Admissions matter: vulnerable children must not be refused schooling

Posted on September 19, 2025 by John Howson

SchoolsWeek has published an interesting report on admissions policies by schools. Shut out: How schools are turning away vulnerable pupils

As regular readers know, this issue has troubled me ever since I became a county councillor in 2012.

I have reproduced my previous blog post about the topic from 2021 below.

While I was a cabinet member in Oxfordshire, up until May this year, I asked officers to look into a virtual school to admit every child without a school, and not being home educated, and ensure there was some daily learning interaction with each child. Why successive governments have ignored the issue, and oppositions haven’t pressed them about it is one of my great disappointments.

It was therefore welcome, when last November, after I challenged the Minister at the ADCS conference about ensuring local authorities had power over all in-year admissions whether to maintained schools or academies to see the clause in the Bill. This is a good first step.

We all need to fight for the most vulnerable in society, and all involved in education have a special duty to do so. Children only get one change at schooling: we need to ensure it available to them

Time for Jacob’s Law

Posted on January 23, 2021

The naming of a young person in Serious Case Review Report is rare. But this week the Report into the death of Jacob in Oxfordshire contained his name. The family gave permission, and hope it will ensure the report is more widely read and acted upon. If so, it is a brave decision, and one that I applaud.

You can read the Report at https://www.oscb.org.uk/oscb-publishes-a-child-safeguarding-practice-review-concerning-jacob/ Full report link at bottom of the press notice

Three agencies, the Police, Children’s Social Services and Education have learning points to take from the Review. In this blog, I will concentrate on the education aspects, as they contain a message heard before on this blog.

Jacob was born in Oxfordshire, later moved to Northumbria, where I suspect he was educated in a First School, and then a Middle School, before being moved in Year 6 to an ‘alternative education provision’ – presumably a PRU?

In July 2017, note the date, the family returned to Oxfordshire. The Report concludes that:

5.1 He was not on roll at any education provision and was a child missing education for 22 months

Jacob’s mandatory need for education was not provided by Oxfordshire County Council when he lived at home and when he was in the care of the local authority both in and when out of county for 5 months. Four educational settings were asked to take Jacob on roll, however largely due to his perceived behaviours and risks to other students he remained off roll for almost 2 years. Jacob’s family were offered the right of appeal when places were refused. His situation was considered by education panels such as the In Year Fair Access Panel and Children Missing Education to little effect and his needs were overseen and monitored by various professionals, including the Virtual School and the Independent Reviewing Officer Service whilst in local authority care. There were no formal dispute resolutions raised14 by Children’s Social Care and his situation was not escalated to the Education Skills and Funding Agency (ESFA) as it should have been.

Had this been an isolated case then this would be understandable, but a month before Jacob arrived back in Oxfordshire I had had an exchange in public with the Cabinet Member for Education at the June 2017 Cabinet meeting of the County Council. Not all questions are for political gain, and this was one where I genuinely thought that there was an issue to be addressed. The question asked:

Oxfordshire county council CABINET – 20 JUNE 2017 ITEM 4 – QUESTIONS FROM COUNTY COUNCILLORS

Question from Councillor Howson to Councillors Harrod and Hibbert-Biles “How many children taken into care over the past three school years and placed ‘out county’ have had to wait for more than two weeks to be taken onto the roll of a school in the area where they have been moved to and what is the longest period of time a child has waited for a place at a school in the area where they have been re-located to during this period?”

As you will see, I asked both the Education Cabinet Member and Cllr Harrod for Children’s Social Services and received this answer:

Answer Over the past three years it has been exceptional for a Looked After Child to be taken onto the roll of an out of county school in under two weeks. Indeed, of the nine cases of primary age pupils we’ve looked at, the quickest a pupil was placed was 12 days (there were two) and the slowest was 77 days. For the 22 secondary age pupils the picture is even worse, with 3 weeks the quickest placement and a couple taking fully 6 months to get some of our most vulnerable young people into a stable school setting.

