The claim
“This Code will make it easier for some parents – like those setting up free schools – to get the school they want, but by weakening the system overall, it will make it harder for the majority of parents.”
Andy Burnham MP, Shadow Education Secretary, May 27, 2011
Cathy Newman checks it out
FactCheck’s spent the day doing a bit of homework on the new admissions code. The Education Secretary wants popular schools to be able to expand more easily.
And schools which are over-subscribed will get financial incentives to pick the poorest. So does Michael Gove score ten out of ten for helping the worst-off get a top class education? Or should he get a black mark for making matters worse for the middle classes?
The background
The government’s new admissions code proposes to change the way school places are allocated in 22,000 state schools across England.
It plans to abolish area-wide lotteries – used to pick children for over-subscribed schools – and allow popular schools to expand.
It also sets out to simplify the system, reducing the code from 130 pages to 50. At its heart is, the Education Secretary claims, an ambition to give children from less well-off families a good start in life.
Top schools like academies or the new free schools will be able to prioritise places for children on free school meals.
So if schools are over-subscribed, children whose parents earn more than £16,000 might lose out. Schools will have financial encouragement to help the worse-off – £430 a year per student, the Lib Dems’ “pupil premium”.
The code will also allow some schools to reserve space for employees’ kids.
The analysis
The shadow education secretary Andy Burnham smelt a rat. He argued that children of free school founders would get to jump the queue.
FactCheck had a trawl through the code. There is indeed a proposal to “give priority to children of staff when a school is over-subscribed, if the school wishes, making it easier for schools to recruit teachers and other staff”.
But one of the free school pioneers, Toby Young, thinks Mr Burnham’s got the wrong end of the stick.
“New Code won’t make it easier for founders of FS to get children in,” Mr Young tweeted.
He’s right that the new rule doesn’t apply specifically to free schools, and it makes no point about reserved places for founders’ children.
But because free schools tend to be set up in areas where there’s a shortage of places, they’re likely to be over-subscribed.
A call to the Department of Education reveals that on this point, free schools are left out of the code. “We’ll consider it on a case-by-case basis. If the founders make it part of their proposals (to reserve a place) then we’ll consider it,” a spokesman for the Department for Education told FactCheck.
So Mr Young could be rewarded for his diligence setting up a school in West London, by putting his four children at the head of the queue.
Mr Young told FactCheck his school proposal doesn’t include a request to bag a place for his kids, and he wasn’t sure how long he would stay with his school, adding: “It’s not really my decision, it depends how long they’ll put up with me for.”
He also pointed out that of the ten to twenty free schools planning to open this year, only half of them are being set up by groups of parents.
On the broader point, though, is Mr Burnham right that the new code makes it harder for the majority of parents?
By privileging the worse-off, it is true that a minority of poorer students will benefit at the expense of some of their middle class peers.
But not everyone’s convinced the new code will help the poor.
Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, warned: “Allowing ‘popular’ schools to expand will do nothing to improve social mobility. It will create sink schools in many areas of deprivation and hit hardest those children whose parents do not or cannot take an interest in their education.”
And there was something to cheer the sharp-elbowed parent. Lotteries were the bane of middle class parents who moved house to ‘cheat’ their way into the best schools. The government has now said that while individual schools could still decide to pick pupils by lottery, local authorities can’t.
That’s likely to mean fewer lotteries – leaving the better-off free to buy their way into the top catchment areas.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
The Shadow Education Secretary is right to say that the new code privileges a minority.
But while he’s chosen to focus on the very few children of free school founders who could be prioritised – though the code does not spell this out – far more important, is the incentive schools now have to choose poorer pupils.
The new code will probably on balance make life harder for the sharp-elbowed middle-classes (though the abolition of area-wide lotteries will please The Daily Mail).
But they’ll always find a way to get their children into a school of their choice. It’s the least well-off who need more help.
The analysis by Emma Thelwell
