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

Why should a child’s chances be thwarted because their parents are of a lower social economic background?

There are ambitious children from lower income families is that so hard to believe.

Grammar schools used to fill this gap, but the few remaining most children are tutored through the 11+ now.

Perhaps also introducing a test that couldn’t be tutored, allowing areas to have one school that does take the truly exceptional students regardless of household, but it’s finding a way to test that within a level playing field.

As with all systems there will be some winners and some losers. And perhaps if children were more spread out with the influence of engaged parents across more schools standards would rise across the board.

There are falling roll numbers anyway, so in theory it should be easier to get your child into your choice of school.

Not to mention the legal quagmire of ownership
Labour thought they could do this before they were elected and quickly backtracked when they realised they can’t.
Been there, fell at the first hurdle

It’s just so thoroughly disappointing. How can he be so out of touch and want to cut corners like this ? He had a real opportunity to improve things in general and he’s continually making these mistakes ?

Schools already do allocate based on their local area, as places are allocated by distance from the school. They do not have access to information on parents income when allocating spaces.

What this policy is suggesting is aligning with a national average, not a local one.

Great idea. Level across the classes. Stop the rich middle from hogging grammar school places, and other better state school catchment areas.

I found this, there’s a paragraph a way down, from a Labour Party spokes person .

‘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/

There isn't a policy.

There are ambitious children from lower income families is that so hard to believe.

It isn't hard to believe at all. But the key factor in that child's success isn't getting them into the best school, it's the support the parents provide. We live in one of the 11+ areas, yes some do chose to tutor but there are some who get through by self tutoring - getting the books and practice papers from the library, and sitting down with their child every night doing half an hour on these.

I had very supportive parents but went to a terrible secondary (pupils achieving 5 A-C at GCSE was under 30%, they tried to close it down at least twice whilst I was there) and came out with 9 A/A* at GCSE, 4 A's at A level, the teaching and behaviour was terrible and I taught myself most of the curriculum from study guides.

That’s totally contradictory? If you have to make the effort to implement a system where the aim is to get some children into the better schools why would you then say ‘providing a good school place for every child, regardless of their background’

If all schools were good you wouldn’t need to shuffle children to different areas .. so make all schools good!

I agree in principle but wonder how it’d work. There’s always a loophole to be exploited too. Would women finishing work to have a lower income be one? I hope not.

My concern would be that by adding to the logistical nightmare of juggling work and the school run, many parents - and let’s face it many mothers - might decide that actually it’s best they take longer off work while they have a young family.

I’m on a second maternity leave currently and we are doing the impossible maths for wraparound care/a childminder and wondering how to do drop offs and pick ups while juggling work when we both have jobs (careers we trained for and therefore are reluctant to leave) where we can’t WFH at all. So we have to factor in getting to and home from work too. Our families are abroad, like many Londoners’, so no help there. When discussing how it’s all going to work, it is tempting to just stay off work until they’re older, even if they go to a nearby school - let alone one we have to travel to.

What a fab job he is doing
Getting us all arguing amongst ourselves
And taking the spotlight of the only real issue he is not tackling
Labour will never get elected again
If they don't remove the cancer at the front

I don’t understand the second paragraph. What would it mean in real terms? That LAs leaflet houses saying what the catchments are for the next year?

I’m not saying you’re wrong at all. I just can’t see what the gap is that’s being filled by this information. Surely all parents know where the local schools are.

And would this be additional to the reserved places you mention? Presumably so. In which case surely there must be at least some displacement of children to schools further away or that are lower choices.

This type of policy may be workable in big cities but outside of that it would be logistically impossible.

I’m also not sure there are as many people desperate to travel further to access better schools as you might think.

My DC is starting at an extremely highly rated Primary school in September. I don’t live in catchment and nor do the majority of the other families. The reason being that the school is in a very sought after village with much higher property prices than the local environment. Public records show that only 3 children were born in catchment in 2021.

I assumed that the school would be oversubscribed but that isn’t the case. They have a PAN of 30 with only 24 due to start next month.

Quite a few parents are one’s who are using it in place of a private pre-prep or prior to using a private secondary school. All are willing to travel a few miles extra to access the school. There is a large council estate in the nearby town which is no more than 10 minutes drive away. One child from there has joined for this year despite there being places for more. I asked the parents of that child why more of her neighbours hadn’t applied as their own local school is pretty poor. She said they couldn’t be bothered and would rather walk to a rubbish local school than drive 10 mins to a fantastic school that’s get excellent results.

This idea that hoards of parents are desperately trying to get into better schools just isn’t replicated in my experience. It may of course be different in cities where the excellent school is only a few hundred metres away from the under performing local school.

Does it not occur that there should be no schools that aren’t good

Why shouldn’t all kids be able to attend good schools

This policy is ignoring the very real issue that we have a problem within the education system that needs addressing. Money would be better spent dealing with that

Yes that’d be the ideal. However it’s not going to happen in their short term in government .

Labour need to make immediate seemingly impactful change, a bit like the almost immediately imposing VAT on education debacle. This is similar.

They can implement it quickly. It will work for a few of us, but long term thinking like improving all state schools via xyz.. no.

Does this not result in more travel emissions?

There’s a secondary I pass sometimes that uses a lottery for places and the traffic around it is absolutely insane. Everyone has to use cars as it’s too far to cycle and the roads are scary.

They are dressing it up as better schools for children but the reality is it will be a fall in standards for some children. That’s not acceptable. If they are saying that regardless of background all children deserve a good school place then it works both ways. They need to redirect their time and energy away from this ridiculous scheme and improve ALL schools .

A good Government should have ‘long term thinking’

We should never applaud the sticking plaster technique
Look at the mess we’re in with pensions

Maybe the government term needs to be increased to incentivise making meaningful change with policies that they can start and make sure the outcomes are achieved .

no wont happen ever

Of course. We can all appreciate I think, that Labour are not a good government.

One assumes by 'faith schools' that you are referring only to Christian faith, others would be free to continue with whatever they do.

No shit Sherlock 🤣

Lots of people who had no skin in the game, applauded vat on education for private schools. That wasn’t even a plaster. It’s a nasty envy policy.

And what is this latest one? A sticking plaster maybe but it will help thousands on FSMs for example.

Didn’t the FSM entitlement criteria change recently? There are now a lot more pupils receiving FSM or will this go by pupil
premium ?

Mixed thoughts.

On the one hand, many families are priced out of the good schools because they cant afford the catchment area. Why should the children suffer for that?

On the other hand, parents who have worked hard to afford the catchment area are penalised so what is the point in getting a better paid job so you can afford a higher mortgage so you can get your kid into the good school?

On the third hand, schools in areas of poverty tend to do worse so by forcing wealthier families into those schools, it should (in theory) pull up the performance of those schools.

We live in the catchment area of an outstanding primary school and until they redefined the catchment area last year, an ourstanding secondary school (rare in this area!). We have a lot of (expensive) rental properties by us and you see at certain times of the year families moving in and then once their children are in the school, moving away again.