Charter Academy East Dulwich Interesting Reading IF You Have Applied To This School

[DeeRanged]

I doubt this is the only school with a twist on it's admissions criteria.............

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/01/academy-school-catchment-council-estates

It's always difficult to tell with London what a catchment really means. They note the nature of housing to the south, but IIRC that's an area where a lot of families use private schools, so geography may not be all.

And the article notes "A fifth of pupils at the school are on free school meals - the national average is 15.9%. Ofsted has noted that the school has a diverse intake", so the it's not a clear cut case.

One to watch.

What is the role of the LA in this ?
Does the Admissions Forum ( if there is one ) only advise on policy , is the administration of policy beyond their remit ?
Southwark must have been aware that over the years appeals were being held ( and won ) challenging this school's decision to exclude certain routes in measuring safest route to school .

But surely now this ruliung means that the path IS an admissable shortest walking distance, so the housing areas are eligible after all?
Does the school give any explanation of how walking routes are judged? The admissions info for the school we are applying to specified that 'any safe walking route' meant lit - so a popular alley in our area counts as it has street lighting.
Is there a reason why the route in question would not have originally been included?
And surely once there had been one successful appeal focussing on that walking route, there would have been a precedent for all other applications?

Ajudicator's report
docs.google.com/open?id=0B9GB1PQuo9iAODYyYzZiMWEtYzEzYS00Y2U3LWE4M2MtNTJiMzhiNjc5YzZl

Pretty shocking reading imo - tho I think Charter are saying that they will challenge some of the statements in it .
Think ,if I understand correctly ,that school were basically relying on routes that could be driven along . But I may be wrong .

I should note that the Guardian's report is not an entirely accurate reflection of the Adjudicator's decision. The headline and first paragraph are both factually incorrect.

The issue is that the school's admission criteria state that shortest walking distance is used as the tie breaker but they were actually using shortest driving distance. This resulted in a pedestrianised road being excluded from calculations which in turn meant that children from an estate with a high proportion of social housing were less likely to be admitted.

The adjudicator's decision speculates that this may have been an attempt to manipulate admissions against this estate but falls short of actually drawing that conclusion. The adjudicator admits that other walking routes may be affected and that there may be other areas that are similarly disadvantaged by the school's failure to follow its published admission arrangements. I don't know the school or the area so I have no idea whether the problem purely affected this estate or if others were also affected.

The school's approach to the Adjudicator was extremely ill advised. They did themselves no favours whatsoever, making all kinds of irrelevant arguments, attacking the complainant, attacking the Adjudicator for even considering the case and failing to address the issue. The school says it has accepted the recommendations but it "has taken legal advice and is in the process of challenging a number of the assertions in the preliminary report." Also ill advised in my view.

Both the LA and the Admissions Forum (there must be one by law) have been asleep on the job. Both should have picked this up and either got the school to fix it or referred it to the Adjudicator years ago.

Sadly this school is not alone. I have come across community schools, faith schools and academies that do not follow their published admission criteria and/or have unfair criteria.

When I say " shocking " I mean I'm shocked by the school's attitude , arrogance and arguments .
And Southwark's apparent lack of interest .

prh47bridge - I thought that under recent legislation ( ? new admissions code ) that LA's didn't have to have Admissions Forums ?

The school's thing about 'we can't listen to the parents advoctaing for this specific path because that wouldn't be fair to the parents who want to use a different safe path' is ridiculous! If they say 'safe walking route' then they should mean each and every safe walking route. And if they then claim to use maps which don't show commonly used safe wlaking routes, then they should use different maps!

The fact that they don't just go 'oh, fair enough, we should allow all this as it is in line with our admissions criteria' is BOUND to raise suspicion of deliberate catchment gerrymandering!

VERY tough on parents in other parts of the catchment who based their preference choices on the catchments from previous years, though, as their situation may now be changed and they might have made differnt choices had they known. .

This is what happens when the whole of a borough's education is based n Academies, Foundation and Free schools, all acting as their own admissions authority and working to different criteria.

Here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/education/1224404-Admissions-plans/AllOnOnePage#25629021

Quite so Blu !

I've just had a proper look at the linked Adjuducation.

This issue was first raised in 2000! Does it really take is long to get things sorted out?

