A village primary school losing pupils
Kelsham Primary School, six miles from the market town of Brayford, had 126 pupils in October 2020 and 88 in October 2026. The last exercise of each chapter, CS 01 to CS 12, is one part of its story, drawn as that chapter’s diagram type.
Kelsham, 2020 to 2026
Section titled “Kelsham, 2020 to 2026”Kelsham is a village of about 1,400 people, 25 minutes from Brayford by the school bus that Dale Coaches runs under contract to the county council. Kelsham Primary School teaches children from 4 to 11, Reception and Years 1 to 6, and has 140 places, 20 in each year. Ruth Okafor has been its head teacher since 2018 and teaches two days a week; Tom Hale, a farmer whose two children went to the school, chairs its governors. Brayford Primary School, the town’s school, has 420 places, two classes of up to 30 in each year, and Helen Marsh is its head teacher.
Fewer children start each September. Births in the villages the school serves fell from 22 in 2016 to 11 in 2025, and a child starts in the September four years after the year of its birth, at Kelsham or at Brayford Primary School: fewer start at Kelsham than were born. Each October the school counts its roll, the last count plus the year’s starters, less the pupils who left.
| October | Pupils | Started | Left | Classes | Teachers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 126 | 19 | 20 | 5 | 5 |
| 2021 | 121 | 16 | 21 | 5 | 5 |
| 2022 | 114 | 15 | 22 | 5 | 5 |
| 2023 | 108 | 13 | 19 | 4 | 4 |
| 2024 | 101 | 12 | 19 | 4 | 4 |
| 2025 | 95 | 11 | 17 | 4 | 4 |
| 2026 | 88 | 9 | 16 | 4 | 4 |
The school is paid £4,800 a year for each pupil, set from the October count before each school year, and £140,000 whatever its size; a teacher’s pay and costs are £52,000 a year. In 2023, with 108 pupils, the governors paid four teachers instead of five, and since then Sam Lewis has taught Years 3 and 4 as one class. Some parents say mixed-age classes are why they chose Brayford, where each year has classes of its own; others stay for Kelsham’s smaller classes. Priya Shah, with children in Year 1 and Year 4, is weighing the move. In October 2026 Ruth Okafor wrote to parents about the falling roll, with some counts and some beliefs.
The governors hold the school’s reserve to a target of at least £60,000. It stood at £96,000 in October 2026, and within a school year it rises and falls by up to £10,000 as funding arrives and pay goes out, so the governors change staff hours only when the reserve differs from its target by more. They read it in a budget report each term and cut a teaching assistant’s hours before a teacher’s, but never below one teacher a class.
David Brennan, the county council’s officer for school places, forecasts each school’s starters from the births, and reads each school’s spending for each pupil in its accounts once a year. Larkfield Homes will finish 60 homes at Mill Lane, a field beside the village, the first lived in from 2027 and the last by 2029; the council counts 0.25 children of primary school age for each new home, 15 children in all.
Brayford aimed for classes of 26 before Kelsham’s children came in numbers, and its governors have raised the aim since, toward 30. In October 2026 the county council asks whether Kelsham Primary School should close.
What each type answers
Section titled “What each type answers”- In chapter 1, a drawing of Ruth Okafor’s letter, CS 01, shows the effects resting on counts as more supported and the parents’ reasons as less supported.
- A system context map, CS 02, shows what passes each way between the school and each party it deals with.
- An influence map, CS 03, shows what bears on how many children start at Kelsham each September, and which of those effects anyone has counted.
- A causal loop diagram, CS 04, shows how a fall in the pupils on roll comes back to the roll through funding and classes, and where the school could act.
- A causal loop diagram with a boundary, CS 05, shows what acts on those loops from outside the school, and how late.
- A stock & flow diagram, CS 06, shows the roll as an amount that only the children starting and the pupils leaving change.
- A chain of stocks, CS 07, shows the pupils passing through the four classes, and how the October count reaches the children starting.
- A feedback control diagram, CS 08, shows how the governors hold the school’s reserve to its target.
- A feedback control diagram with a nested loop, CS 09, shows what limits the governors’ corrective action, and the county council’s loop around theirs.
- A system archetype, CS 10, shows why merging classes to save money brings the spending back.
- Two coupled system archetypes, CS 11, show how Brayford’s pull on the villages’ starters and its rising class size work together on Kelsham’s roll.
- In chapter 12, CS 12, choosing the type for the county council’s question comes first, and the drawing chosen shows whether the roll goes on falling once the last Mill Lane home is lived in.