Secondary school (academy) consulting to give priority to children from primaries of same academy chain

[alltheworld]

I can't see any objective or fair reason to do this especially when secondary school places are so oversubscribed.
I had thought that academies had some kind of oversight from local authorities so that the rules in a borough were roughly the same. Can any point me to some legal framework or suggest how I can raise this with someone at the l a?

There is no requirement for the rules to be the same across the borough

schoolsweek.co.uk/academy-trust-vows-to-fight-on-in-battle-to-pick-its-own-feeder-schools/ Link to a story where this has been successfully challenged

We will end up with a state education over which our democratically elected councils have no say whatsoever .

LAs have little or no influence which enables them to plan provision within their area.

This proposal would enable people to move miles from a school but get a priority place over the local community.

What are the school hopping to achieve by this? Do they have less-preferred primaries they are trying to bribe people into? Why do they want to introduce it?

I don’t know anything about the legal framework.

Two local secondary schools do this when the others don’t. Doesn’t seem to be any legal issues here.

Aha! Do the primaries admit on distance from a v privileged area, perhaps?

Our local state secondary has always done this. Children in the 10 feeder schools have priority over others.

Well I wouldn’t say the primaries are in privileged areas but they’re village primaries where the secondaries are in town next to what could be termed “rough” estates. So yes, I can see that the secondaries May feel they will get more academic/better behaved kids. I’m sorry, I know that sounds like an awfully stereotypical view but I would imagine that’s their reasoning.

Our new academy does catchment based on primary schools. My only objection is that parent's move into the area to get children into the primary schools. As it is a preferred catchment area, then they move while they are still at school there.

This will then lead to them still being given preferred placement at the high school as they are in the feeder primary even if they no longer live locally. Overriding people who have moved into the area but who have maybe had to take a primary place somewhere else due to the local ones being oversubscribed. Which they always are.

I believe that as an academy they can do what they want though.

One near us does this. The primaries are in villages where pupils may otherwise fail to meet distance but have no realistic choice of an alternative secondary.

Yes I think there is an issue in rural counties that kids in villages will miss out on all their first/second choice schools if it always goes on distance.

We used to have a “villages secondary school” in the next village but that was shut down 20 years ago. There was negotiations with the LEA at that time that kids from the villages would always be allowed into X school and this was agreed. Of course 20 years down the line kids can’t get into x school and the lea deny ever agreeing to it.

It makes sense to me to do this. My DC went to a feeder school of their high school, and therefore had priority, so it's nothing new.

Our LA (Hampshire) has always given preference to kids from "feeder" schools - cannot see the problem

not that my kids ever went to either of their catchment schools
but they did use the feeder system

I think feeder schools are one things (all out local high schools have feeder schools usually 8-10 schools so distance still comes into the admission criteria as you are compared to others with your allocated group of feeder schools. WhAt I think has been suggested by the Op (and has in fact been suggested by our local very, very highly sought after girls school is automatic admission for girls from a particular primary school as they have recent joined the high schools MAT. Lots of parents up in arm as it will obviously affect the chances of girls from other primaries getting a place as the admission crieteria is going in after siblings so will be less general places available for girls in the town.

What’s new is not feeder schools (which are presumably the closest to the secondary? ) but that this school only wants the feeders to be from the same Academy chain. So may be taking kids from schools miles Away while refusing kids in schools on their doorstep.

Which really skews provision and choice for local families.

Thanks this is helpful. The proposed schools are named. As a parent we can see that secondary provision is scarce but as each school sets different requirements plus we don’t have access to much of the data which will vary year in year it is hard to be properly informed. I still see no objective reason to prioritise one academy chain over another. As a business model this would be attacked as anticompetitive and unlawful.