The CES has been advised that the Government intends to make two significant changes to the skeleton Code on School Admissions that was provided to Parliament during the passage of the Education and Inspections Bill early in the summer.

These propose to consult on a draft Code shortly which will rule out:

• Oversubscription criteria which require parents to name a school as their first preference (first preference first arrangements) and
• Oversubscription criteria which give a higher or lower priority on the basis of other schools applied to on the form (conditionality).

These changes would have serious implications for some Catholic schools and we continue to lobby against the proposals being universally prohibited.

We urge you to make your views heard when the consultation is published in the coming weeks but also would welcome further evidence of and data relating to the successful use of these criteria by your school. Catholic pupil figures are one part of this evidence but so is evidence that, in the case of secondary schools, they result in a fair and accessible admissions policy for children from poorer families and those for whom English is not a first language. In many cases, these groups will be subsets of the Catholic pupil population.

If you wish to comment on these proposals to the CES, I would be grateful if you would first write to us at admissions@cesew.org.uk

Oona Stannard

Chief Executive and Director

30.08.06