School kids need community,
not commuting.

Facts

Rationale for the changes: Some Key Facts

  1. Attainment:  The city’s schools already perform well for its children, and we should celebrate this – attainment is above average for both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students. Challenges are isolated and need targeted solutions. 
    1. To improve attainment, focusing on reducing absence should be the primary goal. The data shows there is a strong link between absence and attainment, and that longer journey times also increase the likelihood of absence. This causal link is backed up by national research, such as by the Social Mobility Commission and the FFT educational data lab.
  2. Social Mixing: Brighton schools are already more socially mixed than in 2/3 of other LEAs in the country. The new FSM priority will likely increase the mix of disadvantaged and non- disadvantaged students further.
  3. Choice:
    1. Families are already able to choose schools outside of their catchment school. Only 35% of the Longhill catchment’s children attend Longhill. 47% of the BACA catchment’s children attend BACA. 57% of the PACA catchment’s children attend PACA. 72% of the Patcham catchment’s children attend Patcham. Other children have chosen to attend a different school. This might be a school in another catchment, a faith school or outside Brighton and Hove. You can see where all the children go in the FOI data in this datasheet.
    2. Last year, BACA, Longhill and Varndean were the only schools where more than 85 percent of the children offered a place had named the school as their first preference. By contrast, Dorothy Stringer and Hove Park were the only schools where more than 35 percent of the children offered a place had not named the school as their first preference. Dual school catchment areas do not necessarily provide much higher levels of choice than in other catchment areas because choice in the dual catchment areas is bounded by the availability of places and the relative popularity of the two schools.
    3. Catchments are there to give children priority in accessing a school that is reasonably near to where they live. Children without a sibling link or eligible for free school meals will no longer have priority for the schools in the catchment where they live, and be the lowest priority for all other schools. 

About the proposals:  Key Issues

  1. Complexity: The School Admissions Code states that, “Parents should be able to look at a set of arrangements and understand easily how places for that school will be allocated.”   The complex mix of priorities in the proposal makes it very hard for families to understand the impact on them. As a group we have found it very difficult to explain and unpick the plans.
  2. FSM impacts:  Combining the FSM priority with the Open Allocation priority could lead to the shifting of concentrations of children on FSM to different schools, rather than smoothing it across the city. This may lead to some popular schools having well above the city average of children on FSM, something the council has said they want to avoid.
    1. Much of the debate has focused on views that children in the Dorothy Stringer and Varndean catchment are all from privileged backgrounds. The reality is the catchment has a diverse social mix, with the % of children on FSM at the city average (at 29%). It already covers one of the three most deprived areas in the city. If the catchment change goes ahead, it will then cover two of the three most deprived areas: Whitehawk and Hollingdean. Children in these areas are as likely to be harmed by these proposals as those from more advantaged backgrounds.
  3. Displacement out of catchment:  The combination of proposals will lead to large numbers of children not being placed at a catchment school.
    1. The council itself predicts 250 displaced students in 2026. This includes 144 from the V/DS catchment, 57 from the HP/B catchment, and 44 from Patcham.
    2. Under these proposals, after 5 years, once all secondary school year groups are in place, 1,250 children will be displaced from their catchments through Open Allocations. Over 3,000 students (about 1/3 of the city) may be attending schools outside their catchment area, far from home.
    3. This displacement is intentional. It happens for several reasons: the proposed open admission priority, changes to catchment areas, fewer places at Dorothy Stringer and Blatchington Mill, and more places for children eligible for free school meals.
  4. Travel impact:  Children unable to get a place and living in the catchment areas of Dorothy Stringer/Varndean and Hove Park/Blatchington Mill would then be the lowest priority for places in other schools. They would probably only be able to get a place at one of the schools farthest from where they live. This risk mainly affects children without a sibling in secondary school and who aren’t eligible for free school meals. Children who currently make long or complex journeys to school mostly do so out of choice – such as to Cardinal Newman or Kings. It is a decision they and their parents have made about what they feel comfortable doing, that they believe works for them and their families. It is very different when that travel is not through choice.

