Schools: Admissions

(asked on 13th October 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the oversight in place to monitor the application of school admissions policies at a local and national level.


Answered by
 Portrait
Lord Nash
This question was answered on 21st October 2014

The School Admissions Code (the Code) provides a robust framework that governs the determination of school admissions policies and the allocation of school places,whereby 86.5% of parents secured a place at their first preference school in 2014.

All admission arrangements must comply with the Code and must be consulted on at a local level. Anyone who feels a school’s admission policies and arrangements are unfair or unlawful may object to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator. Where a local authority is of the view that a school’s admission arrangements may not be lawful, they have a duty to refer them to the Adjudicator, whose decision is binding and enforceable.

Local authorities also have a duty to report annually to the Chief Schools Adjudicator on the effectiveness of admissions in their area, and to publish their report locally. These reports inform the Adjudicator’s annual report to the Secretary of State.

The Department for Education also receives feedback on the operation of local admission policies from parents, local authorities, schools and other bodies.

Taken together these measures allow the Department to monitor the effectiveness of the Code at both the national and local level.

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