Labour reviewing school admission criteria

[JustAlice]

"Sir Keir Starmer plans to update the Equality Act to give public authorities a new duty to consider a person’s “socio-economic background”.
The changes could mean that schools are forced to give pupils from a working-class background priority when applying for school places, according to Conservative research, instead of judging applications based on how far away from a school someone lives."

Last year BBC had articles on how Brighton and Hove Labour council implemented similar policy, and now substancial % of school places goes to children on FSM instead of childre living closer to the school, making average % of FSM in them closer to the council average.
Protests didn't lead to anything.

If Starmer is going to rollout this model for the whole country, I'm torn, because though I'm against class division and think that current model encourages it

1. I strongly disagree that the families on less than minimal wage income are the only working people in the country. Maybe call them deprived to be honest.
2. In Brighton, faith schools are still not impacted.

YABU - we should be happy about this
YANBU - not a good idea

Unfortunately the better schools are “better” because the families and parents care about education and good behaviour which makes classes easier to manage.

A great way to lose even more teachers from the profession.

Well, they're not denying that they put out a consultation on amending the Equality Act because that's true.

The rest of the article is openly confected by the Tories. It literally says so.

Oh, I agree there’s fifty feet of claim made from an inch of fact.

But you said there was a denial in the article. There isn’t.

And it’s hardly implausible that this government would plan something like this or at least open the door to it. That’s why it’s a clever line for the Tories to push, true or untrue.

As far as I’m aware, the majority of faith schools have 100% of running costs and 90% of their capital costs funded by the taxpayer. The percentage of costs funded by the faith/church is tiny.

So am I. Nice idea in theory but will families in poorer areas be able to cover transport costs? I hope the Government isn’t expecting strapped councils to provide it. They’re in enough trouble already.

It doesn’t sound like much of a denial

“A government spokesman said: “This Government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity through our Plan for Change by providing a good school place for every child, regardless of their background.
“We are determined to make sure there is no class ceiling on the ambitions of people in Britain. That’s why we launched a consultation on the socio-economic duty. No final decisions have been made””

I hope they go through with it. It would ensure that access to good state schools are improved for the ones who need it the most - and it doesn’t require any funding.

Oh yes, this was real fun. Did we have a thread about it? I got my popcorn ready

And what about the bad schools? Do we just sit back and accept that some children have to go to bad schools?

True.

So we're going for society where you need to lie to get access to state services/jobs? where we need to hide success? where improving yourself is something to be ashamed about?

Given that you have apparently deliberately cut the quote mid-sentence to avoid posting the bit about positive discrimination remaining illegal and the schools admissions code still being a requirement, it seems like you thought that those bits kind of ruined your claim. Or do you have another reason for cutting the quote mid-sentence?

"A government spokesman said: “This Government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity through our Plan for Change by providing a good school place for every child, regardless of their background.
“We are determined to make sure there is no class ceiling on the ambitions of people in Britain. That’s why we launched a consultation on the socio-economic duty. No final decisions have been made, but positive discrimination will remain illegal under the Equality Act.
“All mainstream state-funded schools are required to comply with the School Admissions Code to ensure all children have fair access to a mainstream school place where they can achieve and thrive."

I wasn’t being that deep.

Just say your dad is a CEO with a PHD if you think it will make any difference, no one is going to check.

One of mine works in an industry that wants to badly to be seen as inclusive, he has to play everything down. He got more opportunities when we had to move to a shithole from the Home Counties.

People are weird. You do what you can to get on.

What you’ve added is neither a denial nor anything meaningful at all.

The EA doesn’t stop means testing or any social provision measures based on income or assets. That’s not positive discrimination. And the whole point would be to change the Admissions Code.

TBH, the more I read the government’s response, the more suspicious it looks.

Because the “positive discrimination” comment is a bit unclear. Faith schools are allowed to discriminate based on faith under the Equality Act. If the socio economic element is re-introduced, what is stopping admissions criteria enabling discrimination based on a child’s socio economic background?

As the article says,

“Explanatory notes to the 2010 Act explicitly gives the example of influencing the school admissions process.”

“The section of the Equality Act which will be added requires that a public authority “must, when making decisions of a strategic nature about how to exercise its functions, have due regard to the desirability of exercising them in a way that is designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage”.

Why did you cut it off mid-sentence then if it's all fine?

Seems dishonest.

The question is what will Labour do , we know Labour Have said that they intend to ‘provide a good school place for every child, regardless of their background.’. So, how are they going to achieve this utopian feat?

The quote from the Labour spokesperson is blah blah bollocks, much like ‘smash the gangs’ was etc. However they have committed to doing Something, it appears.

I’ve not heard any thing about improving shit state schools across the board (apart from the education tax on children’s education, which hasn’t actually gone to other schools) , so perhaps they will follow the path / test case of Labour in Brighton.

Brighton Has done what the telegraph is saying (linked up thread). They’ve sent poorer kids out of catchment to better schools and other kids in catchment have to travel further. It’s happening. Ask locals there how it’s going.

‘A government spokesman said: “This Government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity through our Plan for Change by providing a good school place for every child, regardless of their background.

“We are determined to make sure there is no class ceiling on the ambitions of people in Britain. That’s why we launched a consultation on the socio-economic duty. No final decisions have been made, but positive discrimination will remain illegal under the Equality Act.

“All mainstream state-funded schools are required to comply with the School Admissions Code to ensure all children have fair access to a mainstream school place where they can achieve and thrive.” ‘

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/08/middle-class-children-shut-out-best-schools-equality-drive/

You have also omitted the part of the article where it gives the explanatory note. You literally skipped over that bit of the article when copy and pasting. How extraordinary.

It said: “The duty could lead a local education authority, when conducting a strategic review of its school applications process, to analyse the impact of its campaign to inform parents about the applications process, looking particularly at different neighbourhoods.
“If the results suggest that parents in more deprived areas are less likely to access or make use of the information provided, the authority could decide to carry out additional work in those neighbourhoods in future campaigns, to ensure that children from deprived areas have a better chance of securing a place at their school of choice.”

Making sure information about school applications gets to disadvantaged neighbourhoods isn't a problem, is it?

Maybe the addition of mc parents will improve the schools?

Why are they not improving the schools that are not so good?

If positive discrimination in terms of selecting for deprivation were illegal then how come all universities are doing this?

The key word there is “could”. The whole article is based on speculation about what “could” happen given the facts we know. The government haven’t denied it which is a bit strange, as they were given the opportunity to. They haven’t clarified what the socio-economic inclusion in the Act could mean. It would be easy for them to deny the speculation in that article.

Because it takes less effort and money to achieve equality by knocking the top down rather than bringing the bottom up.

Luckily eg. Cambridge have stopped this now. Their results began to suffer. A few people had a shock when this happened assuming their little Tommy could get in with lower than required grades.

That suggests that the quality of the school depends on the parents. In that case, switching parents around between schools will just mean that the bad schools become good and the good schools become bad.