PACS has recently seen a document distributed by West London Free School on the proposed admissions arrangements for 2013-2014.

Despite a prohibition in the school admissions code to give preference on the basis of parents past or current hobbies or activities, the WLFS proposed admissions arrangements gives admissions preference to Founders Children.

‘those individuals who played a major role in establishing the school, undertaking activities during the application and pre-opening stages, and continue to play a significant role in the running of the school since opening’.

Starting  in 2009 Toby insisted that his school would abide by the Code:

I gently explained that our school will be bound by the same admissions code as every other comprehensive. At one stage, the Tories mooted the idea of a first come, first serve admissions policy for parent-promoted academies, but they have now abandoned that.

Now that the school is open, however, founder children privilege is ‘just desserts’ – reward for all the hard work and commitment.  Apparently the Tories did not abandon the idea, they simply didn’t put it into the admissions code itself and Toby didn’t put it into the first round of admissions for West London Free School. Perhaps that would have caused too much consternation amongst critics.  Better to do it in a ‘public’ consultation with cash strapped local authority schools picking up the tab (meaning it won’t be seen by many).

Recently in the TES Toby commented beneath an article:

in exceptional circumstances they will be given the latitude to be non-compliant with the Code in just this respect in Annex B of their Funding Agreements.

The much sought after West London Free School Funding Agreement was recently released.  The Annexe B portion of the agreement is where one would expect such an exception to the Admissions Code to be – as described by Toby in the above statement – but it does not appear to be there.  Toby goes on to say:

Any schools granted this privilege will be expected to embark on a 8-week consultation before changing their admissions arrangements so there’s no risk of those arrangements not being transparent.

The consultation exercise is hardly transparent.  The consultation document was apparently sent to all heads and chairs with a request that it then be made known to parents.   This is obviously in expectation that local schools would photocopy all eight pages of the document and distribute them to all parents.  And as the copy seen by PACS contained no timeline information for when the consultation ends and no information on how to respond nor whom to respond to, I suppose the schools also need to write up an A4 on that for all parents.  (Hoping they read english that is).  As pointed out on Local Schools Network , it really should not be the job of cash strapped LA schools to do the legwork and photocopying required to make a free school consultation a proper and public one.  It should be the job of the WLFS.  Let them spend time, energy and…as there is a blank cheque available, some of the  maths budget…