The main reason for this completely unacceptable state of affairs is that the Council has no power to direct an academy to admit a Looked After Child. The only way we can force an academy’s hand is to get a direction from the Educations & Skills Funding Agency and this, as you can see from the foregoing times, can be a very long-winded bureaucratic process.

The fact that it takes so long for academies to admit our Looked After Children shows how doggedly our officers pursue the matter; I suspect that many other local authorities simply give up when they meet an intransigent academy that doesn’t want to take responsibility for educating their vulnerable young people.

The minutes of the meeting note my supplementary question and the response as:

Supplementary: In response to an invitation from Councillor Howson for the Cabinet Member to work with Councillor Howson and the labour opposition to see what could be done Councillor Hibbert-Biles recognised that it was a national situation, and she would be asking for a meeting with local MPs and relevant minister.

How distressing to read the national recommendation in the Serious Case Review that:

Recommendation 2: This Review asks the Department for Education to acknowledge the education key learning and findings from Jacob’s Review and provide feedback as to the effectiveness of the Education and Skills Funding Agency process in resolving issues in a timely manner. The Review asks the Department of Education to provide statute and guidance to local areas and their communities on how to manage the Governance arrangements with academy run schools and local education departments who currently cannot be mandated to accept children on roll.

And in the local recommendations that:

Action Plan 2: The Education System

The key learning set out below is fully addressed in this action plan for children in the education system in Oxfordshire, overseen by the Chair of the OSCB Safeguarding in Education Sub-Group Key Learning:

An education system that ensures:

1. The paramount importance of the role of schools in keeping children safe

2. An education package is put in place in a timely manner for those children who may show challenging behaviours

3. Those children missing education are known and action is swift

This Action Plan should pay particular attention to ensuring: – Restorative work to resolve the fragmented arrangements between academy schools, alternative provisions and the local authority to ensure collective ownership – Policy and procedures to track when children are not on roll – The function of Education Panels in Oxfordshire (In Year Fair Access and Children Missing Education) – The local application of the Education Skills Funding Agency intervention – Education packages for children who may be at risk of exploitation and also present a risk to others.

For those that read the whole Report, there is further evidence on page 31 and footnote 56 of other issues about school admissions around the same time.

Here’s what I wrote on this blog on the 23^rd June 2017:

In my post on 11^th June, after the outcome of the general election was known, I suggested some issues that could still be addressed by a government without an overall majority. First among these was the issue of school places for young people taken into care and placed outside of the local authority. They have no guarantee of access to a new school within any given time frame at present. It seemed to me daft that a parent could be fined for taking a child out of school for two weeks to go on holiday but a local authority could wait six months for a school place to be provided for a young person taken into care.

The Cabinet Question reproduced above then appears followed by:

I found the answer deeply depressing. However, the good news is that MPs from the three political parties representing Oxfordshire constituencies have agreed to work together to take the matter forward. Thank you to MPs, Victoria Prentice, Layla Moran and Anneliese Dodds, for agreeing to seek action to remedy this state of affairs.

If readers have data about the issue elsewhere in England, I would be delighted to hear from you, so pressure can be put on officials nationally to ensure a rapid change in the rules.

I had forgotten that unique letter signed by every Oxfordshire MP after I had made my suggestion.

Nothing happened. Jacob died. We cannot wait any longer.

The DfE must act now to ensure all children have a school place within a specified time frame, whether they move to a new area or are excluded by a school. There must be a register of unplaced children of school age that is regularly reviewed by a senior officer and a politician in each local authority, and Ofsted should update the Secretary of State each year about the national picture.

It is time for a Jacob’s Law. His death will not then have been for nothing.

Read more on this BBC Report into the case https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-55841644

Few successful appeals for infant class places in 2025.

