Serious real-world consequences lie ahead for schools, a head teacher has said, after local birthrates fell at twice the national rate over 10 years.

It was revealed at a meeting of the Rutland Schools Forum on Tuesday (September 29) that birthrates in Rutland fell by more than a quarter (29.5%) between 2015 and 2025, against a national decline of 15.9%, according to the Office of National Statistics.

Forum chairman and head teacher of Casterton College in Great Casterton, Carl Smith, said the decline is already beginning to affect some primary schools and other early years settings in the county, which have seen a drop in enrolments.

"The problem is that if a school takes on a yearly cohort that equates to less than one form entry – a minimum of around 25 – they can't even cover the salary costs of the teacher," Mr Smith said.

"There is a large number of small primary schools in Rutland, and they are highly valued by the villages and rural communities that exist around them, but if enrolments drop sharply enough then they stop being viable. The larger schools may be able to scale down, but the smallest will likely close.

"Parents like sending their young children to primary schools in the nearby area, so they can walk to school and feel close by. If these schools close, then families will have to take children further afield, which could have negative implications of its own."

Mr Smith explained that the Government provides a financial "buffer" to help smaller primary schools, but added that it will "only go so far". Instead, careful planning will be necessary to mitigate the worst effects of declining birthrates, along with affordable housing to attract young families to the county.

"Secondary schools will be okay since a lot of pupils come from over the border, but primary schools are already facing problems, and the existential questions could arrive in as little as five years," Mr Smith continued.

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"There are a number of housing developments in the works in Rutland, but if they aren't affordable enough for young people, then it won't have much of an effect on the school population.

"We could end up caught in a trap where property prices are high, birth rates are relatively low, and the people moving to the area are generally older and wealthier – suddenly the education structure could start to fragment or disappear.

"To put it bluntly, what we need are houses, growth and young people, but in the meantime we need to plan for the future. If authorities take account of what we might be faced with in four or five years time, then we might be able to join schools up, collaborate and possibly mitigate the worst effects of this.

"We need to take a more planned approach to this problem, rather than it suddenly hitting the community, which would be pretty awful "