School Admissions Code 2021

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make a number of comments about school admissions, and follow up on some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made. On the statutory instrument, I do not have any particular issues, although maybe there are a couple of questions. On the issue about catch-up and the code, that will help parents, particularly those of disadvantaged pupils.

The whole business of school admissions is fraught with all sorts of problems. You cannot just wave a magic wand, even with increased data, and expect that everybody will get the school that they want. That just does not happen. What is true is that parents who can afford it will often move house to get into the catchment area of a local school so they can get their child or children into that school, whereas disadvantaged parents and pupils obviously cannot do that.

I remember from my experiences in Liverpool before the advent of academies that it was an absolute nightmare. Often, decisions were made not on what a school was achieving or not achieving; it was often the case that inner-city schools with very successful examination results were disregarded by parents, who wanted to go to the leafy suburbs. So you had the leafy suburbs and aided schools with huge waiting lists, while inner-city schools such as Paddington Comprehensive, which was built in the early 1970s, a 10-form entry school with state-of-the-art equipment, ended up with one and a half forms of entry. As an aside, I remember trying to persuade Shirley Williams, who at the time was Secretary of State for Education, to turn it into a tertiary college—but she was having none of that.

I make these comments just to show how difficult the whole situation is. Yes, it is important to have all the data, and the composite way in which the data is portrayed will help parents. But when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talks about local authority schools he is, presumably, talking about academies as well. Academies choose their own admission requirements so, if we are going to have a standardised approach, it should be for all schools. He made the point, which I do not disagree with, that from looking at the various websites you realise that the workload of the staff means that it is something that they have not given their full attention to. Equally, when looking at the websites of academies, one might say the same as well.

The school admissions process, especially where it helps disadvantaged children or children in care, is hugely important. It is one way in which we can change life chances. We want to ensure that every child is treated in a fair and accountable manner, with local schools and local authorities working together to make sure that the needs of young people in that community are met. Sadly, we often see that that is not the case where schools almost jealously guard their independence from a local authority, and both sides do not want to collaborate in the way they should. Local authorities should have responsibility for place planning to ensure that academies co-operate in providing places. While it is slightly beyond this SI, we think that schools should be able to set aspects of their own admissions policy in compliance with the national code that allow them to specialise in, for example, music or business if they so wish. However, the local admissions process to administer the policy and allocate individual children to schools should be carried out by the local authority rather than by individual schools.

Where the code refers to the oversubscription criteria, are we talking about the waiting list? Is that what we mean? When I have had parents contact me and say, “Oh, I didn’t get a place, but the school’s put me on the waiting list”, is that what we mean by the oversubscription criteria? Would looked-after children be top of that list of criteria, irrespective of the type of school it is? If not, why not?

We talk about admission for disadvantaged children, but we do not define what we mean by disadvantaged children. Perhaps we ought to. It is a very general term. I presume that we are talking about looked-after children, or are we talking about children with special needs? Can they be in separate categories? The explanatory note just talks about disadvantaged children. Maybe I have missed something.

I welcome the fact that mid-term admissions are more codified—that absolutely makes sense, so I do not have any problem with this SI.

I did not realise that the year 7 catch-up premium had been discontinued, for the reasons stated. I presume that there was an SI to establish it. When we have the arts premium, will there be an SI for that?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, may I start by saying how grand it is to be back in the Grand Committee Room after pretty close to two years? I always enjoy debates in this particular Room.

I should declare an interest of sorts, in that I have a son, aged 10, and we have just made an application for his senior school through the admissions policy applying in our London borough. I have no reason to believe that we will not be successful, but it has sharpened my preparations for this debate.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling this take-note Motion allowing noble Lords to debate these regulations and the wider issues around school admissions that he outlined, with which I would agree. I found the Explanatory Memorandum to the school information regulations very helpful in providing clarity on links with the new admissions code.

I shall not say much today about the removal of the year 7 catch-up premium grant. I challenged the Minister’s predecessor on this on more than one occasion last year, principally concerning fears that the overall amount allocated from the national funding formula would not meet the level of support provided by the year 7 grant. However, I noted that, in July this year, the Government announced that the amount allocated through the secondary low prior attainment factor for the 2020-21 academic year would increase from £924 million to £973 million, so it is only fair that we give the benefit of the doubt and reassess that position in a year’s time.

I think it is fair to say that there have long been concerns about the fairness of in-year admissions. The DfE’s own Review of Children in Need, published in June 2019, found that such children

“were more likely to seek a school place outside the normal admissions round and that delays in securing a school place in-year could lead to children missing education.”

Children in care are among the most vulnerable in society, of course. Surely it is of paramount importance that a school place that is in the child’s best interests is found as quickly as possible. We therefore welcome the DfE’s decision to reform the admissions code to give priority to children in care, or those who have previously been in care, in its oversubscription criteria. It is hoped that this will improve the clarity, timeliness and transparency of the in-year admissions process to ensure that all vulnerable children can access a school place without delay.

We also welcome the additions to the fair access protocol outlined in chapter 3 of the code. There are, it is fair to say, more serious deficiencies in the admissions code, which raise questions about social inequality. That is why Labour believes that local authorities should have responsibility for school places, with oversight and control of all admissions within their boundaries. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Storey, support that change. Surely it is nonsense that, at present, councils have legal responsibility for finding a school place for any child arriving in their area, yet they cannot force an academy to accept a child even if the academy is not at capacity. Surely that is not an efficient way to operate school admissions.

All too often, the current system results in school segregation by family income, which has implications for social mobility—or social justice, as I prefer to call it. The point here is the extent to which a child’s family background determines their success. If a child’s chance of attending a high-performing school is effectively determined by their family income, that will clearly act as a major brake on social improvement. There is also a further issue around the social and political implications of young people from different socioeconomic backgrounds being educated separately. That hardly seems likely to assist in building a fair and cohesive society—something that, it might be assumed, is a key component of the Government’s much-vaunted levelling-up agenda.

The Minister will know that many education specialists, commentators and school leaders have called on the department to make further changes to the admission code to close the disadvantage gap, which has spiralled due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The leaked presentation on the needs of schools and pupils following the pandemic from the Government’s sadly short-lived recovery tsar, Sir Kevan Collins, revealed:

“Children from poorer households, who have often struggled most to learn from home, have lost most learning with the attainment gap expected to widen by 10-24%”.


Labour has committed to an education recovery premium, which would support every child to reach their potential by investing in the children who faced the greatest disruption during the pandemic, from early years to further education. We also advocate doubling the pupil premium for children in key transition years, delivering additional support for the children who need it most.

The former Chief Schools Adjudicator, Sir Philip Hunter, has warned that, although the admissions code requires schools

“to adopt, publish and administer admission criteria which are objective and reasonable”,

the very criteria that allow schools to

“give priority to children who live closest to the school, live in a defined catchment area, have siblings already at the school or, in the case of aided schools, are members of a particular church or religion … will, if unregulated over time, result in priority being given to children from privileged backgrounds”

at the expense of their disadvantaged counterparts,

“so the criteria will need to be even more rigorously applied”

as this will lead to schools becoming “yet more selective” and “more elitist”.

On disadvantage, the Minister may have had drawn to her attention by her officials what I regard as a worrying report, published three months ago by Humanists UK. Entitled Careless or Uncaring? How Faith Schools Turn Away Children Who Are or Were in Care, the report found that, in their admissions policies,

“41% of all state secondary schools of a religious character discriminate against children who are or were in care not of their faith … In Kensington and Chelsea, 50% of all state secondaries (religious or otherwise) discriminate against children who are or were in care not of their faith.”