Posted on August 18, 2025 by John Howson

One consequence in the fall in the birth rate seems to have been a downward trend in appeals over admissions to infant classes. Key Stage 1 classes have been capped at 30 pupils for nearly 30 years now, so it might be expected that parents would be keen to ensure their offspring gained a place at the primary school of their choice. After all, parental choice has been a cornerstone of admissions policy since 1979, regardless of the government in power. The data for 2025 admissions ahs now been added to the tie series by the DfE. Admission appeals in England, Reporting year 2025 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

	2025
	Primary (infant classes)	Other primary classes	Primary
Admissions	617,802	137,153	754,955
Admission appeals lodged by parents	8,250	6,334	14,584
Admission appeals lodged by parents (percentage)	1.3	4.6	1.9
Appeals heard by an appeals panel	5,128	3,871	8,999
Appeals heard by an appeals panel (percentage)	0.8	2.8	1.2
Successful appeals	499	1,096	1,595
Successful appeals (percentage)	9.7	28.3	17.7

Of the 617,802 requests for places in infant classes, only 8,250 resulted in an appeal, presumably as the child was not placed in the school of the parent’s choosing at offer day. Some parents either accept another school or a place became available, so 3,122 of these appeals were not proceeded with, leaving just 5,128 appeals heard across the whole of England. Of these appeals, only 499, or 9.7% of the appeals heard were successful, presumably because of the class size limit.

Across the rest of the primary age range, there were only 14,584 appeals, or 1.9% of those either moving children during the Key Stage 2 phase or joining for the first time, perhaps because of the imposition of VAT on private school fees in January 2025. Again, a number of these appeals were not heard, presumably again because a place could be found after the appeal had been lodged. Interestingly, the success rate was much higher for these appeals than for the appeals for admission to infant classes, presumably because there is no mandated maximum class size for Key Stage 2 classes.

In the secondary sector, appeals in 2025 were 4.9% of admissions, around the middle of the 4.5 to 5.5 range of the period between 2016 and 2025. Interestingly, the success rate of these appeals has been falling. In 2025, it was only 19.9%, compared with 26.3% of appeals heard in 2016.

As entry numbers are likely to fall in Year 7 over the next few years, it will be interesting to see whether the percentage of successful appeals rises over the next few years. However, it may well be that popular schools remain attractive to parents, and will still have no spare places creating the need to appeal, especially if siblings are not all granted the place at the same school.

The present Bill before parliament should return in-year admissions for all schools to local authority control. At present academies can opt out of a local system and manage their own in-year admissions. As I have not before (Jacob’s Law) this was especially challenging for children in care needing to find a new school place. Hopefully, their needs will be better appreciated in the future.

Appeals reflect changes in pupil numbers

Posted on August 18, 2023 by John Howson

Yesterday, the DfE published the data about admission appeals for the year 2022/23. There were different trends between the primary and secondary school sectors over the use of the appeals process by parents. Admission appeals in England: academic year 2022 to 2023 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

This year, there were just 14,900 appeals lodged for admission to primary sector schools by parents. Of the appeals lodged, 9,628 appeals were heard relating to primary school places for 2022/23. This represented 1.2% of new admissions. The other appeals presumably were not continued, perhaps because a place became available before the appeal was heard.

The rate in the primary sector is unchanged from last year. Prior to 2021/22, the number and rate have been gradually dropping since 2015/16, when 22,820 primary appeals were heard (2.6% of new admissions) and this year the total was half of the total of 28,471 appeals lodged in 2017.

Of those appeals heard in 2022/23, 1,580 primary appeals were successful: a rate of 16.4%. This is a 0.8 percentage point increase on 2021/22 (but is the second lowest success rate since 2015/16). This might suggest that only the most difficult cases now make it to appeal as the pressure on primary schools nationally eases with the reduction in the birthrate and Brexit.

The ONS announcement this week that there were just 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002 suggests pressure on primary school places may continue to ease, unless there is a policy of closing schools due to falling rolls that seems likely once surplus places reach a certain level and school budgets come under pressure.

