Statutory guidance

School organisation: local-authority-maintained schools

Statutory guidance about making organisation changes to local-authority-maintained schools, including school closure.

Published 28 January 2014
Last updated 5 November 2019 — see all updates

• From: Department for Education

• Applies to: England

Documents

Opening and closing maintained schools

Ref: DFE-00334-2018 PDF, 593KB, 49 pages

Making significant changes (‘prescribed alterations’) to maintained schools

Ref: DFE-00314-2018 PDF, 753KB, 51 pages

Details

These documents are for:

• governing bodies
• local authorities
• decision makers

They describe opening, closing, or making school organisation changes to local-authority-maintained schools.

They set out how you can make those changes, and the areas where you must follow a statutory process.

This guidance is based on:

• The School Organisation (Prescribed Alterations to Maintained Schools) (England) Regulations 2013
• The School Organisation (Establishment and Discontinuance of Schools) Regulations 2013

Statutory guidance sets out what schools and local authorities must do to comply with the law. You should follow the guidance unless you have a very good reason not to.

Published 28 January 2014
Last updated 5 November 2019 + show all updates

1. 5 November 2019

   Updated 'Opening and closing maintained schools' document.

2. 15 November 2018

   Removed 'Deciding prescribed alteration and establishment and discontinuance proposals'.

3. 15 November 2018

   Removed 2016 document 'Opening and closing local-authority-maintained schools'. Has been replaced with document from November 2018.

4. 15 November 2018

   Replaced file 'Making significant changes to maintained schools' with 'Opening and closing maintained schools'.

5. 25 October 2018

   Attached new version of 'Making significant changes ('prescribed alterations') to maintained schools' to update the guidance from 2016.

6. 8 April 2016

   We have comprehensively reviewed and updated all 3 documents. The changes include corrections to discrepancies in the guidance on making ‘prescribed alterations’ to local-authority-maintained schools.

7. 11 February 2016

   Updated page to explain that we are currently reviewing our guidance to local-authority-maintained schools. We will update it shortly.

8. 28 January 2014

   First published.