news story

5th March 2010

New School Admission Decisions Mean Rethink is Now Essential

Decisions over school places in South Gloucestershire for September 2010 show that the system must now be changed, according to Northavon MP Steve Webb. Last month the MP joined local parents in calling on the Council to change its admission rules so that children stood a better chance of attending the same school as older brothers and sisters. The protest was prompted by parents of children at Trinity School, Acton Turville, where several families faced being split up in September 2009 because of the inadequate priority being given to siblings.

Now the 2010 admission outcomes have been announced and the problem has got worse. In the case of Trinity School, four of the families who have been turned down for the school have older siblings already at the school, with a total of six older children affected.

Steve Webb MP said:

“I have repeatedly told the Council that the rules are simply not working. It is quite wrong to split up families in this way, especially when you are talking about children as young as four years old.

"It also makes life difficult for the school, because if families withdraw their older children from the school because of the lack of a place for a younger child, the school then loses vital funding.

"The current review of admission policy must take this issue seriously and make changes so that no-one else has to go through what these families are going through”.
 
At present, first priority is given to ‘local siblings’, then other ‘local’ children and then all other children according to distance. This means that families who live just far enough from the school not to be regarded as ‘local’ can fail to get their child into the school, despite having other family members already attending.