Statutory guidance

School organisation: local-authority-maintained schools

Statutory guidance for proposers and decision makers about opening, closing or making organisation changes to local-authority-maintained schools.

From:
Department for Education
Published
28 January 2014
Last updated
3 March 2025 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Opening and closing maintained schools

PDF, 689 KB, 53 pages

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

PDF, 493 KB, 62 pages

Details

These documents are for:

  • local authorities
  • governing bodies
  • diocese or other relevant religious authorities

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:

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.

Trustees of the school, diocese or relevant diocesan board, or any other relevant faith body, parents and those affected by a proposal may also find this information useful.

Updates to this page

Published 28 January 2014
Last updated 3 March 2025 show all updates

  1. Updated 'Making significant changes (‘prescribed alterations’) to maintained schools'.

  2. Updated guidance to reflect Ofsted's removal of single word judgements.

  3. We have reviewed this guidance and removed out-of-date information. The legislation remains the same.

  4. Updated 'Opening and closing maintained schools' document.

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

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

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

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

  9. 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.

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

  11. First published.

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