School Admissions Problems (Reigate Liberal Democrats)

Reigate Liberal Democrats <info@reigatelibdems.org.uk>

School Admissions Problems

April 25, 2007 7:15 PM

School Places

Proposals for 2008 school admission arrangements came to the March meeting of Surrey County Council, just as offers of school places for 2007 were reaching parents. In Reigate, four-year-olds were offered places at schools as far away as Epsom Downs, with the stupid proposal of transporting them every day by taxi for the 16 mile round trip! SCC could have avoided this problem if only they had recognised that the large numbers of children of school age in the Reigate area did not match up with the number of places. Other problems have emerged in other areas of Surrey. In one case parents protested about the schools they had been offered at the Council meeting.

These problem areas have shown up after last year's big change to 'equal preference' away from the 'preference

weighted' selection. This means if your first choice school rejects you, you're likely to miss out on lower choices as well.

'Equal Preference' means the old 'admissions priority areas' do not apply. Replacing them is the 'nearest school' criterion.

The change followed years of debate, and was supported by the Liberal Democrats as a sensible way to allow parents to list their real preferences without having to make guesses about where they had the best chance of getting a place. On the whole it's been a success, but in Horsley and Reigate the new system led to the exclusion of a cohort of children from the schools that would have taken them under the old system.The situation at Horsley has now been resolved, and children have been accepted at the Howard of Effingham School. Negotiations continue at Reigate.

Working out preferences under the new system had to be carried out centrally and relied heavily on IT. Unfortunately implementation of the new procedure has been the mess that we have come to expect of Surrey County Council in such situations, especially following the big reductions in administrative staff that were part of the Tories' 'Business Delivery Review' in 2006. It was obvious there could be difficulties in places where old patterns of schooling were disrupted. Instead of allowing sufficient time and resources to cope, administrative difficulties were made much worse by technological failure. There were some serious errors, only now being corrected.

There were also delays in sending out offer letters to parents and lists of pupils to schools. Some schools suffered the embarrassment of being contacted by parents who had places offered for Autumn 2007 before they knew the names of potential pupils themselves. Especially embarrassing where the school concerned was not even third choice.

The most obviously significant change to admissions procedures agreed by Council for September 2008 is that distance from school, needed to decide which school is nearest to each child's home, will be measured on a straight line basis rather than by the shortest walking route. The 'walking route' will go on being used to work out entitlement to free school transport.

It won't answer the problems thrown up this year. The Conservative portfolio holder has said there is going to be an independent review of the admissions policy to 'improve future performance'.

We agree improvement is needed. We hope it comes in time.