Academies: Admissions

(asked on 5th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 3 November 2014 to the hon. Member for Huddersfield to Question 211964, what derogations from the Admissions Code have been allowed in 54 free schools and three academies; and what the demonstrable evidence is that such derogations benefit local children.


Answered by
Edward Timpson Portrait
Edward Timpson
This question was answered on 11th November 2014

All academies and free schools must comply with the School Admissions Code. This ensures their admission arrangements are fair, clear and objective.

It is through the Funding Agreement that the Secretary of State has agreed different arrangements (‘derogations’ from the Code) for academies and free schools, but only in limited circumstances, where there is demonstrable evidence that it will benefit local children.

On opening, all free schools are permitted to allocate places outside of local authority co-ordination in their first year only; while all academy schools that have opened since 2012 can grant admissions priority to pupils eligible for the pupil and service premiums. The revised School Admissions Code currently before the House proposes extending this freedom to all state-funded schools.

In addition, we have granted school specific derogations in the following areas:

  • 46 free schools are able to give admissions priority to founders’ children. Founders’ status is granted only to those individuals who have played a material role in setting up the school and who continue to be involved in the running of the school.
  • Three free schools are able to give admissions priority to the children of staff without having to meet the two-year qualification in the Code. This has enabled free schools on opening to recruit good quality staff quickly to the benefit of all their children.
  • Four free schools were granted permission to give admissions priority to pupils eligible for the pupil premium prior to our extending this flexibility to all academies and free schools.

In one free school, we have agreed as a transitional measure that children in an annex of a nearby maintained school which closed would be transferred to the new free school without having to apply. This enabled those displaced children to access good quality local provision.

Three school specific derogations have been agreed for academies, as follows:

  1. Birmingham Ormiston Academy which became an academy in 2011 is permitted to select the majority of its intake by their aptitude for the performing arts since it is operating as a regional centre for the performing arts. The derogation enables children to obtain a specialist education unavailable elsewhere.
  2. The Priory Academy, Lincoln School of Science and Technology (LSST) in Lincoln is permitted to select 10% of its intake by aptitude in technology in recognition that the predecessor school selected on this basis. A derogation was agreed so that the school did not lose its ability to select on this basis on closing and reopening as an academy in 2008.
  3. Belvedere Academy in Liverpool became an academy in 2007. This academy’s predecessor school was an all-through fee-paying independent school. Only the secondary phase became an academy. The derogation permitted all those who were on the independent school’s roll at the point at which the academy opened, including those in the primary phase, to be admitted to the academy. This derogation will end in 2015.

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