In the secondary school sector, the trend was in the opposite direction to that seen in the primary sector. 30,379 appeals were heard relating to secondary school places for 2022/23. This represented 4.1% of new admissions. This a slight increase on last year, when 28,687 (3.9% of new admissions) appeals were heard.

The number of secondary appeals shows more variation than at primary level, with the number heard rising as high as 35,648 in 2019/20, before dropping for the two subsequent years. This year is therefore the first rise for three years.

Of those heard in 2022/23, 6,358 secondary appeals were successful, representing 20.9% of the number heard. This is just a 0.2 percentage point decrease on 2021/22. Overall success rates are notably lower than in 2015/16, when 26.3% of secondary appeals were successful and probably reflects the pressure secondary schools and especially popular schools are under in terms of competition for places. It will be interesting to see what happens in this sector once the numbers transferring from the primary school sector start to fall.

In London, falling rolls have already caused the closure of one secondary school this summer. London secondary school to close this summer | John Howson (wordpress.com) Appeals and their success rate do vary between different local authority areas.

In-year admissions are not generally dealt with by local authorities for academies in the same way that local authorities handle all September admissions. As this blog has noted – Jacob’s Law Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com) – this can cause problems for children taken into care and although two White Papers have recommended changes, the government has not found the time or inclination to put in-year admissions on the same footing as September admissions and the subsequent appeal process. This seems unfortunate as the change does not require primary legislation.

Percentage of admission appeals fell last year

Posted on August 22, 2022 by John Howson

On Friday, the DfE published its annual update on admissions appeals for places in primary and secondary schools. The latest set of data covers admissions for September 2021. Admission appeals in England: academic year 2021 to 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The data are a useful indicator of the sufficiency of places, especially at popular schools that are always over-subscribed. Two sets of data matter: admissions to infant classes -the major of schools for this group are primary schools – and admission to secondary school.

The most important driver of appeals is the trend in birth for the year-group. Is it in a period of above average births or is the opposite true. The system provides a place for every child wanting one, but at peak times does not always expand popular schools, despite government pledges about parental choice that occur from time to time. When the birth rate is low, relatively more parents can gain admission to popular schools for their offspring without having to move house or devise other strategies to challenge the system.

At present, the country is in a period where numbers entering infant classes are falling, but there is still excess demand in the secondary sector for popular schools. This is shown in the following tables

Time period	school_phase	appeals_ lodged percentage	Appeals_heard_ percentage	successful_appeals_ percentage
2016	Primary (infant classes)	3.3	2.3	11.8
2017	Primary (infant classes)	3	2	11.7
2018	Primary (infant classes)	2.6	1.7	9.9
2019	Primary (infant classes)	2	1.4	12.6
2020	Primary (infant classes)	1.9	1.3	10.9
2021	Primary (infant classes)	1.8	1.2	10.5
2022	Primary (infant classes)	1.6	1	9.5

Source: DfE

2022 marked the sixth year in succession when appeals lodge and heard as a percentage of those seeking admission to infant classes fell. Only, 1.6% of admissions resulted in an appeal for 2021/22 school-year, compared with 3.3% for 2014/15. Appeals heard were even lower, at only 1.0%. The difference resulted from either a place being found at the school or parents accepting another school or choosing to use the private sector instead. Places become available as some parents request a place at a state school but then decide to use the private sector.

Interestingly, as appeals fall as a percentage of admissions, parents don’t find they are more successful by going to appeal. In fact, the opposite is the case. In these data only 9.5% of appeals were successful; the lowest since before the 2015/16 school-year. This probably reflects the fact that many of these appeals are for the most popular schools, and there is a limit of 30 on infant class sizes. Parents failing at appeal can always place their child on a ’continuing interest’ list for consideration should a place become available for any reason. This allows for the exercise of parental choice.

