Andrew Crisp's statement to the SCC Executive meeting 26 February.

 

Chairman

I intend to take each of the recommendations in turn concluding with admission arrangements for the Howard of Effingham school.

I should begin by thanking all those who have contributed to this consultation – parents, governors, teachers, officers and members.  The consultation has been extensive, producing around 4,000 responses.

However, before I turn to the specific recommendations there are some general comments that I must make about school admissions.  

The government do little to help the situation.  Ministers often talk about choice, the reality is that many parents have little or even no choice.  Picking a school for a child is at best about expressing a preference.

At the same time Ministers talk of expanding popular schools and closing failing schools.  Of course, failing schools mean failing children and young people and this can never be acceptable.  Increasingly though the role of the local authority is not to run schools, but to act at arms length, with powers limited to intervening when a school has begun to fail.

Simply closing a failing school is rarely the whole answer.  Removing schools mean fewer, bigger schools, reducing the opportunity to express a preference or make a choice.  

I said that government also wishes to see successful schools expand.  In Surrey this is meaningless rhetoric.  The capital settlement from government for repairs and refurbishments in Surrey schools next year is zero.  Government would suggest this is not the case, pointing to capital available through supported borrowing.  The borrowing would be better described as unsupported.  Government no longer provides Surrey with the revenue to repay borrowing as it did until two years ago.

All of this is pertinent to school admissions when the number of children seeking admission to particular schools outstrips the capacity of those schools to admit them.

The process of forecasting admission numbers is difficult.  Between 1999 and 2002 the number of live births in Surrey dropped by almost 1,000 from the start to the end of that period.  This will begin to have an impact in our secondary schools next year.  When a typical year has around 12,000 live births a drop of 1,000 is highly significant.

Since 2002 the numbers have grown again although not consistently across the County with substantial variations between Boroughs and Districts and sometimes even within Boroughs.

At the same time around 1 in 5 children and young people in Surrey are educated in the independent sector.  Of course, this number varies with the state of the economy.

Historically, much of the new housing built in Surrey was family housing with a reasonably predictable supply of children and young people.  In recent years, much of that new housing has become flats that historically have produced few children.  However, with the affordability of property in Surrey becoming a problem for young families and a growing number of single parent households, there has been a growth in the number of children and young people seeking school places who live in flats.

Finally, there will always be questions of migration in and out of Surrey.  Numbers will vary for a variety of reasons.  The nature of the migration will also vary, demonstrated most recently by the fact that a school in one part of Surrey now has web pages in Polish given the demand from that community for admission to the school.

All of these comments are by way of providing some context for this afternoon’s debate and recommendations.

First, I should explain why this debate is taking place today.  Every year the local authority is required by government to set its admissions arrangements for the year ahead and these arrangements must be notified to government by mid-April.  The final decision on the arrangements rests with the full council that will meet a week today.  Any arrangements that we propose must fit within the lengthy and detailed admissions code of practice set by government.

Each year we are also obliged to consult on our proposals for admission arrangements.  Often these proposed arrangements amount to little more than some minor tidying up and otherwise a recommendation for no change.  That is not the case this year in a number of particular cases.  This year’s consultation is doubly significant as it follows on the back of judgements produced by the school’s adjudicator last year.  At that time the adjudicator said that the arrangements put in place should stand for one year only as the council intended to undertake a review of its admission arrangements for the following year.

I do not intend to go into the detail of the consultation response at this time but will draw on specific aspects as I cover the various recommendations.  

The Select Committee have considered the proposals and their recommendations are set out in the report.  The Admissions Forum have also considered the proposal arrangements for 2009 but failed to reach any consensus.

The policy for the vast majority of the county is set out in Annex 1, Section A consisting of five priorities in the following order: looked after children, exceptional arrangements, siblings, children for whom the school is the nearest to their home and any other applicant. The tie breaker will be distance measured by straight line.

Further changes are set out in paragraphs 20 to 36 of the main report and I shall mention those where changes are recommended.  At paragraph 24 it is recommended that the Hermitage Junior School has The Oaktree Infant school as a named partner school, the schools share the same site and have identical Published Admission Numbers.

At paragraph 25 it is recommended that Knowle Park Infant and Kings Cross Junior schools in Spelthorne and Marshfields Infant and Christchurch Junior schools in Runnymede abandon ‘same site status’.

At paragraph 29 it is proposed to revert to the local admission arrangements used between 2003 and 2007 for the Brockham School.

The policy for arrangements in Waverley is set out in Annex 1, Section B and essentially consists of a set of partner schools at priority four, followed by children for whom the school is the nearest to their home address and any other applicant.

At paragraph 27 it is reported that 2232 respondents to the consultation disagreed with the proposal set out in the consultation for admission to Oxted school.  During the consultation a number of meetings were held with the two main campaign groups as well as a number of public meetings.  In addition, there were extensive discussions with headteachers and governors from local schools.  As a result of these meetings an alternative proposal was developed and this is set out at paragraph 37, 1.  There are a number of significant changes to note here:


It is proposed that the catchment area would revert to that previously used.
Over a period of years from 2010 it is proposed to phase out the use of the sibling criteria.
At priority four it is proposed to insert a new criteria that requires applicants both to live within the catchment area and attend one of a list of named partner schools – Dormansland, Godstone, Holland, Lingfield, St Catherine’s. St John’s, St Mary’s, St Stephen’s, Tatsfield and Woodlea.
The tie breaker for each criterion will be those who live furthest from the nearest alternative school as measured by a straight line.