Asking children to travel further to school will impact:

  1. Children’s mental and physical well-being. They are less likely to arrive at school ready to learn.
  2. The city’s transport network; increasing car use and associated impacts. Car journeys to school are increasing, and have overtaken public transport as a way to get to school. Car is now the second most common way to get to secondary school, after walking (26% travel to secondary school by car, 20% by public transport and 50% walk). National data shows that when journeys go over two miles, car use goes up.
  3. Transport planning. With random allocation how can suitable bus routes be planned when you don’t know where the children are and which school you need to get them to?
  4. Local communities and friendship groups by breaking the link between home and the local school.
  5. Working families and carers through making increasing the challenges of balancing caring and work
  6. Higher costs of travel where children do need to take the bus. This will either need to be funded by the council or by families, many of whom are struggling with the cost of living. The estimated cost is £450 per year, per child.
  7. SEND children are likely to feel these impacts even more than others. They are unlikely to receive a higher priority under the admissions priorities. Only 7 children were admitted under ‘priority 2’ for exceptional cases in 2024, and 4 children in 2023.
  8. Changes to PAN: The changes reduce places at two schools which will remain oversubscribed on current plans. On the other hand, a PAN of 210 for Longhill is high compared to the number of students it has admitted in recent years. The last time it admitted 200 students was in 2014.

Expert Views on the Proposals

  1. The Social Mobility Commission found that a school’s absence rate is the best predictor of its pupil premium students’ progress. To improve the attainment of disadvantaged students, persistent absence should be the top priority.
  2. The Sutton Trust have made no institutional statement of support for these specific proposals and said “We have therefore not commented on the detail of the proposals from Brighton and Hove, as we believe that they and the local stakeholders responding to the consultation are best placed to know what will work locally”. The 20% open allocation is not the ‘marginal ballot’ proposed in the Sutton Trust paper. They suggest a random ballot just for a proportion of places at the spatial margin, with the rest allocated based on distance. When asked about open allocation Dr Ellen Greaves said at the Scrutiny Committee “There’s a case for thinking carefully about this policy in combination with the lottery tiebreaker”. 
  1. Prof Stephen Gorard, Durham University said “Obviously it’s got to be done with the minimum of disruption. You don’t want to upset children’s one shot at education and you don’t want to have other unintended consequences that make things worse”. Prof Gorard finds only a weak link between school disadvantage and attainment. He focuses on the effects of choosing to attend different schools, not of being forced to travel long distances. Recent detailed analysis of Brighton and Hove’s local situation by Prof Adam Dennett, shows the weak relationship disappears at concentrations of children on FSM found in Brighton and Hove schools.
  2. Dr Ellen Greaves has recommended the Council wait and evaluate the impact of the FSM policy, saying “Evaluate what happens with the free school meals policy before changing much else.’  
  3. All six LA maintained secondary schools are united in opposing the ‘open admissions’ criteria. Serious concerns have been raised in the public responses from schools in the city, and they requested that the council reconsider.

A Road Map to a Sustainable Solution for the City

What is the alternative? What can create a sustainable long-term, equitable solution for the city?

  1. SLOW DOWN and stop the current proposals before significant unintended consequences are caused 
  2. Find a short-term solution to buy time for a longer-term, sustainable solution that has buy-in from across the city. For example, reduce PAN at Longhill. Support a smaller size by federating with another city school.
  3. Focus on  the process of making good policy.
    1. Be clear about what problems you are trying to solve. Too many different issues have been bundled together in this process, and the school admissions process may not be an appropriate tool for some of the problems.
    2. Build on what’s already working.
    3. Look into how multiple groups could be brought into the design process and the best ways for managing this
  4. Understand your system. Look at:
    1. The spatial system of schools, pupils and their residential locations (disaggregated by relevant demographics – disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged or SEND etc.) and accessibilities – by walking and public transport in particular.
    2. A deep dive on the schools themselves and their recent trajectories.
      1. What are the profiles, strengths and weaknesses of each of the city’s schools (Quantitative and Qualitative)?
      2. What are their trajectories of growth/improvement, stasis or decline?
      3. How do these compare locally and nationally so that we can derive a meaningful context?
      4. Look at what travel distances are typical in other comparable towns and cities. Consider whether people are likely to accept higher levels of uncertainty and longer travel distances than in other places, and whether it is reasonable to expect them to do so.
    3. Look at the suitability of current sizes and locations of schools relative to pupil home locations now and in the future.
      1. Test scenarios for alternative configurations
    4. A full review of alternatives to the current catchment-based system of allocation.
    5. Develop a broad understanding of travel, attainment, disadvantage, absence, in Brighton and Hove specifically to help. Make all findings public and easily accessible. Feed these back into the later design stage