Last year, councils had to provide a total of 2,740,000 secondary school places. However, this figure is expected to rise in the coming years, reaching 3,287,000 by 2024 – an increase of 20 per cent on 2015.
The warning comes as thousands of children found out on Tuesday (March 1) which secondary schools they will be attending this September.
Councils have a legal duty to ensure that every child has a school place, but at the same time government rules mean that all new state schools must be free schools outside of local authority control.
The Local Government Association (LGA) wants the government to give back powers to councils to open new maintained schools or to force academies to expand.
Academies make up 60 per cent of secondary schools, are also outside of local authority control and have the ability to decide their own admissions policies and expansion plans.
The call has come after an analysis showed that one in six secondary schools are currently at or over capacity.
Furthermore, separate research released this week shows that 60 per cent of schools, both secondary and primary, received more applications for places this academic year than they could accommodate.
The study by The Key, involving 1,200 school leaders, also found that four in 10 schools received 50 per cent more applications than they could handle. Last year, more than 80,000 families did not get their preferred choice of secondary school.
Reasons cited by leaders in the survey for being unable to handle the additional applications included lack of space for additional buildings (25 per cent), insufficient school budgets (22 per cent), and school buildings not being fit-for-purpose (19 per cent).
London has the highest proportion of oversubscribed schools (almost seven in 10), while the South West has one of the lowest proportions (just over five in 10).
Cllr Roy Perry, chairman of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said: “Councils have a statutory duty to ensure every child has a school place available to them but find themselves in the difficult position of not being able to ensure schools, including academies, expand. Finding suitable sponsors with the capacity to take on the running of a successful new school is also proving a challenge.
“Councils have already created an extra 300,000 primary places, but those children will soon need to move up to secondary schools. Councils will do everything they can to rise to the challenge of ensuring no child goes without a place, but all schools must play their part too. If academies are not willing to expand, then powers to create new schools should be returned to local authorities themselves if they are unable to secure high-quality free school sponsors in their communities."