Are schools allowed to not prioritise statemented children?

[PollyParanoia]

Just flicking through my Islington Primary booklet and was amazed by the fact that the highest performing school's admissions makes no mention of statemented children. It's Catholic and has the usual Catholic looked-after children, Catholic in the parish etc but nothing about statements. It gets 100% sats every year and acc to its ofsted has below average SEN etc. Surely these are connected? And surely it's unfair not to give preference to statemented children since it leads to neighbouring schools having disproportionate levels. I do know someone who moved her kid from the school because she was told her youngest (moderate to severe SN) wouldn't be welcome.
I don't know, it makes such a mockery of the league tables since it seems absurd to make comparisons between two schools with such differences in the children. I don't know what I'm trying to say, though I suppose I'm a bit frustrated that there isn't any equality and my kids' school is struggling to accommodate so many kids with needs without being given the necessary funding.

That's one poster Mrz.

I'm very aware that lots of SN/SEN children are very high achievers
and here
As far as I recall, MRZ and I both have children with SEN who are high achievers.

Yes my ASD son achieved level 6 in maths, reading and science ...in a school that had NO SEN

So because I post some figures showing that SEN children are disproportionately subject to exclusions that means I am not aware that a lot of SEN children are high achievers? Really?

Yes I'm with snowball etc, I think this thread has been very careful to note that there are many SEN high achieving kids. The ones that seem to be managed out, however, seem not to be and they are the ones that affect the SATS results. I wish I could find the stat about the percentage of non-SEN children reaching L4. It was considerably higher than the stat about all children. That does not mean that many SEN children achieve level 4,5 and 6. But it does suggest that on average they do so less.

Given that anyone who doesn't achieve / make progress can be placed on the SEN register - ie there is no criteria for who should or shouldn't be on the SEN register, I'd expect most kids who don't make a L4 to be on the register.

There are more kids on the SEN register than kids who don't make a L4.

That also means that schools with low levels of SEN may just not be recognising the normal levels of SEN they have (or they may be managing them out)

However kids in MS with a statement is approx 1%, so they shouldn't really be effecting stats much either way. And of course some kids with statements do well academically and some don't.......

My kids' school has a couple of statemented children per class so it would make a difference to their statistics but I see that's not typical.
I don't know what the answer is but it's clearly happening and it seems to me that the system is set up to reward schools that manage out and punish those that are inclusive. And that is wrong. It also seems wrong to me that these tables don't celebrate the huge achievements that some children are making which don't involve getting to a level 4.

In my school, each child represents 10% in SATS so an additional child with a statement, or indeed with low achieving SEN, does affect our results. But I wouldn't want it any other way. We have a reputation for ensuring our SEN children make as much, indeed more progress than other groups. Yes, our level 4 stats aren't great but our value added is and our children, whatever their academic ability, are supported and encouraged. Unfortunately I'm well aware that some other local schols aren't as "understanding"

Indeed Snowball, you know how valuable and wonderful your school is, but outsiders (prospective parents, DofE etc) might make other judgments and that riles me.
I think that my children have benefitted enormously from being in a wonderful inclusive school. But I can't deny that initially I wished my ds's class hadn't been joined by the boy excluded from another school who caused more disruption in a week than the whole of the class the previous year. Ultimately this boy has taught my son tolerance and the possibilities of rehabilitation and that's very valuable. But to be honest, I'd rather my kids' school had a proportionate number since some (and I know absolutely not all or most!) SEN/SN kids do provide extra challenges.

PS on the high-achieving SEN question, needless to say the autistic kids excluded from neighbouring academy primary were not the sort reciting pi to 100 decimal places. It's a bit of a disservice to concentrate so much on high achieving SEN kids when there are many who are not. My friend with an autistic son gets very irked by the way people assume her child must have some extraordinary musical/artistic/mathematical gift. He doesn't.

ARggh don't want my post to be misinterpreted. I would like my kids' school to have a proportionate number of the sort of kids that other schools are managing out or excluding i.e. ones who exhibit challenging behaviour or have additional needs in the classroom which may or may not be a result of SEN (but as prh says, statistically, they are more likely to be excluded if they do have SEN).
Before anyone says I'm making sweeping judgments...

I may only be one person, who has numerous examples of where the school system has played the education choice for their child, but i would like to know a plausible reason for the following:
Living in London, we have primary schools that are very close to each other - a good example being a high achieving school(always top 3 in Borough), and an average school in the same road (late teens to twenties in rank order), a couple of minutes walk away. The high achieving school has 0 statemented children and below average SN/SEN for the area. The average school has statemented children and above average SN/SEN for the area - how? And if I had to say which side of the road had a marginally higher social economic background, I would say the average side, although it's marginal.

Well, the 'average' school may be better at identifying SEN, may be better at applying for statements, may have a local rep for being good with SEN so has more applicants from parents of SEN children.

They may have different EPs assigned to them. And you (normally) can't get a statement without an EP recommendation. One EP may never recommend a statement.......

The 'average' school may be placing kids on the SEN register who shouldn't be. It may be covering up bad teaching....

Or of course the 'excellent' school may be managing out kids with SEN.

You really can't tell unless you have personal experience of both schools.

Have several friends with children at both, same EP btw.

Lets just say, I know where I sit on this particular case - and it's not on the fence!

I'll add you get the opposite extreme where the high achievers are not acknowledged as SEN.

Dd2 is bright, and missing her hand, which gives her minor special needs. I don't think she needs a lot, but I went in and talked to the SENCO (non-teaching, except for SEN) before she arrived. She suggested several things to help, eg. help with carrying her tray for school dinners. So far none of the suggested things have come into play without me saying anything because "she manages well without".

Certainly half way through the year her form teacher hasn't spoken to the SENCO, and the SENCO had not been told she had arrived yet (one very put out senco there) Apparently (acording to the head of year) dd2's teacher is ideally able to cope because she's dealt with a deaf child before

The senco wants her on some thing like school action, basically to acknowledge that occasionally adjustments have to be put in place.

They deal very well with those that are struggling academically, but because they don't see dd2 as struggling they expect her just to be able to get on and them to ignore it. Which a lot of the time she can do, but little tweaks to make life a bit easier for her, wouldn't take them much hassle/funding, somehow get ignored.

My son is in a Catholic school who have been utterly fantastic with him and are known locally to be very good any child with SEN (that includes the Gfted and Talented too). They also take hard to place children who have been excluded elsewhere and generally make a success of it. Not all the children are Catholic either.

It saddens me that a school might manage out children who don't meet their criteria. Pastoral care is where it's all at for me....stuff the academic results I need my child to feel happy and accepted. If it matters the academic results are still good in DS school

Naming a school at the Y5 annual review is no guarantee of admission...one of the pupils at my school only got the preferred school on appeal. At first, the high school had stated that they could not meet her needs. It is true that there is another, closer school that would have met her needs much more effectively as it has a special unit for her area of difficulty, but her parents chose the other one.

We admitted a pupil into Y3 in November with no English, no prior schooling and a diagnosis of ASD. We said before admission that it was not the correct placement for the pupil, especially with short-term emergency funding equivalent to only 1 hour/day. The LEA agreed to provide a statement in the summer term and the parents named his present school on the statement. The SEN panel recommended a placement at an ASD unit attached to a nearby mainstream school. The parents visited the unit the day before term ended and were desperately trying to make the right decision. At present I don't know what their decision was, but the current school told them that it would argue against the pupil being placed there.

It's not always about making the school look good, it is usually about the best interests of the pupil.