Poor Pupils To Be Favoured In School Admissions

Copyright (c) 2012 winschoolappeal

In a bid to end so-called selection by mortgage, proposals are being made to encourage schools and academies to alter their admission arrangements to the advantage of poorer pupils. One of the proposals is to reward schools taking poorer pupils with up to £2,000 for each child admitted who is entitled to free school meals.

Currently, the schools admission code prohibits the selection of pupils by giving priority to children according to the occupational, marital, financial or educational status of their parents, thus preventing admission to a school on the basis of parental wealth or income, or lack of it. These proposals, regarded by some as queue jumping, would put low-income families in a more favourable position than their middle-income counterparts, in the race for school places. In a move to widen equality of opportunity, the initiative may well be introduced through the free schools and academies programme, where those institutions are allowed to set their own admission criteria and can give priority to free-meals pupils who attract the pupil premium of up to £2,000.

The coalition government are keen to promote this as a progressive move to promote educational attainment among children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. The education secretary has been quoted as saying that the current system of schools admissions is "unbelievably complicated." Criticism has frequently been levelled at the schools admissions arrangements as favouring middle class parents who know how to work the system to their advantage and have the economic freedom to move house into the catchment areas of a highly regarded school, hence the phrase "selection by mortgage". The opposition Labour Party dismiss the proposal as a gimmick.

If schools are given the freedom to adjust their admission criteria to favour children from disadvantaged backgrounds, few believe that the schools would choose to do so. High achieving schools are unlikely, in the opinion of many, to opt to jeopardise their positions in the league tables by voluntarily taking in lower attaining pupils, who are likely to make greater demands on resources despite the pupil premium they attract.

Some believe that in the current climate weighting school admission in favour of those on benefits would attract a huge backlash. Sadly, at the moment the word benefits attracts more negative connotations than positive. Parents speak in terms of "hard working parents" being discriminated against. Many object to yet another attempt to tinker with schools and point to the fact that extra money for schools educating poorer children has been part and parcel of the national education system since the nineteen fifties. The education secretary is currently favouring an examination system built around O levels as a gold standard. The free schools initiative is widely criticised for having failed to provide extra places for poor pupils but rather to have served middle-class aspirational families. It raises once again the model of grammar schools as a means of identifying the most able from working class and middle class alike on a meritocratic basis.

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