Brighton and Hove’s largest secondary school is delaying plans to introduce free school meals priority in its admissions.
Cardinal Newman Catholic School carried out a consultation in December and the first week of January proposing to introduce a higher priority to children receiving free school meals (FSM) from September 2026.
The faith school in The Upper Drive, Hove, sets its own admissions criteria.
This means the school does not follow Brighton and Hove City Council’s admissions policy which saw a free school meals priority introduced for September 2025 admissions.
Cardinal Newman principal Claire Jarman said the school governors had decided not to move ahead with a free school meal policy for the September 2026 intake, but “fully intend to” for September 2027.
Ms Jarman said: “Advice was sought from the (Arundel and Brighton) Diocesan Admissions Team as to whether changes could be made to the ordering of criteria in light of the consultation.
“Their advice was that unless there are very clear and demonstrative responses to the consultation that would validate the re-ordering of the other oversubscription criteria, these changes cannot be made and the policy would need to stay as per the consultation version, or revert to the original version and a new proposal be made for the following year’s consultation.
“It was agreed that due to the concerns raised during the discussion, governors did not feel they could determine the proposal and would go out to consultation again next year with greater clarification around the consultation parameters.
“Advice would also be sought from the LA (local authority) as to how the FSM category was determined at application as this is another issue that we would need clarification on.
Admissions information released on Monday 3 March showed families across the city used the new criteria to secure spaces in all six of the community secondary schools which used the council’s admissions criteria.
On Thursday 27 February, councillors agreed to set a free school meals level of 30 per cent to allow for out of catchment admissions from September 2026 at its six community secondary schools.
Cardinal Newman has 13 levels of priority in its admissions criteria, with the highest priority given to children who are or have been in care, and then to Catholic children who have exceptional need.
Proposals in the consultation were to give Catholic children receiving free school meals the second highest priority and give non-Catholic children who receive free school meals the seventh highest priority.
Catholic children with sibling link, in feeder schools, those not in feeder schools, children being received into the church and those from Orthodox backgrounds would all have had higher priority.
The consultation responses found there was concern the proposal would give children receiving free school meals a higher priority than non-Catholic children with siblings at the school.
There was also concern about the impact on non-Catholic children who attend the nine named Catholic feeder schools, as they would also have a lower priority than the proposed free school meals admissions.
A lack of a cap on numbers was also raised as the current city-wide average is 26 per cent and Cardinal Newman currently has an average of 22 per cent of its pupils receiving free school meals.
Responders also felt the criteria should be lower down the list in line with the council’s admissions criteria.
