School-admission campaigners and experts breathed a collective sigh of relief when a long-sought-after pledge to review England’s overstretched system featured in the Conservatives’ general election manifesto.

For years, they have been calling on the government to look again at the increasingly fragmented and complex school admissions system. But since the election, there has been silence on the subject. And those in favour of change are becoming concerned that ministers could yet shy away from a debate over what is always a divisive issue.

Now that the full academisation and grammar school policies that pushed school admissions back up the agenda have been abandoned, could a review of the entire system go the same way?

Dame Sally Coates, United Learning’s director of academies in the south of England - who has repeatedly called for the admissions system to be overhauled - doubts it will happen. “I wish there was a review, but I don’t think there will be anything,” she says. “It is a bit of a hot potato, which is why I don’t think they have done anything about it yet.

“At the moment, admissions is complex and open to back-door selection. It needs to be centralised and transparent.”

School admissions has become an increasingly controversial subject ever since the number of state schools granted autonomy began to grow during the 1990s.

In 2007, a toughened-up admissions code, for which schools were required to “act in accordance” with rather than just “having regard” to, was designed to put escalating concerns about back-door selection to rest. But a decade later, those fears are back with a vengeance. And it is not just about the huge expansion of admission authorities triggered by the mass academisation that began under the coalition government in 2010; there is also concern about whether those expected to police this increasingly complicated system have the capacity to do the job.

Last year, Tes established that the number of academies - which control their own admissions - rose by 2,226 per cent between 2010-15. But the amount of public money spent on the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) - which oversees England’s state school admissions system - rose by less than 5 per cent in real terms over the same period.

The resources of local authorities, which also have a key role in monitoring admissions, are increasingly being stretched, too.

Another potential problem is that schools no longer have to revise their admissions “immediately” following an OSA ruling, although they must still do so within two months.

Alan Parker, a former schools adjudicator, believes that the proportion of admission authorities trying to retain policies that do not comply with the code are likely to have increased following the change, brought in by the coalition government.

“The government could restore [these powers] but that would be to admit that [former education secretary] Michael Gove was wrong in 2011,” he says. “A May government is unlikely to be seen to be reversing things done by Michael Gove.”

It is not as though the government is unaware of problems with admissions. In March last year, as universal academisation was being discussed, ministers were considering radical changes to school admissions that would hand back some academy powers to local authorities. Admissions re-emerged as a political issue later in 2016, as the government unveiled its now-abandoned plan for more academic selection.

‘No lottery system’

In September, Theresa May used her first speech as prime minister to call for an end to “selection by house price”. Tes understands that Department for Education officials went on to hold discussions earlier this year with academics, think-tanks and other experts on admissions to explore how the system could be made fairer (bit.ly/AdmissionReform).

May hoped that lifting a ban on new grammar schools would overcome some of the selection-by-house-price issue. But the Tory manifesto acknowledged that this would not be enough to solve the problems that less-affluent families faced when trying to secure “the best” school places. A review of admissions was needed.

“[Increasing academic selection] will have a great effect, but alone they cannot overcome the unfairness of selection by house price, where ordinary, working-class families find it difficult to access the best schools because they cannot afford to live in the catchment area,” it read.

“We will therefore conduct a review of school admissions policy.”

The manifesto was definite about what this would not mean: “We will be clear at the outset that we will never introduce a mandatory lottery-based school admissions policy” (see box, page 9).

But detail was scarce about what was on the table. When asked after the election in June whether plans remained to carry out a review, the response from schools minister Nick Gibb was not wholly encouraging. He would only say that the DfE “routinely keep the admissions system under review”.

Fears are now growing that the issue has been overtaken by events. Melissa Benn, chair of admissions campaign group Comprehensive Future, says: “My feeling is that the landscape is so unstable now and the Tories are in such disarray that I expect they don’t know [what’s going on].”

Even in the DfE admission meetings, held before the Conservatives suffered their disappointment at the polls, Tes understands that there was little agreement between experts on what should be done.

One source who attended the meetings says: “I got the sense they were a bit directionless. They thought that if they got experts together, there would be some obvious things that could be done. But it was clear in the meetings that there just wasn’t a lot of consensus. To me, there are not easy wins around admissions.”

Agreement over the key problems that currently exist is easier to find. Critics are concerned that the admissions system still gives those families able to afford a house near a top-performing school a better chance of securing a place.

And there are fears that the growing number of academies, as well as some schools’ lengthy and complex oversubscription criteria, are making the system more difficult to navigate for parents of disadvantaged children who would benefit most from a good school (bit.ly/SharpElbows).

Social-mobility charity the Sutton Trust argues that a fairer solution would see school places allocated via lottery, or banding, to reduce the emphasis on catchment areas and allow more disadvantaged children to access schools with good results.

Banding aims to secure a “fair” comprehensive intake by dividing children into ability groups and then taking pupils from each band. But the approach is open to manipulation.

Others say that a review is needed to look again at the role of the local authority in school admissions. Currently, councils still play a central role in policing admission arrangements and co-ordinating applications for school places. But as more schools have become academies, and therefore now run their own admissions, it has become harder for local authorities to carry out these responsibilities.

Rebecca Allen, director of thinktank Education Datalab, believes that the government needs to be clearer on what it thinks the ongoing role of a local authority should be.

“How can they retain the statutory duty to ensure each child has a suitable education if they cannot control school-place provision and admissions?” she asks.

Early last year, Tes reported that ministers were considering putting local authorities in charge of appeals over academy admission decisions and for admissions to academies during the school year, as part of a move towards an entirely academised system (see bit.ly/AcademiesAdmissions). Such a move might have been welcomed in some quarters, but it would have represented a major U-turn on a key component of the academies programme: autonomy over admissions.

While academies, and the trusts that run them, retain the freedom to set their own admissions, concerns are growing about how they are choosing to use this autonomy.

This year’s OSA annual report included local authority warnings about a growing tendency for multi-academy trusts to name primaries within their chains as feeder schools in the oversubscription criteria for their secondaries - even if these primaries were some distance away from the secondary.

Councils say this has had an effect on their planning for school places and can lead to “a fall in successful preference allocations, possible increases in transport costs and a deficit of places in some areas”.

OSA reports during the past year also reveal that a number of faith schools have increasingly complex admission arrangements. In some cases, religious schools have required families to fill out supplementary information forms that asked for prohibited information.

There seems little doubt that an overhaul of school admissions is needed. And the Conservatives’ manifesto and DfE roundtable meetings on admissions suggest there is government recognition of the flaws in the current system.

The reappointment as education secretary of Justine Greening, who regards social mobility as a priority, has also boosted hopes of a significant review. But as Parker says: “Reviews of admissions are easy to announce, but more difficult to put into effect.”

School admissions remain a potential minefield for ministers, especially when you lack a parliamentary majority - and even more so when the experts you have consulted are divided on the solution.

@Eleanor_Busby