Agenda item

[Report of the Director of Children's Services. To be introduced by the Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Children, Education and Families]

To agree the proposed arrangements for admission to community nursery classes, primary, junior, and secondary schools and to St Aidan’s Voluntary Controlled School and for sixth form admission for the year 2022/23 can go out for consultation.

The Leader introduced the report which set out the proposed admission arrangements for entry to school in the academic year 2022/23 for Haringey’s community (A community school in England and Wales is a type of state-funded school in which the local education authority (LEA) employs the school's staff, is responsible for the school's admissions and owns the school's estate.) and voluntary controlled (VC), nursery, infant, junior, primary, secondary and sixth form settings.

It was noted that every local authority must also publish a co-ordinated scheme which sets out the procedures all schools and academies must follow to co-ordinate the admission process for the reception and secondary transfer admissions round to ensure that all residents are offered a school place.

Approval was sought to commence a six-week period of statutory consultation. The details of the proposed consultation  was set out in paragraph 3 of the attached report.

RESOLVED

1. To agree to commence consultation on the proposed admission arrangements, including the proposed in-year admissions scheme for the academic year 2022/23;

2. To agree to commence consultation on the proposed In-Year Fair Access Protocol which will be referred to as IYFAP in this report which, if agreed by Cabinet on 10 November 2020, will come into force on 1 March 2021;

3. To agree that the co-ordinated scheme for the admission of children to maintained primary and secondary schools as set out in Appendix 8 of this report can be published on the Haringey website on 1 January 2021;

4. To note that the proposed consultation on the proposed admission arrangements is proposed to take place between 24 November 2020 and 5 January 2021 as scheduled;

5. To note that following the consultation, a report will be prepared summarising the representations received from the consultation and a decision on the final admission arrangements and the In-Year Fair Access Protocol will be taken by Cabinet in February 2021.

Reasons for decision

The purpose of the proposed consultation is as follows To ensure that our proposed admission arrangements for 2022/23 are consulted upon and the co-ordinated scheme is set in accordance with the mandatory provisions of the School Admissions Code 2014.

The School Admissions Code (2014) requires all admission authorities to publicly consult on their admission arrangements where changes are being proposed. The Code stipulates that if no changes are made to admission arrangements, they must be consulted on at least once every 7 years.

We consult on our admission arrangements annually irrespective of whether or not there is a proposed change to the arrangements (The Schools Admission Code 2014 (para 1.42) sets out that when changes are proposed to admission arrangements, all admission authorities must consult on their admission arrangements (including any supplementary information form) that will apply for admission applications the following school year. Where the admission arrangements have not changed from the previous year there is no requirement to consult, subject to the requirement that admission authorities must consult on their admission arrangements at least once every 7 years, even if there have been no changes during that period.). This is to ensure transparency and openness on the contents of our arrangements and to allow parents, carers and other stakeholders who might not have previously been interested in admission arrangements (perhaps because they has no children of school age) to make a representation which can then be considered as part of the determination of the arrangements.

Alternative options considered

We are required by the School Admissions Code 2014 (para 1.42 – 1.45 of the Code) to carry out any consultation on our admission arrangements between 1 October and 31 January each year for a minimum period of six weeks. We are not proposing any changes to the proposed admission arrangements for the year 2022/23. As set out in para 4.3 above, we consult annually on our arrangements irrespective of whether we are proposing any changes, to allow transparency and openness in the process.

This year we are not proposing a change to the oversubscription criteria for community and VC schools. While there are other ways admission arrangements can influence the allocation of school places set out in the Schools Admissions Code 2014 (e.g. designated catchment areas, identified feeder schools or giving priority in our oversubscription criteria to children eligible for the early years premium/ pupil premium) no alternative option is being considered at the time of writing this report.