Evidence to the Education and Skills Committee:
Inquiry on secondary education school admissions instruction
This written evidence is submitted by Dr Ian Birnbaum,
Chief Education Officer of the London Borough of Sutton, who is
writing here in his capacity as Chair of the Pan-London Coordinated
Admissions Executive Board. This Board is responsible for overseeing
and steering through the Pan-London Coordinated Admissions Project.
Background to the Pan-London Coordinated Admissions
Project
Through his work with the Department for Education
& Skills in helping to put together the new framework and
regulations for Coordinated Admissions, Dr Birnbaum established
a framework for an approach to coordinated admissions throughout
the whole of London. On behalf of London authorities Wandsworth
Borough Council made a bid to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
for funding to provide the information and communications technology
infrastructure to allow this project to happen. The bid was successful
and in April 2003 the ODPM made available £1,485,000 for
the project.
What is the project?
The project creates an infrastructure so that applications
and offers for secondary school places can be fully coordinated
across London. To understand how this will be done, we need first
to summarise the key aspects of coordination which have to be
in place by 2005.
Under the new regulations for coordinating secondary
admissions each local authority has a responsibility as both a
Maintaining LEA and a Home LEA. As a Maintaining LEA it is responsible
for coordinating all the applications made to the schools that
it maintains whether those applications come from parents inside
the LEA or outside it. As a Home LEA it has a responsibility
to ensure the coordination of applications made by its residents
whether those applications are to its own schools or to schools
outside the authority.
The regulations impose upon the Home LEA fairly minimal
responsibilities for coordination but they do provide it with
the power to go much further than this. The minimal level of
coordination that the Home LEA must provide is to make available
a common application form on which all residents will set out
their preferences in rank order. The Home LEA is then required
to send that information to admission authorities within the Home
LEA and to other Maintaining LEAs for applications outside the
Home LEA.
It does have the power, however, assuming there is
mutual agreement between LEAs, to eliminate multiple offers arising
from different Maintaining LEAs making offers to the same parent.
The Pan-London Coordinated Admissions Project establishes this
process across the whole of London and the LEAs adjoining London.
The intention is for the 2005 admissions that all
33 London boroughs together with the eight LEAs adjoining London
will cooperate to eliminate all multiple offers. This means that
no parent will receive more than one offer from the 41 local authorities.
Given that no local authority can make more than one offer this
should ensure that no parent receives more than one offer. The
only multiple offers that will remain will be from the City Technology
Colleges (which unfortunately are not part of the regulations)
and from independent schools.
What are the benefits of eliminating multiple
offers?
In essence one person's multiple offer is another
person's lack of offer. By ensuring that no one gets more than
one offer it should be possible to satisfy the preferences of
far more parents at the point of which the offer is made. And
because far fewer parents will be left with no offer under such
a system it will also reduce the anxiety and frustration which
many parents and pupils feel.
Whilst the system cannot guarantee that every pupil
will be made an offer on offer date it will go a long way to ensure
that most do. It cannot guarantee an offer for every child because
in some areas a large degree of oversubscription will mean that
only when multiple offers from independent schools and City Technology
Colleges are removed will it be possible to allocate places to
everyone.
How will the system work?
In order to ensure that all 41 participating LEAs
coordinate their admissions effectively in what is a very complex
operation we are using the ODPM grant to ensure that each local
authority has a local admissions system and that these systems
all connect to a Pan-London Register, effectively a central database.
Each local admissions system will transmit information between
itself and other local admissions systems via the Pan-London Register.
The applications and preferences from all residents
will be input into the Home LEA's local admissions system. The
system will then relay to all the Maintaining LEAs' local admissions
systems those applications that are for those Maintaining LEAs'
schools. The local admissions system in each Maintaining LEA
will then receive from its local schools potential offers that
might be made and will determine which single offer to make usually
by offering the highest preference on the parents' form amongst
those schools potentially making an offer.
That information will then be sent back to the Home
LEA's local admissions system which will be able to determine,
again by reference to the parents' form, which of the potential
offers from the Maintaining LEAs it should make. Once again it
will choose the one which is the highest on the parents' form
amongst those Maintaining LEAs potentially making an offer. The
information will then be relayed back to the Maintaining LEAs'
local admissions systems which will then re-allocate any spare
places.
The process will continue backwards and forwards
until a steady state is reached. Once such a steady stage is
reached it means that there are no multiple offers within the
system. At that stage each Home LEA will be in a position to
make a single offer.
Such a complex system could not operate without good
quality local admissions systems and a database to connect them
all together. Our project has commissioned such systems and a
database is in preparation building on the ICT on-line infrastructure
we already have in London, which we call the London Grid for Learning.
Some local authorities already have a local admissions
system and the project will provide funding to ensure that they
can interface properly with the Pan-London Register so that there
is maximum automation in the process.
Why is this project important?
This project represents the most extensive level
of admissions coordination ever developed in the United Kingdom
and possibly well beyond the United Kingdom shores. Indeed, it
is probably the most complex piece of coordination ever put in
place for local government. More importantly, in the context
of the Select Committee's work, it represents a pilot project
which could be rolled out for England as a whole and, indeed,
it has been constructed with that very purpose. We envisage that
within a few years of its going live in 2005 it will be possible
to extend its operation so that admissions across the whole of
England are coordinated in this way. That would mean that no
one in England as a whole would receive multiple offers from maintained
schools, and if City Technology Colleges can be brought into the
arrangements, which we believe they should, only multiple offers
from independent schools would remain.
Further developments
As well as this exciting project, London is also
working with Hertfordshire on a parallel project which will put
in place an on-line admissions system for parents from 2005.
It is intended that London will be a pilot for this on-line project
so that all London parents can, if they wish, make their applications
on-line. This part of the project is at a very early stage of
development since we are currently concentrating on establishing
a coordinated admissions system. But we expect that both should
be able to go live for 2005.
Conclusion
We believe that what we are doing in London in relation
to admissions is highly significant and that the success of the
project will have considerable benefits for the parents and pupils
of London and beyond. We will be very happy to talk further to
the Select Committee about the project and its implications and
we will be happy to provide further evidence, either in writing
or orally, as required.
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