Sutton wants to cut Devonshire Primary's reception intake from 90 to 60 for September 2027. Births are down 548 a year and 360 reception places sit empty.
Sutton Council wants to cut the reception intake at Devonshire Primary School from 90 places to 60 from September 2027. Councillors are asked to approve the plan on Wednesday 24 September.
The school is not in trouble. Ofsted rated it Good across every area it judged when it inspected on 14 January 2025 (Ofsted reports: Devonshire Primary School). The reason is simpler, and it applies to most of the borough: there are not enough four-year-olds.
The proposal sits in the Pupil Place Planning and Capital Update Report going to the council’s People Committee. The report says Devonshire made 65 offers for September 2026 against an admission number of 90, a surplus of 25 places. It also says the school’s governing body supports the reduction.
Why: 548 fewer babies
The council’s own forecasts put the cause plainly. There were 2,193 births to Sutton residents in 2024, against 2,741 in 2016. That is 548 fewer babies a year, a fall of 20 per cent, and those 2024 babies are the reception class of 2029.
Devonshire sits in what the council calls the Central primary planning area, the part of the borough where most new housing is going up. Even there, births have fallen 27 per cent since 2016, from 839 to 612. The report is blunt about what that means: the 2,462 homes Sutton must find room for by 2030 would generate roughly 45 children a year across the whole borough, and town centre flats produce fewer children than houses do. New homes will not fill the empty classrooms.
The East planning area has fallen furthest, down 32 per cent. All the figures are from Appendix A of the report, which draws on Office for National Statistics birth registrations.
360 empty reception places
Appendix A also counts the gap directly. Sutton’s primary schools have capacity for 2,550 reception pupils. There were 2,190 on roll at the May 2026 school census. That leaves 360 places unfilled, about one in seven.
The council’s new strategy document quotes both one in seven and, in its own summary, one in ten. The tables are the firmer number.
The rest of the picture, from the Managing Falling Rolls in Primary Strategy:
- the primary roll fell by 285 pupils in a single year, January 2025 to January 2026
- six primary schools have a reception surplus above 30 per cent
- four more are above 20 per cent
- 13 schools, 38 per cent of them, were still oversubscribed for reception in 2026
- national guidance says a healthy surplus is about 5 per cent; Sutton’s is twice that and forecast to reach nearly four times it
That last line is the heart of it. Schools are funded per pupil, so empty desks cut budgets, and the strategy says the risk is to “the diversity of the curriculum offered”.
Closure is on the list
The strategy sets out eight options the council and schools will work through, in order:
- reduce the published admission number
- maximise pupil numbers
- make better use of school sites with spare capacity
- vacant premises managers’ houses
- including children with SEND
- collaboration and federation
- amalgamate schools
- close schools
Option eight is described as “a very last resort”, and the strategy notes the Department for Education’s guidance carries “a presumption not to close”. No Sutton school is named for closure or merger anywhere in the papers.
What is coming is bigger than one school. The council expects to consult this autumn on cutting Sutton’s overall primary admission number by at least 60 places, two forms of entry, for admission in September 2028. Devonshire’s reduction is separate and earlier: it would go to the schools adjudicator as a variation for September 2027.
Secondary schools are not affected yet. The council projects a 2.4 per cent secondary surplus from September 2029, rising to 7.1 per cent by 2032.
Also on the agenda
Two special school changes go for statutory consultation at the same meeting, with decisions due back in December:
- Sherwood Foundation Special School, to increase its capacity across its three campuses to a peak of 289 places in 2030, settling at 264 from 2032
- Sutton Tuition and Reintegration Service, to add 14 places from April 2027 for children with an education, health and care plan
The council also forecasts a £13.55m overspend on its Dedicated Schools Grant in 2026/27, driven by demand for specialist places.
What it means for you
If your child is due to start reception in September 2027 and Devonshire is your first choice, the reduction makes it harder to get in, not easier: fewer places means the distance cut-off tightens. Nothing changes for children already at the school, and the report says the space would be repurposed, partly for a support base for pupils with SEND, in a way that is “easily reversible”.
If you want a say, the autumn consultation on wider admission number cuts is the one to watch. Watch the council’s school admissions pages for it.
The People Committee meets at 7pm on Wednesday 24 September at the Civic Offices, St Nicholas Way, SM1 1EA. Meetings are open to the public and the full papers are on the agenda page.
Our other Sutton coverage: planning applications, council tax bands and house prices.
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