Tag Archives: pupil admissions

Appeals reflect changes in pupil numbers

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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

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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 periodschool_phaseappeals_ lodged   percentageAppeals_heard_ percentagesuccessful_appeals_ percentage
2016Primary (infant classes)3.32.311.8
2017Primary (infant classes)3211.7
2018Primary (infant classes)2.61.79.9
2019Primary (infant classes)21.412.6
2020Primary (infant classes)1.91.310.9
2021Primary (infant classes)1.81.210.5
2022Primary (infant classes)1.619.5
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_periodSchool _phase       appeals_lodged _percentageappeals_heard _percentagesuccessful_appeals _percentage
2016Secondary4.53.626.3
2017Secondary4.83.724.6
2018Secondary5.34.123.4
2019Secondary5.54.623.3
2020Secondary64.922.2
2021Secondary5.14.120.1
2022Secondary53.921.1
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

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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.

What is the role of a school in its community?

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For everyone interested in either the role of a middle tier in our school system in England or in how pupil place planning and support for vulnerable children is handled in the current shambles around the arrangements for schools in England, this is an important report to read. Local authority provision for school places and support for vulnerable children – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The recent White Paper on Education was the second one to pledge to change in-year Admissions and this Report indicates why Ministers should act swiftly to make the necessary changes to the current system.

At the heart of the debate about the middle tier is the role of local authorities and the role of academies and the Trusts that run them. The following two quotes from the report sum up current situation nicely in relation to these important issues for the management of our schooling system:

‘Nevertheless, our research also suggested that there are two ways in which academisation can affect local education systems. First, because there are different processes for making decisions and resolving disputes about place-planning and placements of vulnerable pupils for academies and maintained schools, where an “isolationist” school is an academy, it can be more difficult, complex, and time-consuming to resolve issues. Second, while not generalising, school, trust and LA leaders and parents/carers reported that, among the minority of schools that took an “isolationist” approach, these were more likely to be schools that were part of larger regional or national academy trusts.’

‘Furthermore, there was broad agreement among school, trust and LA leaders and parents/carers that LAs were uniquely placed to play this role [place planning]. (In relation to place-planning, a minority of trust leaders and national stakeholders argued that the RSC should be wholly or partially responsible for delivering place-planning.) Whichever way roles and responsibilities are configured, there was consensus about the need for clarity, alignment of responsibilities and decision-making authority, for reciprocal expectations of schools, trusts and LAs around participating in local partnership-based approaches to place-planning and support for vulnerable pupils, and a renewed, more collaborative relationship between local and central government.’

The situation is summed up by a quote from a local authority officer:

‘Nobody wants to roll back the clock. But if we have MATs not working for the best interests of young people in the community, we don’t have any direct levers. We would have to go through the RSC, and not sure they have many levers. A lot of accountability sits with the LA, but the responsibility of delivery sits with schools. Doesn’t feel appropriate. We need some accountabilities placed on academy trusts and schools to deliver expectations [for vulnerable children].’ (LA officer page 106)

We need a system that works for the children seeking an education, and not primarily for those that provide that schooling. This is especially true for our most vulnerable young people and I hope that Ministers will spend time over easter reading this report and then acting upon its findings. State schooling is a public service and must be managed as such.

Opportunity for All?

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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.

Pressure on school places intensifies

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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.

 

 

 

Missing the point

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For the past year I have been drawing attention to the fact that children taken into care during the school year and then placed away from home may well have to change schools at short notice and mid-year. In many cases, schools asked to admit these young people recognise that the Admissions Code provides for priority for looked after children during the admissions round. However, in some cases, schools take an entirely opposite approach to in-year requests for a place and do everything to stall an admission.

Yesterday in parliament, my MP asked a question about this issue:Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)​

Looked-after children in Oxfordshire could have to wait for up to six months to get into the secondary school that they need to, primarily because local authorities do not have the directive powers over academies that they do over maintained schools. What is the Minister doing to ensure that the most vulnerable children do not miss a day of school?

