'Radical' hope for admissions

A new duty to report annually on the fairness of school admissions could make councils more radical in their approach to allocating places, according to a leading education expert.

Concern about the practices at Manchester City Council, Barnet LBC and Northamptonshire CC prompted a demand from the Department for Children, Schools & Families (DCSF) for all councils to document local admissions arrangements by the end of this month.

A statutory duty to report on the "legality, fairness and effectiveness" of the process forms part of the Education & Skills Bill and features in a 30-page consultation issued earlier this month by the DCSF.

Martin Rogers, policy consultant at the Children's Services Network, said many of the proposed changes to admissions were parent-focused simplifications of the application system, but that the duty to report on fairness presented a "significant change".

"You really will need to be looking fairly broadly at the sort of radical options that are there to tackle the kind of inherent bias in schools," he said.

Mr Rogers added that a definition of 'fair' for pupils living in an authority area could include removing criteria such as how near a family lives to a school, or if siblings already study there.

"If what [councils] find is not effective or fair, they'll have to do something about it," he said.

Debbie Jones, who chairs the resources and sustainability policy committee at the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS), agreed there was potential for the annual report to drive change. "Anything that improves accountability and transparency has got to be a good thing," she said.

Ms Jones added that the ADCS was setting up a panel to consider the implications of the consultation and examine 'banding' — the offer of places based on a wide spectrum of pupils' ability.

Margaret Tulloch, secretary of the Comprehensive Future campaign group, said that the duty to report on the effectiveness of admission arrangements should expose more problems than the current system.

"Just because a complaint hasn't been made doesn't mean nothing bad is happening," Ms Tulloch said.

"The adjudicator can only adjudicate when a complaint is made."