Consultation Into Leigh Area Catchment & Admissions Arrangements Starts

July 20, 2017 by SBC

Friday 21 July 2017

A two-phased consultation into school catchment and admission arrangements for nine schools in the Leigh area has begun, with documentation ready to view and respond to atwww.southend.gov.uk/schoolcatchmentresponse

The ‘listening and engagement’ phase will now take place over the summer and into the September term where two initial options to deal with the admissions arrangement challenges that the Borough currently faces will be presented online and at interactive sessions.This will be followed by a formal public consultation on one option (as required by legislation) that will take place at some point between October 2017 and 31st January 2018. The new arrangements will be brought into place for reception pupils starting in September 2019.Model A proposes a reduction of catchment areas for six schools, enlargement for two schools and small changes to one other school.

Model B proposes that six schools have their catchment areas removed (West Leigh Schools/Leigh North Street Primary School/Chalkwell Hall Schools/Darlinghurst School) and that these catchments are replaced with a shared priority area.

Changes to oversubscription criteria which prioritises admissions to schools are also being considered, including prioritising all siblings before pupils that live in the proposed catchment or priority area.

The consultation is necessary because evidence shows that if the council does nothing, that by September 2019, and based on birth data alone, 63 children in total would be unable to get a place across the Chalkwell Hall schools (37), Leigh North Street (19) and the West Leigh schools (7), despite living in that catchment area.

Cllr James Courtenay, Executive Councillor for Children and Learning, says: “Although living in a catchment area can never guarantee a school place, they must give parents a reasonable chance to get their child into the catchment school. If they don't there is little point to catchment areas. Currently for some schools this is not always the case.

“Where this is happening year on year, alternative options should be looked at and doing nothing is simply not an option as we are at the stage where our admission arrangements for the Leigh area could be considered unfair by the national adjudicator and challenged locally.

“Allocations to the Leigh schools have been varied and up to 2017 most schools have been able to accommodate all pupils applying from the catchment area, and in years where this has not been possible it has been for one-off reasons such as isolated birth increases. However from 2019 onwards, the births in West Leigh Infants School, Leigh North Street Primary School and Chalkwell Hall Infants School areas all exceed the number of available catchment places. When we then combine this factor with the number of pupils that have historically moved into the area, the likelihood of all catchment children gaining a place is significantly reduced. Therefore we must act now.

“In developing these options the Council has reviewed all birth data, forecast data (which includes housing and on roll data) and had a number of discussions with schools, governors and members of the admission forum to seek solutions.

“We understand this is an emotive issue and that is why we are running a two stage and genuine consultation process, with initial engagement to seek the views of parents and school staff, which will be followed later in the year by formal consultation on one option, which is set out in national legislation.

“We will absolutely listen to all views as this process is about ensuring we involve everyone who wants to express their opinion, encouraging people to have their say and developing a fair and balanced approach to admissions and catchments areas that is fit for the future.”

Small interactive sessions are taking place, but places are limited and so there will also be a drop-in information session on 18th September from 10am to 3pm at the Civic Centre (no need to book) and depending on demand other sessions may be organised.