In the secondary sector, the pressure of recent years when the bulge year-groups transferred from primary to secondary school appears to be easing.

time_period	School _phase	appeals_lodged _percentage	appeals_heard _percentage	successful_appeals _percentage
2016	Secondary	4.5	3.6	26.3
2017	Secondary	4.8	3.7	24.6
2018	Secondary	5.3	4.1	23.4
2019	Secondary	5.5	4.6	23.3
2020	Secondary	6	4.9	22.2
2021	Secondary	5.1	4.1	20.1
2022	Secondary	5	3.9	21.1

Source: DfE

Appeals lodged fell for the second year in a row, as did appeals heard, where the percentage was the lowest since the 2016/17 school-year. Successful appeals also ticked upwards from the low point in 2020/21 of 20.1%, to 21.1% for 2021/22. Interestingly, presumably because secondary schools are generally larger institutions than primary schools with more ‘wriggle room’, successful appeals in the secondary sector tend to be a much higher percentage of appeals heard than in the primary sector.

One remaining area for appeals, even when the birth-rate is at a low point in the demographic cycle, relates to the building of new housing estates, and the provision of schools, especially secondary schooling where a new school will eventually be built, but early owners may have to rely upon existing schools and their admissions policies.

In these cases, parental choice and the notion of catchment areas may collide. In rural areas these days, there is also the issue of the provision of free transport. Local Authorities normally now only provide transport to the ‘nearest school’, thus preventing many parents from exercising any parental choice. With council budgets under severe pressure, and the growth of academies setting their own rules on admissions, the reason for this is clear, but upsetting for some parents.

When Transport for London offered free travel across their region for young people, politicians at Westminster couldn’t see what the problem was, even if their postbags were full of complaints from constituents.

A falling birth-rate does have one other advantage for government. Either cash can be saved as fewer new schools are needed or time-expired school buildings can be replaced with up-to-date new facilities. In the past, some local authorities used to be very good at exploiting this trend and renewing many of their schools when cash for replacement schools was on offer. But, that’s for another blog.

In-year admissions matter

Posted on June 8, 2022 by John Howson

Each year thousands of children move to a different school. In some cases, it is because either a parent has a new job or has been relocated by an employer to a new location. Information in many parts of the country about schools with places available is still as sketchy as when I first started advising relocation firms some forty years ago.

Finding a house is easy, plug in a price band and see what comes up on the search engines. But, what’s the point of buying a house where there are no school places? Children may face either a long period out of school or a long journey to the nearest school with an available place.

So, here’s an idea. A traffic light system to tell parents about the state of schools on local authority web sites and linked to a page on the DfE site.

Here’s how it might work.

Green – places available in-year for all or most year groups

Amber – some places in some year groups

Red – few places or even no places and not worth joining the ‘waiting list’ unless you live very near the school.

Of course, it leaves the system open to gaming – as if the present system was free of such tactics – by naming a full school and expecting transport to be paid for if the nearest school with a place is more than three miles away. But, the risk of that approach is that you get the school nobody else wants to go to.

The situation is especially acute for children with an EHCP and needing a place in a special school. Managing those moves for often severely challenged young people can be especially difficult mid-year. I would encourage employers to take that into account when arranging start dates for the parent.

The issue of in-year admissions is especially challenging in some areas at present because of the influx of children and their mothers from the Ukraine. Often host families live in areas of over-subscribed schools and that can put pressure for local authorities, especially where most of the secondary schools are academies. Hence my traffic light idea. After all, parents don’t understand that local authorities cannot just tell an academy to admit a child.

As the current Schools Bill is wending its way through parliament it might be worth the government either bringing forth the secondary legislation to return control of in-year admissions to local authorities that was mentioned in the last two White Papers or adding a clause to the Bill agreeing to do so within six months of the commencement date of the Act.

As regular readers of this blog know, another group that could benefit from this change are children taken into care and moved away from their local area, usually for very good reasons. This almost always means a change of school. If you want to know why I feel so strongly abut this, search for the post about Jacob on this blog.

Administrative changes need champions, and this is one that I hope many will champion.

