A leading charity today called for changes to the school admissions system to make it “fairer”, including giving disadvantaged pupils priority when schools are oversubscribed.

Social mobility charity the Sutton Trust has published a report today that also suggests school places could be issued through a ballot system to deter middle-class parents from buying homes in areas close to high-performing schools.

The report, Selective Comprehensives: GB, follows the trust’s research in 2017, which found that the 500 top “non-selective” state schools in England had just 9.4 per cent of pupils on free school meals, compared with the national average of 17.2 per cent.

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Sir Peter Lampl, founder and chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “Getting a place at a good school is key to getting on in life. Yet the bottom line is that in Britain your chances of doing that depends on your parents’ income and whether they can afford to live in an affluent area.

A fairer school admissions system?

“This is why we want to see more use of ballots - where a proportion of places is allocated randomly - as well as a focus on improving the quality of teaching in all schools, particularly those in the most disadvantaged areas.”

The research also found that a typical house price in the catchment area of a top-500 school was £45,700 more than the average house in the same local authority.

It found that about half of the gap between the proportions of pupils on free school meals in these schools, compared with the national average, was due to the location of high-attaining schools and the rest was due to social selection in admissions occurring even within those neighbourhoods.

A trust spokesperson said: “To improve access to the best schools, the Sutton Trust would like to see changes to the admissions process that include prioritising disadvantaged pupils where schools are oversubscribed.

“The report also recommends that local authorities, particularly in urban areas, should consider a system with fewer incentives for middle-class parents to buy homes in the catchment areas of top schools. Allocating a proportion of places randomly - say half, through a ballot system - could form a central part of this.”

At present, around 70 per cent of schools in England are their own admissions authority, as highlighted by the campaign group Comprehensive Future in its call for an “urgent inquiry” into the admissions system last week.  

Former chief schools adjudicator Sir Philip Hunter told Tes that “cracks were now appearing” in the admission system, partly because the DfE’s School Admission Code had been “watered down” in recent years to give schools more flexibility in the admissions criteria they adopt when oversubscribed.

He said: “The code should now be strengthened, in particular by laying a duty on schools to ensure that the net result of their criteria does not select unduly from privileged families.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “By the end of this decade we are on track to have created a million new school places since 2010, the largest increase for at least two generations. Since 2011, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers, as measured by the disadvantage gap index, has narrowed by at least 9.5 per cent.

“Currently, under the School Admissions code, priority must be given to specific groups of vulnerable children whilst also enabling schools to give priority to those eligible for the pupil premium. All state-funded schools, including academies, have to comply with this to ensure all school places are allocated and offered in a fair and open way. 

“We also continue to target areas most in need of support - our Opportunity Area programme is investing £72 million over three years to promote better educational outcomes and life chances in 12 of the most deprived areas of the country, and we recently launched Wave 14 of the free schools programme, targeting the areas with the lowest educational standards and a need for more good school places.”