Controversial schools, policy still an issue

EDUCATION Secretary Charles Clarke has finally ruled on how parents will apply for places' at the county's 120-plus secondary schools in 2004.

After months of wrangling, however, Mr Clarke's intervention has still not resolved the controversial issue of "conditionality" - the policy adopted by some non-selective schools in Kent in which children who do not enter the 11-plus are given greater priority.

Mr Clarke says that is out of his hands because it is a matter for the independent Schools Adjudicator, whose job it is to rule where there are challenges over the admissions policies of individual schools. - Fifteen of the county's non-selective schools, including St Edmund's in Dover and the county's other five Catholic schools, operate the policy.

KCC's ruling Conservative administration has denounced it for "blackmailing" parents into opting out of the 11-plus and had wanted to end the practice.

The schools say it allows them to offer more places to those who genuinely want a place there.

Making his announcement this week, Mr Clark said: "Deciding schools' admissions policies is beyond my powers."

Many decision about whether the criteria for gone schools should be changed is for the Schools Adjudicator, not for me. That decision is due shortly."

The Secretary of State was called in to decide Kent's admissions scheme after Kent County Council was unable to secure the agreement of all its schools to its proposals.

Mr Clarke has broadly maintained the scheme he first set out for public consultation in July.

Parents will be able to express preferences for three. schools and, in most cases, ,will only have to complete one application form which will be handled by the education authority.

All parents will be told which school their child has been offered a place at on the same day. In Kent's case this will be on March 4.

Those pupils who do nominate a grammar school will do so before they sit the 11-plus exam and will only know whether they have passed on that day.

Kent is the first authority in the country to have had admissions arrangements imposed on it under new Government powers.