A Brighton primary school is to limit the number of children admitted to its Reception class to 15 for the next two years.
The change will mean that St Mark’s Church of England (CofE) Primary School, in Manor Road, can have mixed year group classes as it tries to rescue its finances.
Shrinking pupil numbers left the school with a deficit of about £150,000 at the end of the 2025-26 financial year which ended just over two months ago.
The change – for an intake of 15 instead of 30 in September this year and next year – has been approved by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator.
According to Brighton and Hove City Council records, since 2022 the school has allocated places to 14 to 16 pupils on national offer day – and currently has about 160 pupils on roll.
Just 13 families put St Mark’s down as their first preference for this coming September and a total of 16 pupils were offered places.
The school has been set up for 30 children to a year group – or about 210 in total – but with school funding based mainly on pupil numbers, the spare places are posing a growing financial challenge.
St Mark’s governors told the schools’ adjudicator, Robert Crawley, that their financial recovery plan included staff changes to teach four mixed-age classes.
From September, the proposed Reception and Year 1 group would have 26 children and the governors expect the school to have a total of 147 pupils.
The governors said: “Adopting this approach will help secure the long-term sustainability of St Mark’s, enabling it to continue serving the community as the only Church of England school in the locality.
“The proposed variation will enable the school to align Reception intake with the lower pupil numbers already seen across the rest of the school, supporting a transition towards the proposed four-class structure.”
St Mark’s has a “good” rating from Ofsted but has a high volume of children leaving and joining mid-year which the governors linked to parents working on short-term contracts at the nearby Royal Sussex County Hospital.
The council said that if more children than 15 listed the school as first preference, they would be offered a place at another school in the area.
Across the Brighton and Hove “East Planning Area”, which covers Whitehawk and Hanover, there was also spare capacity at other schools in the locality, with 104 places still available for this coming September 2026.
Dr Crawley said: “It was clear from the data provided by the school that the LA (local authority) has a picture of recent / projected demand in schools in its planning areas.
“In my view, the governing body at the school and the LA have clearly thought through how the financial shortfall in the school’s budget is to be addressed.”
He noted that the physical capacity of the school buildings remained the same, allowing for an increase in the published admission number (PAN) should there be a need to admit more children.
The adjudicator’s report said that Brighton and Hove had about 400 surplus school places in reception classes for this coming September because of the declining birth rate.
In May, Brunswick Primary School, which was once the biggest primary in Brighton and Hove, with an intake of 120, reduced its Reception admissions for the next two years to 60.
Three primary schools have closed in recent years and another – Middle Street – is due to close at the end of August.
The three to close were St Bartholomew’s, in Brighton, and St Peter’s, in Portslade, which closed in 2024, and St Joseph’s, in Hollingdean, which closed in 2025.
Since 2019, the council has been cutting the intake at larger schools to try to head off a crisis as birth rates drop and families move out of Brighton and Hove.
The 2021 census found 20 per cent fewer under-fives in the area compared with 2011.
