A mother whose son missed out on a place at a popular secondary school has criticised the catchment area structure in Brighton and Hove.
Sarah King was awarded £250 in compensation from Brighton and Hove City Council to acknowledge her “distress, frustration and uncertainty” over the way her son was allocated a place at secondary school.
Dr King was awarded the compensation after she complained to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. She was anonymised as Dr X in the ombudsman’s report.
She said that the council did not stick to its published criteria but adopted a method which was not permitted.
It followed a surfeit of applications for Varndean and Dorothy Stringer in September 2021 and a later decision by Varndean to admit 30 extra pupils as a “bulge” class.
The Sussex University lecturer lives in the Varndean and Dorothy Stringer schools catchment area and put them down as first and third choice respectively.
Her son secured a place at his second-choice school, the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA), which was outside their catchment area although just a 10-minute bus ride from their home.
Dr King won her case with the ombudsman because the council did not include all children, including her son, for whom the school was the first choice, when it allocated the extra 30 places.
The ombudsman’s investigator found fault with the council’s admissions and appeals process and said that oversubscription criteria were not included in the published admissions arrangements.
The unnamed investigator said: “Information about what would happen in this type of situation where a PAN (published admissions number) was temporarily increased was not available to parents.
“I am satisfied the council allocated places using unpublished admission criteria.
“The code states that in the event of oversubscription, the council must ‘set out clearly how this will operate, ensuring that arrangements are transparent’.
“The council effectively added an extra stage in the ballot process … I appreciate it was the pragmatic solution but it was not published and it should have been. This was a fault.”
During the admissions process, Dr King said that she opted for BACA as second choice because she realised that the Varndean and Stringer catchment area was likely to be oversubscribed.
She said that she expected her son to be allocated a school outside their catchment area and went for the best alternative option.
Dr King said: “The catchment is oversubscribed. In 2022, there were only 30 extra children and they squeezed them in.
“It wouldn’t have been 30 children if they said beforehand that they might squeeze extras in. Would 31 have been too many?
“There are children in Whitehawk who don’t have a school next to them who get sent all over the city and they don’t get to go to the popular schools.
“My son’s at BACA and he’s happy there and I’m happy. I’m not going to change him to another school. I’m happy with our second choice.
“My issue is the council is increasing inequality by always pandering to the people in the catchments that shout the loudest.”
Dr King contacted campaign group Class Divide about her case and her concerns about catchment areas because she was aware that the group was campaigning against inequality in the system.
She said: “Why not put BACA into a catchment with Varndean and Stringer and give all those kids who deserve their first-choice school an equal chance to go to Varndean and Stringer.”
Class Divide, which was set up two years ago, campaigns to open up more schools to youngsters from the council estates in Whitehawk and east Brighton.
Parents and pupils in the area have only one catchment area option – Longhill School in Rottingdean.
The group said: “What this story highlights is the decades-long unfair catchment and school admissions process that is weighted so heavily in favour of the advantaged. It’s amazing no political party has been able to rectify it.
“You only have to look at the catchment map overlaid with index of multiple deprivation data to see just how rigged the system is.
“We want the new Labour council to set up an education equality task force that takes action to reform catchment areas as quickly as possible.”