A text for Holy Week

Posted on April 12, 2022 by John Howson

Matthew Chapter 25 verses 31-46

This blog doesn’t make a habit of straying into the realm of theology, but a recent comment about the availability of school places for children taken into care together with the post on this blog about the recent research report published by the DfE on vulnerable children and admissions did set me thinking about school admissions policies.

There is a post from a couple of years ago on this blog entitled Jacob’s Law that discussed some aspects of the issue, but not the question as to how faith schools can behave. The wider issues on admissions are discussed in What is the role of a school in its community? | John Howson (wordpress.com).

I have now discovered that some faith schools do not put all children in care in the top priority group for admission. Instead, they prioritise practicing members of their faith community. Some faith schools go some way to helping admit children in care, but only if the child in question or their carers can be considered ‘of the faith’ using a similar test to other children.

As these are state schools, using taxpayers’ money, I wonder whether it is appropriate for some children in care not to be provided with a top priority position in the admissions criteria? After all, many of these children will have been moved from their family home to live with relatives or foster families and forced to seek a new school through no actions of their own.

However, perhaps the greater argument in asking the Christian churches and other faith schools to reflect upon their admissions policy, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, where the downgrading of children in care seems to be most prevalent in admission criteria, to consider placing all children in care at the top of the list of criteria for admission is the sentiments expressed in Matthew Chapter 25 verses 31-46.

Now I know that the passage does not explicitly mention schooling or education. Indeed, learning, per se doesn’t feature a great deal in the gospels, as opposed to children that do receive mentions, presumably as like health services, they weren’t of much concern about schooling in Roman controlled provinces at that time. However, the sentiment of public service expressed in Matthew’s Gospel must surely be thought to include schooling. After all, it is in line with a gospel of love for one another?

More than a century ago, around the time the 1902 Education Act was being discussed, the Wesleyan Church debated whether their teachers were teachers of Methodists or teachers of children, and decided their purpose was to teach children, not just to teach Methodist children. Hence, there are no state-funded Methodist secondary schools, although there remain a few primary schools around the country under the auspices of the Methodist Church.

I would hope, at least in terms of children taken into care, whose vulnerability and need for support is obvious, that the leaders of faiths whose schools don’t put such children at the top of their admissions policy would reconsider that decision this Easter. Please put children in care as top priority for admissions in every state-funded school in England.

Opportunity for All?

Posted on March 28, 2022 by John Howson

The government published it Education White Paper today. They didn’t make it easy to find the whole document, but it can be accessed at Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk) For younger readers, it is called a White Paper because when such documents first appeared they had white covers. Later when documents with suggestions and not proposals appeared they were called Green Papers as they had a green cover.

Enough of the history, although it is worth looking back to the last education White Paper. It promised to look at returning in-year admissions to local authorities, but nothing happened. This time on page 53 there is a graphic that just says LAs will ‘manage’ in-year admissions. It is not clear where the management role will have sanctions to back it up. I hope so. If local authorities are provided with ‘backstop’ powers to direct in-year admissions that will be a step forward and should be put into place as soon as possible. The intention is summarised in paragraph 163. As a final safety net to cover rare circumstances where collaborative working breaks down, we will consult on a new backstop power for local authorities to direct trusts to admit children. Trusts would have the right to appeal this to the Schools Adjudicator. Please start the consultation as soon as possible – Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The news in the White Paper that local authorities can run academy trusts is to be welcomed as correcting one of the wrongs of Mr Gove’s original 2010 Academies Act. However, in the spirit of strong schools, will schools in existing academy chains be able to make a transfer either to another chain or to a local authority trust, and will local authorities be able to include schools outside their boundaries in a Trust, such as Swindon schools in a Wiltshire trust or Blackpool schools in a Lancashire Trust? Will there need to be Chinese walls between an LA Trust officers and other officers with powers to direct Trust, as over admissions?

The White Paper downgrades Regional School Commissioners to Regional Directors, a less threatening title to local democracy. However, the amount of power local authorities can wield will depend upon funding. At least local trusts should have the same financial powers as the present trusts to manage central costs.