Here is the Minister’s response
Nadhim Zahawi

Those most disadvantaged children, to whom the hon. Lady referred, are actually given priority during the admissions process.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-05-14/debates/28B7B87C-B33B-4B69-B2D5-16AF519F3309/OralAnswersToQuestions

The exchange shows how it is necessary to be very precise when wording parliamentary questions, as indeed journalists tell me that it does when wording Freedom of Information requests. The Minister is technically correct, but that answer seems to apply more to the normal admission round for the start of the school year than to casual admissions in-year, as happens when a child is taken into care.

The DfE does need to address this issue. I would ask readers to check what is happening in their locality. Are there children in care being tutored away from schools because a school place cannot be found? How closely is the local authority monitoring this issue and what are the large children’s charities doing about the matter?

It is tough being taken into care and, as the admissions code recognises, we should be ensuring priority in the education of these young people at any time of the year. This includes continuity of provision.

I recognise that there are some areas of the country where there are large numbers of such children being placed and so of these are areas in selective systems further reducing the option of schools that can be approached. Should we offer more boarding school places for such children rather than trying to find foster families or is that too much like returning to institutional care – they is still the issue of how to handle school holidays in those cases.

Being taken into care presents a big risk to the education of a young person. At least trying to ensure that they can be found a school place quickly and that schools recognise the need to transition these newcomers into school life effectively and with sympathy is the least we should ask of a civilised society. Please do not allow these children to be forgotten.

 

A fudge with no teeth

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Today’s political announcements about the shape of new school places in England might mark a turning point. Conversely, it might just be a neat solution to two problems that needed a resolution. First on grammar schools, and the £50 million funding for the expansion of places. Let me state at the outset that I am opposed to selective education, especially at age eleven. I believe that the Liberal Democrats should campaign to remove these schools even though the Lib Dems run councils in Sutton and now Kingston upon Thames in London that have such schools within the council boundaries.

The BBC has an interesting chart showing what has happened to the size of grammar schools between 2009-10 and 2015-16. Of the 20 such schools shown, all have expanded. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44067719 Whether this means that the remaining 140 or so grammar schools haven’t changed their intakes isn’t mentioned. As I have remarked before, the government faced a dilemma. With pupil numbers rising sharply in many of the areas in the Home Counties and outer London where a disproportionate percentage of grammar schools are to be found, doing nothing would effectively decrease the percentage of pupils in these areas able to attend a selective school. Such a policy risked creating the worst of all worlds; not pleasing those that want the abolition of grammar schools, but also upsetting parents who would find it difficult to secure a place for their offspring in an increasingly competitive application process. Today’s announcement will, the Secretary of State no doubt hopes, placate the latter while doing no more than enrage the former, but without lasting political damage, and be seen as the best compromise on offer.

Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson Layla Moran has said in a press statement: “Grammar schools are the wrong answer to the wrong question. This money should be spent on local schools so that every young person across the country can get the education they need to prepare for the future.” But has stopped short of calling for the removal of these schools. Perhaps this is because such a policy is already implicit in the Lib Dems approach to education. I summed much of that approach as I see it in a recent chapter in a book by the Social Liberal Forum that I co-authored with Helen Flynn. A review of the book can be seen at https://www.libdemvoice.org/a-21st-century-liberal-approach-to-education-57473.html albeit written by a committed Liberal Democrat.

How the government will enforce the rules on selection, offered as a sop to opponents of selective schools and a fig leaf to make the policy more attractive overall, is an interesting question. I assume it is to be just a fig leaf. After all, will any new rules apply to applications for all the places at the schools that take the money or only to applicants for the additional places funded through the new cash for the extra places? This would potentially create two admission rounds: one for existing places and the other for the new Hinds’ places. The latter might perhaps only be open to pupils from certain primary schools with, say, a history of not sending any pupils or only very small numbers to the selective school sector. Alternatively, the rules might stipulate only pupils on Free School Meals in the year they apply for a place. One might envisage some other such permutations. All would need monitoring, plus a clear set of sanctions, especially where the selective schools are not co-educational schools, but the primary schools in the area are co-educational.

The other announcement today, about faith schools, is potentially more momentous and deserves a blog post of its own.

 

Can schools cause a housing crisis?

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Are academies screwing up the housing market? In the 2016 Education White Paper, it was hinted that in-year admissions might be returned to local authority control as they manage the main admissions round. So far, nothing has happened.

