The number of objections to schools admission arrangements rose last year, the annual report from the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) reveals today.

The OSA annual report shows that there were 129 objections to admissions arrangements in 2017-18, up from 100 the previous year.

But it adds that these cases related to 78 individual admission authorities (either schools or local authorities) when last year there were 91 admission authorities involved.

This was due to a large number of objections made about two particular schools - 20 to do with one academy, which were not upheld, and 12 to one community school, which were upheld.

The report reveals that of the 116 cases completed during the year, 37 objections were upheld, 31 partially upheld and 48 not upheld.

Objections were made on a range of matters including the use of feeder schools, catchment areas, faith-based arrangements, priority given to siblings and testing at selective schools.

The report also reveals that:

• The number of schools which are giving priority to children on the basis that they are eligible for pupil, early years or service premium has risen from 300 to 550.
• School websites which are not consistently updated can have different and sometimes inconsistent or contradictory versions of arrangements exist at the same time on different parts of websites. “This can be confusing and potentially misleading for parents,” says the report.
• There were 11 objections from local authorities about schools which had reduced their published admission number - the number of pupils they will admit. Local authorities were concerned that the places were being removed that were needed that were required.