Issue - meetings

[To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Children and Families. Report of the  Interim Assistant Director for Schools and learning.]This report   seeks agreement for:

 1) The proposed admission arrangements for entry to school in the academic year 2017/18 for Haringey’s community and voluntary controlled (VC), nursery, infant, junior, primary, secondary and sixth form settings.

 2)The proposed admissions arrangements for in-year applications to community schools in Haringey 2017/18. In-year applications are applications which are received at any point throughout the year other than for reception or secondary school transfer.

3)Haringey’s In-Year Fair Access Protocol (IYFAP) which all schools and academies must follow.

4)The co-ordinated scheme for admission to school in 2017/18 for the reception and secondary transfer admissions rounds.

The Cabinet Member for Children and Families introduced the report which set out the proposed admission arrangements for the school year 2017/18 in respect of the borough’s community and voluntary controlled schools. These arrangements are consulted upon annually. The most recent consultation included a proposal to restrict the sibling priority for primary schools to those children living within 0.5 miles of the school if the family were to move home between admission of the first child to the school and any subsequent children. This proposal had been included to allay concerns from residents that families were moving away from the local area but that younger siblings were still attending those schools and thereby preventing local children going to their local school.

Following the statutory consultation, which was carried out between 13 November 2015 and 31 December 2015, nearly 240 responses were received on the sibling priority proposal and the Cabinet Member advised that the responses were approximately 56% in favour and 44% against. The Cabinet Member further advised that an Equalities Impact Assessment (EQIA) was undertaken following the consultation and that the EQIA showed that there would be a disproportionate impact on certain protected characteristics and would effect people who would be moving for reasons other than out of choice. Attempts to maintain the proposal whilst managing the impact had proven unsuccessful due to the complications and the computerised nature of the application process for primary schools.

The Cabinet Member advised that, in addition, the demand for primary schools had levelled out this year and that there was still reception places available for N10 and N8 postcodes; hence the need to protect primary school places for people living locally had decreased. As a result, the report recommended that the Council would not proceed with amending the sibling priority criterion.

The Cabinet Member outlined that the Council were aware that there were a number of claims of people moving to the area and getting their first child into the school and then moving away from the area whilst their younger children continue to attend that school. The Council would also be taking other steps to ensure that siblings did not gain an unfair priority and there would be an anonymous whistle blowing provision on the Council’s website to investigate claims. The Cabinet Member stated that the Council would follow up on claims made through the whistle blowing website page and would take action.

The Leader stated that EQIA’s were conducted precisely to understand the unintended consequences of a decision and that this felt like the right decision to be taking in circumstances where a significant number of people could potentially be disadvantaged.

RESOLVED

1.    To agree the recommendation set out in this report not to proceed with a change to the sibling criterion for the borough’s primary community and VC schools;

2.    To determine the Council’s admission arrangements for the academic year 2017/18 as set out in Appendices 1- 6 of the report.  These appendices include a retention of  the existing  ...  view the full minutes text for item 195