No preferential treatment for school admission
ADJUDICATOR DISMISSES PARENT’S ARGUMENT IN PLACES ROW
A DAD has lost his fight to overturn a first school’s admission policy.
Earlier this month, 60 children started reception class at Archibald First School, which Ofsted recently rated ‘outstanding.’
But one parent clashed with the school after governors refused to prioritise places for new starters whose siblings had just left.
“He proposed that children whose older sibling had transferred into Year Five at (Gosforth Junior High Academy) should be given the same priority as children with an older sibling still at the school,” reads an Office of the Schools Adjudicator report.
Gosforth, unlike most of Newcastle, runs a three-tier school system. Rather than primary and secondary schools, pupils there attend first, middle and high school.
But the adjudicator stated parents would have known the rules in advance as they had existed for “some years”.
And the Department of Education had identified 21 primary schools within two miles of the objector’s postcode – adding that one of those was closer to his home than the school at the centre of the dispute.
“If having their reception child and their year five child in the same school was important for a parent, options would have been available in the twotier school system,” added the report.
The school is a feeder to Gosforth Junior High Academy.
Children with siblings already at Archibald First School are given priority for one of the much sought-after places, along with children nearby.
Almost a third of all the new starter places this September were offered to siblings of children already at the school, the report states.
The unnamed father argued that overturning the ruling would make it easier for parents with more than one child to get them to school on time.
But the adjudicator did not uphold his objection.
“Extending the criterion to include former siblings attending a particular middle school could be difficult to do objectively and could reduce the number of places available for first-born children living in the area,” added the report.
“The criterion has been in place for some years and parents would have been aware of it when applying for a place at the school; they could not have expected it to be any different when a younger child was ready to start school.
“Parents in the area would have known when they applied for a place at the school that once the older child left any sibling priority for a younger child would cease unless the arrangements changed and there could be no certainty of that happening.”
The school declined to comment. living