I really feel for Southwark parents wrt to education. Charter - a good and sought after school carrying on like this, the Kingsdale Admissions process, which no-one can fathom wrt to the currency of the award of a scholarship and opening itself up to anyone anywhere by lottery...

Southwark?? Where no two secondary schools have a similar criteria? Pah!

Kingsdale should think on just in case a similar group of parents decide to investigate their admissions criteria!

I think there are several MN-ers hanging on Charter applications - I hope they are all helpfully affected by this rather than adversely.
As if secondary transfer wasn't worrying enough.

gingeroots - Yes, Admission Forums are no longer compulsory but they were for most of the period for which this has been going on. And I share your feelings about the school's attitude as evidenced by their submissions to the Adjudicator. The word arrogant springs to mind. Sadly I can name an LA near me that continues to flout the Admissions Code on waiting lists and adopts a similarly arrogant approach, managing to interpret a decision by the Adjudicator that clearly ruled against them as actually supporting them.

EdithWeston - It can do when parents don't object to the appropriate authorities. This only went to the Adjudicator last October.

Blu - Note that the Adjudicator says this has been happening since 2000. The school did not become an academy until 2010. If the Adjudicator is correct they seem to have simply carried on with a pre-existing poor practise. And as I said previously, I have encountered many LAs that fail to follow their published admission arrangements, thereby disadvantaging some group of children.

True, prh47 - but that's even more of a reason for them to have held up their hands and said 'oops you're quite right, we've only just taken over and hadn't noticed this, we'll rectify it straight away', rather than defending an erroneous status quo not of their making. As you say thay have not positioned themselves in the most flatttering light in their responses.

And, of course, cynical parents would say that under Academy status they have even more reason to massage their catchment to their advantage than when it was a community school.

I know families who use this school and they are really happy with it, it's a good school, and it deserves community support as much as the whole community deserves access - from whatever kind of housing people live in.

There's a thread about this on the East Dulwich forum where someone says that the Charter School actually takes pupils over to a sports ground using the path that's been ignored for purposes of measuring nearest walking distance. It is also alleged that a good few appeals have been won over the years by articulate, fluent English-speaking parents who have pointed out that this policy hasn't been implemented properly but the school, which was a Foundation School and is now an Academy, has never changed its method of measuring home school distance as a consequence. One can only speculate how many parents who couldn't put together a good appeal case, or found it all too intimidating to even try, have lost out unfairly.

It's also caused a bit of a to do because of course parents made their applications last year on the basis of published stats about how far children lived from the school and got offers last year, when the incorrect measuring method was used. The Adjudicator has specifically instructed the school to use the correct method for this year's admissions, not to wait for the next round.

I really feel for parents who made applications on one basis and now find it changed, that seems unfair and morally wrong - but it would be iniquitous and impossible not to apply the ruling now (can you imagine the ire of those parents told to wait til next year?) and in any case, if they didn;t apply the new judgement, every appeal would win and they would be very over subscribed.

No way to make it fair and happy for everyone this year

Sorry - I realise it was a Foundation school, not a community school.
(last post but one)

I'm actually of the view that the basis on which applications have been made hasn't changed. The tie breaker is the same as it always was. The only difference is that it is now implemented correctly. Shortest walking distance now means exactly what it says on the tin. Some parents will benefit from this as they will find the official measurement places them closer to the school than previously.

I imagine that the distance for the last child admitted will be somewhat lower this year than in previous years but that sometimes happens anyway. I don't think that is morally wrong. Maybe a little unfair but not as much as continuing to say one thing and do another.

I note that the LA said that it didn't think the school was in breach of the Admissions Code. I am appalled that the LA thought it was ok for the school to fail to follow its own admission arrangements. The claim that it was not in a good position to comment on the technical aspects of the case is ridiculous. It was a simple question. The school says they use shortest walking distance as a tie breaker. They are actually using shortest driving distance. Is this ok? You don't need to be an expert in measuring the shortest walking route to know that the answer is no.

I really don't know how great the impact will be on this years secondary school applicants .
But the geographical area from which succesful applicants normally come has changed .
10 years is a long time for the implementation to have been incorrect ,some residents in the area adversly affected by the misimplementation may have been aware that applications could be sucessful on appeal and they may have applied this year on that basis .
Those in the areas not adversly affected may well have been totally unaware of this situation and have had no idea that they have a correspondingly decreased chance of being succesful .