Perhaps the biggest change in policy terms in the White Paper is the ending of the freedom of parents to control the education of their children as paragraph 77 make clear, the government will also introduce legislation to establish a register for children not in school, exploring how this data should be used by local authorities and multi-agency teams to undertake their duties and support children’s education. The 1870 Act required parents to educate their children. The 2022 White Paper now also requires them to tell the authorities how they are doing that education. Will the next step be to ensure that all children receive high quality education of id the white Paper’s real time ‘Opportunity for all in state funded schools?

Overall, the White Paper is not as dramatic as it was thought it might be.

Attendance Group must address in-year admissions issue

Posted on January 28, 2022 by John Howson

I recently caught up with news about the DfE’s Attendance Group, and the Minutes of its December meeting. Attendance Action Alliance January meeting notes: 9 December 2021 (publishing.service.gov.uk)

I am delighted to discover the high-profile nature of membership the Group and that the Secretary of State has taken an interest, as owner of the work. However, although the Group discussed the question of a register for home educated children and the concerns over those children just missing school on a regular basis, I didn’t find any emphasis on ensuring that children taken into care are offered a school palace as swiftly as possible and within set time limits. The same standards also need to be put in place for children with special needs whose parents move to a new location during the school year and need a new school placement.

Taking a new job should not be conditional on whether there is a special school place available for your child.

In a previous post on this blog, calling for a ‘Jacob’s Law’, I laid out the case for in-year admissions to academies not to be held up by such schools not wanting to admit such children. The 2016 Education White Paper: Education Excellence Everywhere recognised there was an issue with in-year admissions to academies because local authorities had no powers to over-rule the decision of a school not to admit a pupil. This was why Jacob was out of school when he died. Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com)

Sadly, nothing significant has changed since 2016. I hope that the Attendance Group will consider the issue of in-year admissions at a future meeting, and not just focus on the parents that don’t send their children to school. The system must work for the benefit of all and not just those that are easy to educate. The same is the case of children with SEND requiring in-year admission to a school.

These young people must not be ignored, and just offering tutoring is not the same as admission to a school. Home tutoring doesn’t provide the same social interaction that being in a school provides however good the ‘virtual school’ is at its job.

Of course, there are risks where the school community is hostile to incomers and many schools could well look to improve the transfer experience for in-year admissions that can be even worse than that experienced by pupils transferring at the start of the school-year.

Being taken into care as a school-age child is a traumatic experience, and we owe it to these children to make sure that their education is affected as little as possible. So, it is my hope that the Attendance Group will as a minimum endorse the 2016 White Paper suggestions and, if possible, go further and set time limits for school places to be offered to children taken into care and requiring a new school placement. For most, it wasn’t their fault that they have ended up in the care of the local authority where all the secondary schools are academies.

Admissions still a headache for everyone

Posted on August 23, 2019 by John Howson

The DfE has recently published data about appeals for admission to primary and secondary schools. The data relates to admissions for the start of the 2018-19 school year; mostly for September 2018, but some schools may start their year in August. Although the data relates to admissions to any year group at the start of the school year, it seemingly doesn’t cover in-year admissions from parents moving into an area during the school year. There also doesn’t seem to be any mention of special schools and the evidence appeals could provide about the pressure on places in that sector. The basic information is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/admissions-appeals-in-england-academic-year-2018-to-2019

As pressure on primary places has eased, with the downward trend in births, so the percentage of appeals lodged in relation to admissions to infant classes in the primary sector has also reduced; from 3.3% of admissions in 2015/16 to 2.0% for the 2018/19 admission round. There has been a similar, but smaller percentage, decline in appeals for places in other years in the primary sector.

By contrast, in the secondary sector, where pupil numbers are on the increase, appeals are on the increase, up from 29,000 in 2015/16 to nearly 38,500 for the 2018/19 admission round. The percentage of these appeals decided in the parents’ favour has also been in decline during this time period as pressure on places has intensified.

