JCoSS Governors have published the JCoSS admissions policy for 2018-19.
- There will not be guaranteed feeder places for Eden. Feeder places will remain for 2018 at 5 places per Year 6 class for the existing feeder schools.
- The proximity places will remain at 18, as at present.
- The change to sibling eligibility will go ahead.
- Priority for staff children, and the changes to 6th form entry criteria were broadly uncontroversial and these proposed changes will go ahead.
Headteacher Patrick Moriarty commented: “JCoSS seeks to serve the Jewish community as a whole and sees itself as having a unique role of encouraging Jewish pluralism in the secondary sector. Our original intention for the proposed changes was to safeguard the pluralist intake of applicants to JCoSS as we believed there would be surplus places in the community for September 2018.
As has been our experience previously, this consultation elicited a range of deeply held, and passionately expressed views. The arguments for and against adding Eden as a feeder school are finely balanced, as are the arguments for and against feeder schools more generally.
The position regarding place provision in the community for 2018 remains uncertain, but Governors are obliged to set a policy using the best information they had at the time of their decision.
On balance, therefore, the governors did not feel that this was the right time to make any significant changes to our admissions criteria which could be perceived as either entrenching or disposing of feeder schools generally. Governors felt the same about proximity places.
Therefore for now, the three existing feeder schools will retain their status as in 2017/8 but we will not be adding Eden. The number of proximity places will not change. We will however continue to monitor the position and consult accordingly.
We believe the resulting policy for 2018-19 is the fairest possible, taking account of many strong points made during the consultation. It is impossible to please everyone with admissions policies and we hope that parents across the community recognise our efforts to be fair and genuinely consultative”.