Secondary Admissions: School Admissions
Summary of Evidence provided by Paul
Robinson
The London Context
Features:
- Hierarchy of schools in the eyes of parents which
condition choice and satisfaction with the system.
- Large number of different admission authorities,
a mixture of admission criteria and appeal arrangements.
- Significant movement of pupils across borough
boundaries.
- Secondary schools with a large number of feeder
primary schools.
- Highly developed independent sector, which attracts
a higher percentage of able and motivated pupils than the national
average.
- Large number of multiple acceptances of offers
effectively blocking the offers to other children - a state of
affairs, which will be largely though not totally eradicated by
the new co-ordinated admissions, arrangements.
- Variable picture in terms of transition and attainment
between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3.
- High pupil mobility means that in most LEAs there
is a significant but changing group of children without a school
place in-year (ie outside the normal admission round). Most LEAs
do not have a common source of information, for schools for which
they are not the admission authority, on which children are admitted
and who is on waiting lists. When LEAs track children with no
school place it is difficult to obtain up to date information,
particularly for children getting school places in neighbouring
LEAs.
- As vacancies appear in all year groups in successful
schools during the year (because of mobility) this often means
places are offered to pupils on waiting lists who already have
a place in another school rather than placing children with no
school place.
A few of the issues:
- Building confidence and trust in the whole system.
- Balancing the interest of individual schools
with a wider corporate responsibility to support the interests
of all pupils.
- Cracking the conundrum of admissions outside
the normal admissions round.
- Reducing the negative influences on the transition
between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 and building on the positive.
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