With secondary school rolls now on the increase in many parts of the south of England, and likely to eventually increase across the whole country over the course of the next few years, many more schools are filling up in some of their younger age year groups. They are, therefore becoming more reluctant to offer places to in-year applicants.

I have been campaigning for some time about the effect this can have on children taken into care that are having to experience a long wait before a school is forced to take them in the end; this at a very vulnerable time in their lives when being deprived of social interaction school can offer is a real concern and needs urgent action.

Now, I am also being told of parents moving mid-year for employment reasons that are finding schools reluctant to offer a place to their child. Where most or all secondary schools are academies this leaves the parents in a weak position and their child or children possibly out of school for several months.

I have remarked before that it is a supreme irony that a parent talking a child on holiday for a fortnight can be fined, whereas one taking them across town to a new house can be excluded from schooling for much longer. Something isn’t right here, and the government needs to take action. Firstly, they should determine the size of the problem and what the effects of rising rolls are likely to be on the need for in-year places and spare capacity within the system.

Builders, developers and employers human resources departments need to understand the effects of current policy, since with social media being immediate in nature it could slow down the house market and make employees reluctant to switch jobs mid-school year if they believe schooling will be a problem for their children.

As an aside, many schools could do more for children they admit mid-year and might want to track how well they integrate into the school. Schools with large number of forces children are well aware of this problem and that was one reason the Service Children’s Premium was introduced.

The fact that academies are their own admissions authorities is probably at the heart of the problem. Perhaps head teacher boards could discuss the issue wearing their responsibility for the system and not as heads of individual schools or directors of MATs.

Pupils deserve an education and although inconvenient and sometimes unsettling to schools in-year movement will take place and needs to be handled in both a sensitive and timely manner. If a school has a place in a year group it is difficult to see why the decision isn’t Immediate, especially with the power of information technology.

Transfer at 14; good idea, badly executed?

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Schools Week has been running a story about the failure of many UTCs and Studio Schools to attract pupils for September. Their latest news is that Plymouth UTC will now not take any pupils at 14 this coming September http://schoolsweek.co.uk/troubled-utc-plymouth-pauses-recruitment-at-14/ Here in Oxfordshire the news on that front is better, with two of the three UTC/Studio schools fully subscribed. Indeed, the Didcot UTC has made 120 offer for 120 places equal to its Planned Admission Number and the Studio School in Bicester exceeded its PAN of 50 with 53 offers to the 60 applicants. Now, whether or not they all turn up is another matter, and we won’t know until parents have considered issues such as how much it will cost to transport their child to the school.

The Space Studio School in Banbury follows the trend identified by Schools Week, with 16 offer for the 75 places available. But, located as it is in the grounds of the town’s largest academy it has always seemed to me to be a bit of an oddity.

Despite these good recruitment numbers, there remain for the schools in Oxfordshire the same issues rehearsed before in this column. Existing Oxfordshire secondary schools will lose the funding of 173 pupils if all those offered places move to the Didcot and Bicester schools. That’s the best part of £700,000 in one year. Over four years it would amount to not far short of £3 million pounds after allowing for inflation. Put this drain on income on top of the 8% the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggested might be the cuts to school budgets over the rest of this decade and you have the potential for financial problems at other schools.

To make the most of a system, you need a degree of planning or unlimited funds. We don’t have either at present and we don’t seem to have a government that understands that in times of austerity you need to make the most of the resources that you do have available.

The issue in Oxfordshire is, what will be the consequences for schools losing pupils at 14 and 16, whereas elsewhere the consequence is the opposite. What happens to the schools that don’t attract enough pupils to pay their bills? The silence from the Regional Schools Commissioners and the National Commissioner on the need for a rational approach is of concern. These civil servants must not be high priced rubber stamps approving new academies without understanding the consequences.

In the end, it will be the much maligned local authorities that will have to sort out ant mess. It may be no surprise that the Plymouth UTC operates in a selective school system. In such a system, few pupils will leave a selective school at 14 making it even harder to recruit from the remaining schools with the pupils that didn’t take or pass the selection process.

It is probably time to look at how the transfer of pupils at 14 is going to work in the longer-term: leaving it to the market isn’t really an option.