This data is important to parents that will soon be struggling with the admission process for 2020. Local Authorities must publish their admission booklets by the 12^th September, in order to allow parents to express their preference for schools by the end of October, for the secondary sector, and by early 2020 for the primary sector.

Last year, parents in Oxfordshire faced the problem of deciding whether or not to apply for a place at a school that didn’t exist. Some parents in the London borough of Enfield face the same prospect this autumn. Wren Academy want to open a new school and have created a set of admission criteria, including:

The remaining places will be allocated equally between Foundation and Community applicants as follows:

a. Faith places (up to a maximum of 92) allocated in the following order: i. Up to 55 places for Church of England applicants ii. Up to 37 places for other Christian faith applicants b. Community Places (up to a maximum of 92) for all other children

Where there are places available in either category 3 or 4 above,these will be filled from the other category.

Leaving aside the issues parents will have about whether they can apply for both a Foundation category faith place and a community place as well, and whether both parents need to be of the Christian faith for a Foundation place or just one will do, there is the issue surrounding the fact that the school hasn’t yet been created by the DfE, and thus no Funding Agreement has been signed.

The DfE really needs to update the Admissions Code to deal with this situation and make explicit that any school included in the admissions booklet is guaranteed to open the following September.

Pressure on school places intensifies

Posted on June 13, 2019 by John Howson

The DfE has published the data on offers made regarding admission to primary and secondary schools for September 2019. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/secondary-and-primary-school-application-and-offers-2019

In view of the growing number of pupils in the transfer age group from primary to secondary school, now almost universally at age eleven, the percentage of pupils receiving their first choice of schools fell again this year to just 80.9%.

Secondary Schools
Entry into academic year	% made 1st preference offer
2010/11	83.2
2011/12	84.6
2012/13	85.3
2013/14	86.7
2014/15	85.2
2015/16	84.2
2016/17	84.1
2017/18	83.5
2018/19	82.1
2019/20	80.9

The percentage successful at gaining a place at their first choice schools has now declined every years since 2013/14 when it reach a high of 86.7%. Of course, there are significant regional differences, as well as differences between urban and rural areas.

As the DfE points out in the report: Northumberland (98.4%) and North Somerset (96.9%) achieved the best first preference rates in 2019. Northumberland has been the top performer in this measure for the last four years.

As in previous years, the lowest first preference rates at secondary level are all in London, Lambeth (54.8%), Lewisham (56.9%) and Hammersmith & Fulham (57.3%) achieved the lowest rates in 2019.

Central Bedfordshire is now the only local authority to submit secondary data for year 9 as their largest secondary intake. They had the third best percentage of transfer to secondary school to their middle schools that are classified as secondary schools.

Interestingly, there is no comment by the DfE on the transfer of pupils at age 14 to the UTCs and Studio schools. Presumably, anyone that wants to go to these schools can secure a place.

There was a small fall in first preference rates in the primary sector this year, down from 91.0% last year to 90.6% this year, but this is still well above the 87.7% of 2014/15.

This year there were 608,200 applications for a primary school place, virtually the same as last year, but the 604,500 applications for a secondary place represented an increase of 3.6% over last year, and just over 100,000 more than the lowest year of 2013/14.

There are implications in teacher supply for this increase in the secondary school population. The increase has been factored into the Teacher Supply Model by DfE civil servants.

What hasn’t been factored into the real world situation is the shortfall against the Teacher Supply Numbers in many subjects as far as trainee teacher numbers are concerned.

As this blog has pointed out in other posts, even assuming the DfE projections on retention and returner numbers are correct, not recruiting enough trainees can have real implications for schools.

As piece of research in California has demonstrated that it is the schools serving the more deprived neighbourhoods that suffer most when it comes to recruiting teachers when there is an overall shortfall. I fear the same is likely to be true in some parts of London, especially with the bonus on offer to some teachers to go and work in Opportunity Areas.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: admissions