Rural Schools

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what proportion of (a) primary and (b) secondary schools in (i) Cornwall and (ii) England are located in rural areas. (112697)

The available information for Cornwall and England is given in the following table.

For similar information on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland I refer the hon. Member to the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Department for Education.

*Maintained primary and secondary schools*¹*: Number and percentage of schools by urban/rural classification*^2,3—As at January 2006
	Cornwall local authority area
	Primary	Secondary
	Rural⁴	Urban⁵	Total	Rural⁴	Urban⁵	Total
Number of schools	169	70	239	12	19	31
Percentage of schools	70.7	29.3	100.0	38.7	61.3	100.0

*England*
	Primary	Secondary
	Rural⁴	Urban⁵	Total	Rural⁴	Urban⁵	Total
Number of schools	5,251	12,253	17,504	524	2,843	3,367
Percentage of schools	30.0	70.0	100.0	15.6	84.4	100.0
¹Includes middle schools as deemed. ² Urban/rural classification for schools is based on the school's current postcode. ³ Schools have been classified as being in either an urban or rural area by matching their school postcode to the Rural and Urban Area Classification 2004 indicator held within the May 2006 National Statistics Postcode Directory. Areas are classified as urban or rural at the Census Output Area (COA) level, and postcodes are classified according to the status of the COA in which they are located. ⁴ Includes schools in the following classifications: hamlet and isolated dwelling (sparse and less sparse), town and fringe (sparse and less sparse), village (sparse and less sparse). ⁵ Includes schools in Urban = 10k (sparse and less sparse) classifications. Source: School Census and Edubase

Volume 455: debated on Tuesday 16 January 2007