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<p>All academies and free schools must comply with the School Admissions Code. This
ensures their admission arrangements are fair, clear and objective.</p><p>It is through
the Funding Agreement that the Secretary of State has agreed different arrangements
(‘derogations’ from the Code) for academies and free schools, but only in limited
circumstances, where there is demonstrable evidence that it will benefit local children.</p><p>On
opening, all free schools are permitted to allocate places outside of local authority
co-ordination in their first year only; while all academy schools that have opened
since 2012 can grant admissions priority to pupils eligible for the pupil and service
premiums. The revised School Admissions Code currently before the House proposes extending
this freedom to all state-funded schools.</p><p>In addition, we have granted school
specific derogations in the following areas:</p><ul><li>46 free schools are able to
give admissions priority to founders’ children. Founders’ status is granted only to
those individuals who have played a material role in setting up the school and who
continue to be involved in the running of the school.</li><li>Three free schools are
able to give admissions priority to the children of staff without having to meet the
two-year qualification in the Code. This has enabled free schools on opening to recruit
good quality staff quickly to the benefit of all their children.</li><li>Four free
schools were granted permission to give admissions priority to pupils eligible for
the pupil premium prior to our extending this flexibility to all academies and free
schools.</li></ul><p>In one free school, we have agreed as a transitional measure
that children in an annex of a nearby maintained school which closed would be transferred
to the new free school without having to apply. This enabled those displaced children
to access good quality local provision.</p><p>Three school specific derogations have
been agreed for academies, as follows:</p><ol><li>Birmingham Ormiston Academy which
became an academy in 2011 is permitted to select the majority of its intake by their
aptitude for the performing arts since it is operating as a regional centre for the
performing arts. The derogation enables children to obtain a specialist education
unavailable elsewhere.</li><li>The Priory Academy, Lincoln School of Science and Technology
(LSST) in Lincoln is permitted to select 10% of its intake by aptitude in technology
in recognition that the predecessor school selected on this basis. A derogation was
agreed so that the school did not lose its ability to select on this basis on closing
and reopening as an academy in 2008.</li><li>Belvedere Academy in Liverpool became
an academy in 2007. This academy’s predecessor school was an all-through fee-paying
independent school. Only the secondary phase became an academy. The derogation permitted
all those who were on the independent school’s roll at the point at which the academy
opened, including those in the primary phase, to be admitted to the academy. This
derogation will end in 2015.</li></ol><p> </p>
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