Schools challenge admissions policy

Parents are facing more confusion

PARENTS are facing further confusion over Kent's secondary school admissions arrangements for next year after it emerged that two schools are formally challenging the authority's policy.

The objections by the two schools means KCC will not know until late June at the earliest if its planned arrangements for 2003-2004 can be put in place.

It will now be for the Schools Adjudicator - a Government quango whose job is to arbitrate where there are disagreements over admissions - to rule on the two objections.

The delay could threaten a repeat of the widespread chaos which affected thousands of Year Six parents applying for places last year.

KCC was forced to make eleventh-hour changes to its policy after the adjudicator initially upheld objections made by non-selective schools, but then them overturned that in a second ruling because of a counter-challenge by grammar schools.

This year, objections on similar grounds have been lodged by Tenterden's Homewood School and the Bennett Memorial School in Tunbridge Wells.

Both have complained that KCC's system will effectively continue to allow parents whose children take the 11-plus test a double first choice - even though it has amended its policy.

For 2003-2004, there will be a two-stage process in which parents first identify only one school. If that is a non-selective one, parents also indicate if their child will be entered for the 11-plus.

Homewood and Bennett Memorial say that this is unfair to parents who genuinely want a place at a high or non-selective comprehensive school and often lose those places to children who fail the 11-plus.

Bennett Memorial head teacher John Caperon said: "We feel that by inviting parents to express a desire to enter the 11-plus before formally expressing a particular preference does add up to parents being offered two first choices.

A system set up this way - allowing parents to reconsider their preferences means there is a pressure to siphon away all the more able pupils to selective schools to the detriment of comprehensives." At the same time, KCC has lodged a formal objection to the adjudicator over Homewood's proposals to let parents know the outcome of their applications 10 days before other schools in the county notify parents.