Annex E
LEGISLATIVE BACKGROUND
1. This Government inherited a system which
gave parents the right to express a preference for the school
they would like their child to attend (first introduced in the
Education Act 1980). A significant legal ruling in 1989, (Greenwich
Judgement,[7]
established that LEAs could not give priority to children simply
because they lived in the authority's administrative area; all
applications must be considered equally.
2. The Education Act 1944 prescribed three
categories of school: county, voluntary and special. Voluntary
schools were of three types: voluntary controlled (VC), voluntary
aided (VA) and special agreement (SA). The local education authority
(LEA) was the admission authority for both county and VC schools,
but in the case of both VA and SA schools the governing body (GB)
was the admission authority. Prior to 1944 there had been two
categories of school: board and voluntary schools.
3. The Education Act 1980 introduced parental
preference. Admission authorities were required to publish their
admission arrangements and comply with parental preference.
4. The Education Reform Act 1988 established
grant maintained (GM) schools who could opt out of LEA control
into central government funding and thereby gain more autonomy.
Schools could be established as GM; or existing county, voluntary
controlled, voluntary aided and special schools could opt for
this status. GM schools were their own admission authorities.
5. The School Standards and Framework Act
1998 abolished GM Schools and created the categories of schools
that we have today; Schedule 2 of the SSFA provided indicative
allocations of new categories with provisions allowing for schools
to change to a different category in certain circumstances, but
ex-GM schools could choose their new category. County schools
became community; controlled schools became voluntary controlled.
Special agreement schools became VA schools. GM schools which
had formerly been county or controlled schools tended to choose
foundation status, but a substantial minority of all GM schools
chose voluntary aided status.
6. This Act also enabled GM schools, which
were formerly special schools, to become foundation special schools.
The admission of children with statements of special educational
need is covered by the Education Act 1996. Consequently the admissions
provisions in the 1998 Act do not generally apply to children
with statements of special educational needs. If their statement
names a particular school, the school must admit them, regardless
of its usual admission arrangements and criteria.
7. Local Government Reorganisation has resulted
in an increased number of local education authorities. In 1995
there were 109; by 1999 this had risen to 150.
7 R v Greenwich London Borough Council,
ex parte John Ball Primary School (1989) 88 LGR 589 [1990]
Family Law 469. Back
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