes. Primary cohorts rarely refill in later year groups, so a class that starts under-filled usually stays under-filled until it leaves. One empty Reception place therefore costs roughly £35,800 across a child's seven years at the school.
How many empty places does a typical under-filled primary school have?
Our analysis of DfE data for 11,893 established state primaries found 42.5% are below 90% occupancy, and the median under-filled school has 51 empty places — worth about £261,000 a year in per-pupil funding.
Can school marketing actually fix a falling roll?
It depends on the cause. Where there are too few children locally, marketing changes little. Where a school is under-filled while several other primaries sit within walking distance — which describes 59% of England's under-filled primaries — families are actively choosing between schools, and visibility, reputation and how easy it is to book a visit become decisive.
How much does an admissions marketing campaign cost compared with the shortfall?
The campaign documented in our published case study spent £1,059 on advertising across a full season and took one school from 53 to 97 applications. One additional pupil is worth £5,115 in the first year — roughly five times that entire advertising budget.
Ian Clifford is the co-founder of School Marketing Works and has been running admissions campaigns for UK schools since 2018, including the one documented in our published falling school roll case study.