A CATHOLIC school on Merseyside was scolded by the Government last week for having an “arbitrary” admissions policy.
Sacred Heart Catholic College expanded its catchment area and took on 20% more pupils than its capacity without consulting its local education authority (LEA).
Governors at the school also breached a nationwide admissions code by penalising vulnerable children in care when choosing who to let in.
Schools adjudicator Dr Elizabeth Passmore upheld a complaint from Sefton LEA about the Crosby school. Dr Passmore has re-written Sacred Heart’s admission policy, re-drawn their catchment area and will compel them to stick to their pre-agreed intake of new pupils.
In her ruling, she wrote: “I am greatly concerned by what appears to be a complete disregard of the terms of the Code and the School Admission Appeals Code, and what seems to be the arbitrary way in which the school admits pupils.” The school is meant to offer 216 places each academic year. But 264 Year Seven pupils joined its roll last month.
Dr Passmore also lambasted the school for running what appeared to be an ineffective appeals process. In 2008, twenty-nine appellants were granted places after initially being refused, which she said “indicated a weakness somewhere in the process”.
Sacred Heart’s governors drew their own catchment area based on a number of pastoral areas – which define the area of one clergyman – rather than on parishes.
Dr Passmore said this would have created “a very large catchment area indeed” that overlapped that of another Catholic secondary school.
The governing body also chose to raise the school’s admission number to 224 without asking Sefton, or checking to see if the school could cope with the increase. They said they did this because the new number “seemed more fitting to the amount of applications received”.
Cllr Peter Dowd, Sefton’s cabinet member for childrens services, thought Sacred Heart’s governors had “the best intent- ions” but welcomed the adjud- icator’s ruling because schools needed to stick to admissions policies to avoid “chaos”.
He said last night: “It’s not with alacrity that I welcome the decision of the adjudicator. It was more in sorrow than in anger that we had to go down that path.
“Once you go down the path of breaching the criteria, it’s a problem about where it ends – it gets to be invidious.
“If every school did that, if every school was using that rather chaotic whim system, there would be absolute chaos, a breakdown in the admissions policy. We had to send the message that you just can’t go off and do your own thing.”
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