The problem:
- The Government’s impact assessment suggests that these changes could mean that a good school are told they have fewer school places to keep a bad school open.
- The changes will also mean that popular and oversubscribed schools may be unable to expand, reducing the number of good school places available. The Government’s impact assessment explicitly states this measure “could also limit the ability of popular schools to grow”.
NSN recommendation:
- This clause should be removed from the Bill. Parents should be empowered to choose a good school for their child and good schools should be able to expand if there is the parental demand to do so. Creating a situation where good schools could be stopped for expanded or even forced to take fewer pupils to keep a worse performing and less popular school open is not a way to drive improvement in our school system.