The Impact of Falling School-Rolls on the Assignment of Primary Schoolchildren to Secondary Schools in Manchester,1980–1985

The paper examines the effects of falling rolls in Manchester primary schools both on the catchments and on the intake of the secondary schools in the city during the period 1980–1985. Various formulations of the transportation model in linear programming are used to evaluate the scheme by the Manchester Education Authority for linking primary schools to particular secondary schools. A second analysis adopts similar methods to evaluate recent proposals by the Authority to reduce both the number and the size of secondary schools in the city. It is found that many of the distance inefficiencies present in the Authority's allocation system occur because its mechanisms top-up the intakes of suburban schools at the expense of school intakes in the inner city.