School told to change admissions

By Angela Harrison
BBC News education reporter

Children living half a mile from the school can be denied a place

A high-performing London secondary school has been told to change its admissions rules, days before parents have to submit their application forms.

The ruling, by admissions watchdog the Schools Adjudicator, is being contested by the school, Drayton Manor in Ealing.

The school is seeking judicial review, due to be considered on Tuesday.

The adjudicator said its policy of only admitting children for whom the school was their closest could discriminate against those in poorer areas.

Now Drayton Manor High School has been told to switch to a strictly distance criteria - admitting children who live closest to it.

'Parents unaware'

The complaint is that some people living less than a mile from the school were not being admitted because they were slightly closer to another neighbouring school, Brentside High School.

That school is lower down the league tables.

The complaint was made to England's schools adjudicator by the local education authority, Ealing, which argued that the existing arrangements went against the new admissions code.

The council said the arrangements meant most children living between half a mile and a mile away from the school would not get a place at Drayton Manor unless they had a brother or sister there already.

It argued that the policy favoured families in the more affluent areas to the east of the school and discriminated against those in the more disadvantaged areas to the north.

In his ruling, the adjudicator said the present policy indirectly discriminated against children from poorer parts of the borough.

He said: "The council points to what it considers to be widespread confusion and frustration among parents living close to the school, who cannot understand why they are unlikely to be successful given the proximity of their homes to the school."

With applications for London and surrounding local authorities due in on Friday, 24 October at the latest, most parents will not have been aware of the order before making their applications. The order only covers this year's admissions round.

The school has taken the unusual step of taking out an injunction against Ealing council, preventing it from talking about the case or publicising the adjudicator's decision which was released on 16 October.

It has the effect of excluding a significant proportion of children living close to the school Schools adjudicator

It is understood the school did this because it thought it would be confusing for parents, coming so close to the deadline for applications. Also, if the High Court ruled in the school's favour on Tuesday, the council would then have to re-inform parents that the original admissions policy had been reinstated.

Information from the adjudicator's website shows that the council made a formal complaint to the adjudicator in June and that the school complained that this was too late to raise such objections.

'Cohesion'

In its evidence to the adjudicator, the school argues that its intake is balanced and reflects the diversity of the wider community and that it is too late to late to change its admissions arrangements for 2009.

The school says the present arrangements were brought in to encourage applications to Brentside High School at a time when it was "significantly under-subscribed with pupils walking past the school on their way to Drayton Manor, with the associated negative consequences for social integration and community cohesion".

It said it had revised its admissions arrangements in recent years "to take account of developing circumstances and the requirements of the [admissions] Code", dropping an additional feeder schools policy.

The adjudicator said the school believed that the admission of children from the south and east "contributes positively to the balance of its intake".

His ruling said: "The criterion does not actively promote equity and indirectly discriminates against economically less advantaged families unable to afford housing in the areas benefiting from it.

"It has the effect of excluding a significant proportion of children living close to the school and for whom the school should be a real option, if that is their parents' preference, in order to promote community cohesion and to enable them to benefit from this excellent school."