To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what progress he has made in enabling oversubscribed schools (a) to take in more pupils and (b) to keep their class sizes down. [75605]

We are allocating over £150 million of funding for 1999/2000 to reduce infant class sizes for 5, 6 and 7-year-olds. This will enable over 1,600 popular schools to increase their intakes. The number of pupils in infant classes of over 30 will also fall from around 485,000 in January 1998 to under 200,000 in September 1999.