Fair admissions in action
Reach Academy Feltham is an Ofsted Outstanding all through school which opened in 2012. Rebecca Cramer is the CEO of Reach Academy Trust.
“Our original admissions policy didn’t have pupil premium priority within its oversubscription criteria. We introduced it after we received our Ofsted Outstanding rating in 2014. We became aware that his was having an impact on the housing market around the school and we wanted to ensure that we continued to serve the families that would benefit from our school the most.
“We decided to introduce a pupil premium priority in our oversubscription criteria. We chose to use a quota that ensured we would have at least the same percentage of children eligible for the pupil premium as our local area. This made sense to us, we would be serving a true representation of our community. In addition, we have a random lottery element within a defined catchment area, our stakeholders recognise that this makes our admissions arrangements as fair as possible.
“We were delighted to see a rise in the number of pupils in our school who are eligible for the pupil premium after we implemented these changes. Currently we have a higher proportion of pupils eligible for the pupil premium than the average for our local area and our numbers have remained stable for the last few years.
“The changes have become such a successful part of our ethos that we are implementing a similar approach to the new school we are opening within our Trust – Reach Academy Hanworth Park.”