Parents accuse ‘outstanding’ secondary school of shrinking catchment area without warning

A top state school “shrank its catchment area” without warning parents who bought nearby houses, families have claimed.

Dozens of families bought houses in St Albans, Hertfordshire, with the expectation that they would be in the right postcode for their children to get a place at Beaumont School, an “outstanding”-rated secondary school.

However, parents say they were shocked to learn on Friday that they had not been offered a place, despite some living as close as a six-minute walk from the school gate.

This year, the furthest distance between the school and the home of a child given a place in the catchment area was 511 metres, down from 873 metres last year and 840 metres in 2022.

Many children who have missed out on a place face an hour’s walk to schools that have accepted them instead.

Joey Kwong, an IT project manager, said she was stunned to learn that her son Brayden had not been offered a place, despite living 512 metres away.

She said she bought the house at the end of 2022 to get a place at the school and to have convenient commuter links to London.

She said: “Because we are both working, we want Brayden, our son, to be able to walk to secondary school so I can get back to full-time working”.

She said it was “pretty shocking” to find he had not been given a place on Friday.

Brayden has instead been offered a place at a boy’s school about one mile away.

Ms Kwong, who is against sending her son to a single-sex school, said: “We are still trying to accept the fact that we have to send our child to this school.”

Aasha Shamsuddin, a mother of twins, said she missed out on places for her children despite living 687 metres away from the school gate.

The family bought their home in 2020, when they appeared to be “well within” the catchment area, she said.

Her twins have now been split up, with her daughter allocated a place at a school over an hour’s walk away, or requiring two separate buses, and her son going to a local boys’ school.

She said: “It was such a shock on Friday. None of us knew this would happen. I didn’t know they would consider a 1 hour 20 minute walking distance for a school. It’s been non-stop stress trying to work out what happened and why.”

The school’s list of parishes in its catchment area for applicants has not changed, which means it did not need to carry out a public consultation. But its effective catchment area shrunk because the number of places available for Year 7 pupils has fallen from 240 to 210 this year.

Martin Atkinson, the head teacher of Beaumont School, disputed claims that parents had not been warned that there were 210 places available. He said the admissions information on the school’s website made its “published admissions number” of 210 “very clear” and said he gave four speeches on the school’s secondary transfer evening in September in which the number was “clearly conveyed”.

The school has blamed Hertfordshire county council, which handles its admissions, for the decline in places. Beaumont’s published admissions number has remained static at 210 for several years but the council asked it to increase places to 240 temporarily for the last two years to cater for a bulge in the 11-year-old population.

The school said it had told the council it was “very willing” to increase the pupil intake to 240 permanently. However, it said the council decided to allocate those places to other schools in St Albans.

In a letter to the council, Henry Gregg, another parent impacted this year, said there has been “no public consultation” on the decision to reduce places, which he claimed has “a profound impact on hundreds of families in St Albans and has caused widespread anger and distress in the local area”.

He added: “This reduction in school provision will have a detrimental impact on homeowners in the area, as it will make it harder for them to sell their homes if they choose to move. None of these implications were consulted on with the local community, leaving them unprepared for these changes and unable to make alternative arrangements.”

He said that “many” children who had missed out on Beaumont places had been offered places at schools that were more than an hour’s walk away from their homes, including at Marlborough Science Academy, Townsend Church of England School and St Albans Girls’ School.

Caroline Clapper, Hertfordshire county council’s executive member for education, told the BBC that every child in St Albans had been offered a place at a school within walking distance.

However, in a letter to the Department for Education (DfE), Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Albans, said the claim was “at odds with the evidence shared with me by distressed parents”.

She is calling on the Government to intervene to increase the number of Year 7 places at Beaumont School to 240.

A spokesperson for Hertfordshire county council said: “We understand the disappointment of parents who applied for places at Beaumont School for next year but were not successful.

“Neither the published admission number nor the catchment areas for Beaumont school have been changed so there wasn’t anything to consult on. For the last two years Beaumont School has admitted more pupils than its Published Admission Number as a temporary measure to accommodate an unusually high number of students in the St Albans area.”

The DfE has been contacted for comment.