Memorandum submitted by Dr Ian Birnbaum,
Strategic Director, Learning for Life, London Borough of Sutton,
and Chairman, Pan-London Co-ordinated Admissions Executive Board
(SA 16)
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
Co-ordinated Admissions Executive Board. This Board is responsible
for overseeing and steering through the Pan-London Co-ordinated
Admissions Project.
BACKGROUND TO
THE PAN-LONDON
CO-ORDINATED
ADMISSIONS PROJECT
Through his work with the Department for Education
& Skills in helping to put together the new framework and
regulations for Co-ordinated Admissions, Dr Birnbaum established
a framework for an approach to co-ordinated 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
co-ordinated across London. To understand how this will be done,
we need first to summarise the key aspects of co-ordination which
have to be in place by 2005.
Under the new regulations for co-ordinating
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 co-ordinating 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 co-ordination 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 co-ordination but they do provide
it with the power to go much further than this. The minimal level
of co-ordination 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 Co-ordinated 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 co-operate 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 over-subscription
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 co-ordinate 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 co-ordination ever developed in the United Kingdom
and possibly well beyond the United Kingdom shores. Indeed, it
is probably the most complex piece of co-ordination 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
co-ordinated 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 co-ordinated 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.
November 2003
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