The Schools Adjudicator, responsible for deciding on school admission policy disputes, has ruled that the determined admission arrangements for 2019 for these three schools are in breach of the Schools Admissions Code and ordered them to be changed. This will ensure that the new rules are fairer to local children or, in the case of The Rochester Grammar School, that more appropriately qualified girls are admitted.
Three other schools acknowledged the validity of my complaint at an early stage and withdrew their proposals. These were: Brompton Academy, Hundred of Hoo Academy and Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School.
Medway Council, with oversight of school admission rules published on its website, neither took action to block the unlawful proposals (if indeed they noticed them), nor bothered to express a view on their legality to the Schools Adjudicator when invited. There has been just one complaint about a Kent school's proposals since 2012 (relating to In-Year Admissions), as KCC monitors proposed changes.
To look at the decisions in detail follow the links: Fort Pitt; Holcombe Grammar; The Rochester Grammar, with my analysis below.
I first raised these issues in an article in January, and as a result Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School withdrew its proposals, having also put them forward two years previously and been rejected by the Schools Adjudicator. I suspect they hoped there would be no challenge. Brompton Academy went ahead with the proposal but then withdrew it in full before the Schools Adjudicator reached a decision.
There are four common themes in the decisions:
- The main issue across all three schools is that they wished to give priority to pupils who had siblings at other schools in the relevant Trust. There is a specific permission given in the School Admissions Code, for example for schools on the same site or close links between two single sex schools, but the Adjudicator was satisfied this did not apply in any of these three cases.
- In a second common issue for the first two schools below, the Code allows priority for children of staff at the relevant school. Each school published criteria that gave priority for children of staff at any of the Trust schools which has been found unlawful before by the Adjudicator. At a minimum this ought to have been known by those drawing up the criteria and the lawyers hired by the Thinking Schools Academy Trust for Holcombe Grammar to challenge my objection.
- The Code requires that feeder primary schools be named, but this is not the case in two of the three admission policies and the Schools Adjudicator required this to happen.
- ‘The objector argues that each year more secondary schools in the area appear to be introducing criteria that offer places to those who have attended feeder schools. The objector argues that this will lead to a growing pressure on primary schools to join multi-academy trusts so that their children can have some priority for a secondary school. It could also mean that children who do not reach the eligibility score for a selective place but who attend a feeder school for a selective school will have no priority for a place in a local school. For the reasons, I have set out above, I do not consider this concern to be well founded in relation to the existing feeder schools for the school for 2019’. However, the Adjudicator acknowledges that this may become an issue in the future, when a different decision could be reached!
I now look at the outcomes for each school individually:
With regard to (1) above: ‘The school’s legal advisors responded that the priority is clearly set out in the criterion in compliance with the Code’….The trust’s legal advisors in setting out reasons for priority to be given based on the schools being in the same trust described the curricular and pedagogical links. I have not been provided with a reason other than that given above for why such a priority should be given for this criterion’. The school case is decisively dismissed at length.
With regard to (2): The question of the distinction between staff of the trust and staff at the school is a matter that has been raised in a previous determination for this school and the school agreed at that time to make the necessary change to its arrangements. It is disappointing to see that the school has not fully complied with the determination that upheld this point. I note that the school has accepted that an error has been made in the redrafting of its arrangements.
With regard to (3): The school argues that the names of the schools are implicit in the reference to trust schools. I do not accept this argument; the unambiguous requirement in the Code is that feeder schools are to be named
In particular, the introduction of priority for children in named feeder schools and children of members of staff at the school are both legitimate criteria, although they do not require the high level Medway Test pass of the other girls.
The school withdrew the proposed criterion of children of members of staff at any school of the Trust, following my initial article in January. However, it still fell foul of the rules relating to siblings at other secondary schools of the Trust.
‘The trust’s legal advisor makes the case that the schools within the trust are linked for curriculum purposes and this provides the reason for the schools to be linked in respect of paragraph 1.12 of the Code........However, there is no curriculum continuity argument since gaining priority under this criterion is dependent only on the secondary school attended by a sibling’ and this section of my complaint was upheld.
Whilst not relevant to the complaint, I sense that The Rochester Grammar is seeking to change its profile. It is certainly known as a school that is highly elitist and unforgiving to those who can’t keep up academically. The changed new admissions policy will still give priority to girls from four local primary schools and siblings of girls who have sisters at the school who qualified by passing the Medway Test at any level. The large majority of pupils will be girls who qualified with high scores in the Medway Test. It will be interesting to see how the former group fares but surely the school ethos will have to change, or those girls will have a difficult time.