The numbers behind London’s empty — and closing — schools

On a dreary Monday night in late January, a community protest gathered outside Hackney Town Hall. Amidst the usual chanting, banners and placards though, passers-by may have noticed something different. The majority of those standing in front of the Town Hall that night were children and parents. The group was protesting the council’s plans to shut down four primary schools across the borough. Several children had only just moved to those schools from others in Hackney that had shut the year before. “Four last year, four this year. How many more? Where does [it] stop?,” one of the protesters, a teacher called Carly Slingsby now facing redundancy, asked reporters.

Slingsby probably wasn’t expecting an answer, but she was asking an important question. One that we might want to pose in a different way in order to understand what’s going on here, namely: Why are London schools closing in the first place?