What is going on over school admissions? Last week, Jim Knight, the schools minister, urged disappointed parents to make greater use of the hopelessly bureaucratic appeals system. Today, he and his boss, Ed Balls, said they had evidence of schools – they won’t say how many – breaking the admissions code and asking parents inappropriate questions about their backgrounds – even, apparently, asking them for donations to the school.
Nobody would defend such practices, but what has to be asked is why ministers are cracking down so hard and so publicly on what must surely be quite a small-scale problem. The answer is that the admissions code has now moved from one status – that schools must “have regard” to its strictures – to another: it is now part of the law of the land. This was the heart of the deal struck by Tony Blair to bring on board some rebel Labour backbenchers to support his creation of trust schools in 2006.
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