Schools Admissions Policies

Debate between Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton and Lord Wharton of Yarm

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

That is absolutely right. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point that I will come on to.

We can all agree that the last thing we want is children out of school. In fact, parents could be prosecuted for keeping their children at home for such lengths of time. However, according to a Mail on Sunday investigation in September, bureaucracy was barring up to 15,000 primary and secondary pupils from the classroom nationally. Each school calculates its own published admissions number—known as a PAN—every year. This determines the number of pupils that can be admitted to each year group. However, such is our shortage of places that 120 of this year’s 327 secondary school applicants did not get any of their three choices.

One school is bearing the brunt of the city’s scarcity of school places. The Radcliffe school in Wolverton does not fill its PAN, so when the council cannot give in-year applicants any of their three preferences, it allocates them to the Radcliffe, seemingly regardless of where the children live in our ever-expanding city. Head teacher John O’Donnell is currently dealing with an influx of 140 allocations. A staggering 119 are from children who are out of area, many of whom will have to be bussed or potentially taxied in from outside. Understandably for students who are out of catchment, Radcliffe was not one of their three preferences. The council is fulfilling its duty—every applicant is being offered a school place—but this is turning the Radcliffe into a de facto community school. Whereas 5% of its intake came from outside the catchment area previously, that has suddenly increased to 10%, and is set to rise further.

That volume of allocations has taken its toll. Mr O’Donnell is devoting two days a week to dealing with the backlog. His induction arrangements involve meeting the pupils and families to determine their requirements, be they special educational needs, academic courses or even language—after all, 37 mother tongues are spoken at the school. The induction process has been criticised, but it is understandable that Mr O’Donnell wants to get his pupils off to the best start. His school finally broke out of special measures in October 2009, after a well-deserved record round of GCSE results, but do we want him to put children straight into lessons that are not appropriate just to get them into school, or do we want him to continue raising standards? Such is the backlog that pupils are now being allocated places at the Radcliffe, where they will not be able to start for months. The result is scores of children sitting at home—not studying, just waiting.

Why has the Radcliffe seen such an influx? It can be partly explained by the creation of the Milton Keynes academy—a fantastic new facility, and the city’s first—which opened in September 2009. As I told the Secretary of State after he delivered his White Paper on 24 November, the academy’s PAN is lower than that of its predecessor, the Sir Frank Markham community school. That has displaced people from the academy’s catchment area, who are instead being given places at the Radcliffe. For example, Mr O’Donnell is for the first time seeing applicants from the Netherfield estate, which is 1 mile from the academy, but nearly 7 miles from the Radcliffe. In fact, many of the Radcliffe’s new intake of 119 are from the academy’s catchment area.

It is worth taking a moment to consider why it is so important for children to go to a school close to home. Once they are 18, many seem to pick a university that gets them as far away as possible—or a continent that takes them even further afield, on their gap year—but most school kids just want to walk to school with their mates. The national Walk to School campaign highlights why travelling on foot is good for morale and health, taking congestion off our roads and promoting a more cohesive society.

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this excellent debate and campaigning so vigorously on behalf of school pupils across Milton Keynes. I am sure that he will be aware that there is a problem right across the country. In Ingleby Barwick in my constituency, a local group called BO2SS—Barwick’s Own 2nd Secondary School—has come together to put forward a free school application specifically in order to allow local pupils to attend a school within walking distance in their community. It is important to put on record the fact that although the problem is significant in Milton Keynes, it needs to be addressed across the nation as a whole.

[Mark Lancaster]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I would argue that a good basis for the big society is schooling children in their own communities.

With Mr O’Donnell’s out-of-catchment intake, he is seeing a massive decrease in those attending after-school activities. Engagement has already taken a hit because many pupils have to change buses in central Milton Keynes. There, they are drawn to shops and attractions, rather than continuing with their journeys, which sometimes involve catching two or three buses. We have to think about what sort of society we want to create. Do we want our children to become juvenile commuters, reading bus timetables rather than textbooks?

The problem is not confined to the two aforementioned schools. For example, the Mumford family moved to a house in Newport Pagnell that overlooks a secondary school, Ousedale. Two of their daughters were offered places at the school, but not in a classroom yards from their home—rather, at the campus in the next town, Olney, which is more than 8 miles away and not on a bus route. They were alternatively offered places at the Radcliffe school, 6.5 miles away, but told that they would not be able to start until November. After weeks out of education, they face a daily commute when there is already a school on their doorstep. Likewise, a mother and her son moved to Olney, very near the town’s Ousedale campus. The son was instead offered a place at the Radcliffe school, 11 miles away. As there is no bus service that would get him to school, he was offered a council-funded taxi to take him there and back every day. Fortunately, after an intervention from my caseworker and persistence from his mother, his appeal was successful and he has happily started at his local school, without having to use a taxi, that would have cost the council £2,875 a year.

We are talking about fairness, but what is happening is unfair on children whose parents are not able, for whatever reason, to fight their case and push for appeals. It is unfair on the children whose parents cannot provide them with transport if they have to travel several miles to school or support them if they are stuck out of education for a period of time. Indeed, schools can admit above their PAN in exceptional circumstances if children fall into the categories stipulated by the fair access protocol. This protocol also applies to those who have been out of school for more than one term or those whose parents have been unable to find them a place after moving to the area. However, Milton Keynes council resorted to this protocol on only four occasions last year and not at all this year.

After my prolonged campaign for “I before E”—infrastructure before expansion—and the coalition Government’s commitment to it, I am confident that our rate of school building will keep up with our population growth. After all, Milton Keynes is the fifth fastest-growing city in the UK, but I am concerned that, as new schools appear, they will fill up with pupils from across the city before nearby houses are built. Head teachers have wanted to hold places, but the incentive is to fill places to secure maximum funding.