A to Z Index:

School Roll Forecasts

classroomBelow are the 2007-based School Roll Forecasts for Aberdeenshire's Primary and Secondary schools until 2016.

Overall, the accuracy of the forecasts is likely to be greater in the short term.

For small rural primary schools with fluctuating rolls, forecasting is often problematic, for example anticipated housing developments on small sites (less than 5 units) are unavailable. While particularly in settlements with more than one primary school where the schools are relatively close together, out of zone admissions may become an issue. In the short term, most of the potential secondary pupils are already within the local primary school system. In Aberdeenshire, the secondary schools are relatively isolated spatially from each other: no settlement has more than one secondary school. This limits the impact of out of zone admissions, which make roll prediction more difficult. However, staying on rates into the final two years fluctuate from year to year.

While forecasts are provided to 2016, it must be recognised that beyond 2012 (5 years) forecasts for individual schools are subject to greater uncertainty, and will be influnced by land use policy decisions on the location of development which have yet to be made. To this end, only the trend shown for the period 2008-2012 will be used as the basis for discussions with interested parties regarding the future under or over capacity of any secondary school.

Primary School Capacities and the associated calculations of the difference between Roll and Capacity and Roll expressed as a percentage of Capacity are only shown in the tables up to school session 2006-07.

From 2007-08, Primary School Capacities will have to be revised to take account of the new maximum size of 25 for P1 Classes.

The Scottish Government has announced its intention to introduce a maximum class size of 18 for Early Stage classes.  We do not know when this requirement will take effect.  This change will significantly reduce Primary School Capacities.

In order to download Aberdeenshire's School Roll Forecasts please click on the links below: