These numbers stood at 15,866 and 11,065 respectively in January 2024, i.e. more main registrations and fewer subsidiary registrations.
Moreover, there may also be pupils attending AP schools who are not on roll but who may be attending on a trial or temporary basis. These figures cannot be calculated from School Census so the scale of this is unknown.
A breakdown of enrolments by school type for January 2023 is shown below.
The second point to make is that america rcs data AP schools tend to fill up as the year progresses.
In 2023, there were 38% more in Summer than in Autumn.
Part of the reason that numbers fall between Summer and Autumn is that many pupils in AP are in Year 11 and most AP schools do not offer post-16 provision.
So it would seem unusual that there should be such demand for places in the AP sector at the start of a school year.
I should also point out that some pupils could be counted more than once in the charts above (e.g. if they held a main registration at one AP school and a subsidiary registration at the other). But only around 200 pupils appear to be affected each term.
Missing main enrolments
Around 1,100 pupils with a subsidiary registration at an AP school in Summer 2023 appeared to have no corresponding main enrolment at a state-funded school in England.