Campaign Group In Brighton & Hove Backs Council Plans For Admission Changes

A campaign group has backed council plans to give pupils receiving free school meals a better chance of securing their first choice school.

Class Divide, fighting for greater educational equality in Brighton and Hove, has spent the past three years calling for Brighton and Hove City Council to close the attainment gap for young people living on the city’s most deprived estates.

In the run up to the local elections earlier this year, Class Divide held a hustings event in the Whitehawk and Marina ward.

Labour candidate David McGregor, who is now a councillor, “committed to the change” to give children receiving free school meals a greater choice.

When the council proposed the change, Councillor McGregor posted on social media:

“As someone that grew up on free school meals, I’m so proud of this Labour administration for introducing a policy to give kids on free school meals a greater choice in the school they go to.”

In recent years, secondary schools have been oversubscribed, with “bulge” years of primary school pupils moving through the education system. Now, intakes are expected to start shrinking.

And education chiefs are proposing to give youngsters on free school meals the third priority level when applying to secondary schools – after children in care and those with exceptional needs.

The proposals – due to be decided by the council’s Children, Families and Schools Committee on Monday (6 November) – are designed to balance out the percentage of pupils receiving free school meals.

Class Divide campaigner Curtis James said:

“There is evidence of benefits to schools, to teachers, to quality of education if you’ve got a better mix of kids from different socio-economic backgrounds at school together.

“To me, there’s the obvious benefit of children from different backgrounds meeting on a societal level. The big one is around meaningful choice.

“There’s this idea that all parents have a choice of what school their children will go to. Whitehawk lost its secondary school nearly 20 years ago and, at that point, parents in BN2 5 lost any meaningful choice.

“We believe all families should have access to choice. It’s only free school meals kids, but it is a good beginning.”

Carlie Goldsmith, from Class Divide, said that the campaign understood that there needed to be a workable system for parents and schools.

Dr Goldsmith said:

“This will make sure that essentially what we’ll have is all the schools in the city having at least the same percentage of children on free school meals as there is in the city in their cohort, which makes sense.

“We want a bigger social mix in schools and, at the moment, there are some schools where children on free school meals are heavily concentrated – and that isn’t a problem for children on free school meals. I was one of them.

“What does happen, with the current financial problems and economic context, is schools have to do an awful lot to make sure their pupils are in a position where they’re able to engage fully in the school day and learn.

“That places additional pressure on schools. Our schools are rising to the pressure but if you’ve got a good school, it’s good because you can teach all children.

“There are schools which are not representative of the city average.”

Class Divide is planning a podcast and events to encourage people to share their views both for and against the proposals should councillors agree to start a public consultation.

A report to councillors said that if 15 per cent of the pupils at a school received free school meals and the city average was 20 per cent, more pupils receiving free school meals would be likely to be offered a place.

The council expects the figure to reach 28 per cent by 2025 when the changes come into effect and when the council estimates that 60 fewer pupils will require a secondary school place compared with this year.

The percentage of pupils currently receiving free school meals in each secondary school is as follows

• King’s School 15 per cent
• Blatchington Mill School 16 per cent
• Cardinal Newman Catholic School 16 per cent
• Dorothy Stringer School 18 per cent
• Varndean School 19 per cent
• Patcham High School 20 per cent
• Portslade Aldridge Community Academy 28 per cent
• Hove Park School 32 per cent
• Longhill High School 36 per cent
• Brighton Aldridge Community Academy 46 per cent

The Children, Families and Schools Committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 4pm on Monday 6 November. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.