Oversubscribed secondaries that prioritise local students are reinforcing “geographic inequalities” by excluding those who cannot live close to school, according to researchers.
Research led by academics at the University of Bristol shows that secondaries are around 20 times more likely to give priority to local, rather than disadvantaged, students.
The research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, reveals that more than 90 per cent of secondaries are able to decide admissions criteria themselves since the introduction of academies and free schools.
And the academics say this has led to a range of different, highly complicated processes that are not only hard for parents to understand but also sometimes “reinforce segregation across neighbourhoods”.
The research, which looks at admissions for September 2020, has been published at a time when families find out if their child has been accepted into the secondary school of their choice.
Steve Rollett, deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, agreed that it was important to understand how factors like disadvantage, geography, travel and school choice impact on admissions in local areas.
However, he said that many school trusts “specifically choose to serve disadvantaged areas, where geography may be the simplest and most effective criteria to help pupil premium children”.
School admissions code ‘should be reviewed’
But other organisations, like the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), want the school admissions code to be reviewed in order to “require all schools to do more to prioritise disadvantaged children”.
Responding to today’s report, ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton said there are “well-known issues around people moving into catchment areas to get their child into these schools” and also called for a review of the ”distorting impact of Ofsted judgements”.
The Nuffield research shows that, beyond the legal requirements, the most common criteria used in admissions policies by far are siblings (96 per cent of schools) and geography (88 per cent), with explicit prioritisation of disadvantaged pupils far lower, at just 5 per cent.
But it says that in free schools, many “innovative” admissions arrangements - such as the pupil premium criterion - are being used and there is “less reliance on traditional admissions arrangements” such as catchment areas.
The report adds that admissions requirements are difficult for parents to navigate, saying that a third (33 per cent) of councils do not publish guides to the admissions arrangements for all schools in their area, meaning parents have to consult individual school websites.
Lead author Simon Burgess, professor of economics at the University of Bristol, said the report’s findings raised “important concerns about the chances of England successfully levelling up achievement and opportunity for children and young people from all social backgrounds”.
Ruth Maisey, programme head of education at the Nuffield Foundation, said: “This research highlights the very real barrier that pupils from lower-income households face when applying for their secondary school place.
“Prioritising local pupils reinforces geographic inequalities by excluding those who can’t afford to live close to the top-performing schools. We hope this research encourages more schools to think creatively about using their admissions criteria to promote opportunity and fairer access.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, said it had always been a “potential flaw” of distance-based admissions that schools in more affluent areas become oversubscribed and more difficult for disadvantaged pupils to access.
“However, disadvantaged pupils’ chances of receiving the best education should not depend on attending oversubscribed schools further away from where they live,” he added.
“The government needs to fund all schools sufficiently so they can provide the best possible education, irrespective of catchment area.”
