- Bristol Free School
- Admissions
- About the school
- VLE
ADMISSIONS CONSULTATION REPORT - 2013
The consultation document was posted on the school’s website and sent to local primary schools and secondary schools. In addition, it was sent to Bristol City Council and other Local Authorities in the area. The statutory consultation period closed on the 28th February 2012.
BFS was consulting on proposed changes to its admissions policy to take account of it now being permanently sited at its current, temporary location. When the admissions policy that governed the applications for September 2011 and 2012 was submitted and approved by the Department of Education (DfE), it seemed likely that its permanent site would be on the St Ursula’s site and the admissions policy drafted to reflect this. BFS was set up to serve the Neighbourhood Partnership Area around St Ursula’s and the new policy seeks to:
1. Ensure that the school still serves the community for which it was set up; and in which there is no secondary school
2. Ensure that students living close, to what is now the school’s permanent site, at Burghill Road, have the opportunity to gain a place.
3. Limit the number of students gaining places around the school site; to protect the admission numbers of two neighbouring schools.
A total of 43 responses were received, 41 were from individuals and 2 from local secondary schools. Of these 27 (67%) were in favour of the draft policy being adopted as it is and 16 (33%) were against it being adopted. Of those responding and in favour of the policy, a small number (2) questioned the precise location of the point from which the 80% over-subscription criteria would be measured. Of the 16 against, their reasons for being against adoption were varied:
• 7 wanted the oversubscription criteria to be more straightforward and be based solely on distance from the school site. These people tended to live fairly close to the school site.
• 2 were just against accepting the draft policy and gave no reason or alternative
• 2 were from local secondary schools:
The Chair of Governors of one school responded, making three distinct points:
Taking an additional 10% from close to the permanent site was a change to what was originally proposed.
There are surplus places in secondary schools serving this area and no perceived demographic change to warrant the additional school places
The school was established “notionally” to arrest the movement of BS9 students out of the area and/or into the private sector; taking some students from BS10 may threaten the viability of two other schools
The Chair of Governors of a second school responded that there was no justification for extending the school’s admissions criteria into Southmead by changing the percentage from 90:10 to 80:20 as BFS was set up to serve BS9 families
• 1 proposed a ‘feeder’ school model
• 1 proposed a lottery system
Having considered the responses to the consultation and the fact that there were no strongly suggested amendments, the Governing Body Meeting has adopted the published 2012/13 Admission Policy that was consulted on, with two amendments: one to the wording of over-subscription criteria 1 – looked after children (to bring the policy in line with the new school admissions code which was approved after the publication of our draft policy); the second to bring the sibling criterion for the founding year within criterion 3.
The adopted policy can be viewed in full here.