At the select committee it was proposed that a further priority be included at number five:

Those children who live in the catchment area but do not attend one of the partner schools named in priority four.  I believe this should be accepted.

I also intend to bring forward and amendment to addition of Crockham Hill school to the list of partner schools set out at priority four.

Crockham Hill like St John’s lies outside the catchment area, but for families living largely to the south east of Oxted and within the catchment area it is the nearest school for children at primary age.  It would be wrong to exclude these children from priority four as they attend their nearest primary school.

This brings me to the Howard of Effingham school.  At paragraph 28 it is stated that the numbers supporting the proposals in the consultation were almost identical to the numbers opposing the proposals.

Problems with admissions to the Howard of Effingham school became a particular issue at this time last year.  Exceptionally it was possible to create an additional class for admissions in September 2007 and this overcame the particular problem.  Between March 2007 and July 2007 a series of meetings were held with parents largely drawn from the East and West Horsley communities seeking to find a solution to the problems that had occurred.  Ultimately both the Council and parents were unable to agree a way forward and the Council sought a variation while parents opposed and made a separate proposal to the School’s Adjudicator.

In late September 2007 the Adjudicator ruled and brought together the Council’s variation and the parents proposal.  Copies of the Adjudicator’s judgement have been provided to all Executive members today.  The Adjudicator’s decision stands for only one year, but it is worth reflecting on what was almost the final paragraph of the Adjudicator’s comments where he said “I have considered going further, introducing the preferred options of the objectors or introducing new catchment areas.  I have not done so, as I recognise the complexity of the local situation and the potential for further unintended or unpredictable consequences.  As a result I consider that, whilst the revised arrangements for 2008 are an improvement on the original version, they are capable of further refinement”.

The proposal set out in the consultation regarding the Howard of Effingham school is presented at paragraph 3, C. iii) and entailed use of the countywide admissions policy but if the school is oversubscribed in any category places will be offered to those who live furthest away from their nearest alternative school as measured by a straight line from the address point of the pupil’s house, as set by Ordnance Survey, to the nearest school gate for pupils to use.

It is clear from the consultation that simply to use the nearest
alternative school or the Surrey standard tie-breaker will leave many
people unsatisfied and may lead to a referral to the adjudicator.  Both campaign groups have set out their views at length in documents made available to the members of the Executive and in one case as recently as last Thursday in a letter from solicitors.  Given the lack of agreement between those contributing to the consultation I felt it was appropriate to try and find another route forward.

With the progress to an agreed solution in Oxted I believed it was appropriate to seek a similar outcome around the Howard of Effingham.  To that end I asked officers whether it would be possible to recreate as closely as possible the catchment area created when the authority was last able to draw such an area after applications had been received, known as an Admissions Priority Area.  This practice itself is no longer possible.

A catchment area has been drawn and this is the map that is presented in Annex 11.  As you will see it includes East and West Horsley, Effingham, Ockham, an area to the south of the school and the majority of Bookham. The line to the east of the Howard is almost identical to the line that would be drawn dividing the area between that which is closest to the Howard and that which is closest to Therfield.

At the same time I have carefully considered the argument about reasonable access to an alternative school.  In the abstract I believe there is access to an
alternative school, not 9 or 10, but maybe 2 or 3.  However, in the light
of the data I have seen for this year these two or three may also be
unavailable because they are likely to be over their PAN for September 2008
admissions.  Knowing that numbers next year are likely to be similar to
this year, the likelyhood of an alternative school for some children will
be curtailed. While my preference would be to retain the standard Surrey tiebreaker of measuring distance from home to the school, I believe this evidence means it is not possible.

I am also keen that the system we propose goes as far as possible to give people access to their nearest school should this be their preference and that the system is transparent and easy to understand.

To that end I propose that priority four be a conjoined priority utilising
the most recently described catchment area and attendance at one of five
named partner schools - Oakfield, Eastwick, St Lawrence, The Raleigh and
The Dawnay.

A priority five would then be those who live in the catchment area, but do
not attend one of the named partner schools.

Priority six would be any other applicant.

Within the catchment area I propose to use the nearest alternative school
tiebreaker, outside the catchment area the Surrey standard tiebreaker will be used.

Let me illustrate how this would work, based on the likely numbers for next year.  The PAN at the Howard is 240.
 

Of course, not all of the 217 that live in the catchment area will automatically apply to the Howard.  Some will apply to local Catholic schools, some will have siblings elsewhere and some will move away from the area.

The number applying from independent schools is not the same as the number that will take up offers to attend the Howard, with some using their application as cover in case they don’t get in to the independent school of their choice.  Our experience has been that no more than half of this group take up the offers they receive.

Given these figures what looks like 270 on first inspection would reduce to 250.  Within a reasonable margin of the Howard PAN at 240 that suggests all those above the figure could be accommodated by asking the school to over-offer.

Going forward, the likely admission numbers for 2010, ie those children currently in year 4 are lower than those currently in year 5.  At the five named partner schools the numbers reduce from 217 to 191, providing further capacity for those both within and outside the catchment area.