Lurking in a turgid clause in the government’s schools bill is a change seen as “potentially explosive” by those who fear it will force high-performing academies to shrink or even close.

The planned change, which would give local authorities greater power over school admissions, has divided education leaders - with some warning that it would erode parent choice, and others calling for it to go further.

But how much impact will it have, and which schools could be most affected?

School admissions change

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, in its current form, would allow councils to object to an academy’s published admission number (PAN). If the objection was upheld, the schools adjudicator would then be able to set the academy’s PAN.

Currently the adjudicator can only consider objections where the PAN has decreased; for example, where this could create a shortage of places.

But this situation is increasingly irrelevant due to the fall in the birth rate, meaning that the more likely risk is that one school’s decision to grow makes another unviable.

Speaking in Parliament, schools minister Catherine McKinnell said the change would “support local authorities with effective place planning” and ensure that the number of school places available in an area “adequately reflect the needs of that local community”.

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Local authorities have long called for this change, and some academy trust leaders feel it is an entirely sensible move.

Tom Campbell, chief executive of E-ACT, which has 38 schools, says it “brings some much-needed order to the current pupil place planning crisis”.

“Local authorities are best placed to make decisions on PAN and admissions in their area, making decisions for the community and developing longer-term strategies for school places,” he adds.

He highlights the “chaos” that he says was created by allowing free schools to open in areas with a surplus of places, and letting them “unilaterally” choose to expand.

“In my opinion, this is why so many schools are in financial difficulty,” he says.

Bailing out underperforming schools?

But others feel that hard questions need to be asked of schools failing to attract pupils. “A school that’s under roll is under roll for a reason, because parents are choosing not to go to it, so that school’s got to be accountable,” says Michael Gosling, CEO of Trinity Multi-Academy Trust, which has 11 schools.

This, for many, is the crux of the debate: why allow a local authority to stop a popular school from growing in order to prop up a potentially less successful one?

This is the discussion that Gareth Stevens, CEO of 18-school Inspiration Trust, is having with Norfolk County Council.

The trust runs two primaries where the local authority wants to halve class sizes - a move that Stevens says would necessitate merging year groups at the expense of curriculum quality, and possibly making teaching there less appealing.

“These schools are among the top-performing in Norfolk, making the proposed reduction in admissions concerning, especially since nearby schools with poorer performance are not currently targeted for consolidation,” says Stevens.

Currently the trust is able to challenge the move, but under the new bill it would lose this power.

‘The admissions change isn’t about fair access. This is about eroding MAT powers for no particular reason’

Stevens questions the logic of reducing access to effective schools. “There should be a broader evaluation of primary school viability,” he says.

“While maintaining village primary schools is possible with adequate funding, current financial arrangements seem insufficient…It may no longer be feasible to maintain primary schools in every village given current demographic trends.”

Those in other parts of the country fear that such reductions in admissions could become a wider trend. Gosling says he can easily foresee academy PANs being lowered “to keep local councillors happy or to maintain the sustainability of a particular school that’s been underperforming for 10 years”.

“That is one of the things that could happen that parents are completely unaware of,” he warns.

There is a sense of frustration among some leaders that the scale of the admissions changes has largely gone under the radar, unlike some of the bill’s more headline-grabbing proposals on pay and the curriculum.

A multi-academy trust leader in the South East said: “I wouldn’t say I agree with but I’m comfortable with the changes around national curriculum and pay scaling. We do that anyway.

“But the admissions change…isn’t about fair access, and I’m not sure how it will benefit our pupils. This is about eroding MAT powers for no particular reason.

“I think we’re creating a risk that doesn’t need to be there.”

The issue of parent choice

The Conservatives’ shadow education team, meanwhile, have made the issue of parent choice one of their major lines of attack during debates on the bill.

The clause “strikes at school choice by making the size of schools not a matter for parents in choosing and voting with their feet but instead for local councillors and the schools adjudicator”, shadow schools minister Neil O’Brien said in Parliament.

“You strike at parental choice and you strike at one of the most powerful engines for school improvement,” he added.

On the other hand, could sustaining a struggling school - potentially by constraining a nearby school’s PAN - help to preserve choice? For example, by ensuring that parents have the option of a more conveniently located school or one that is not run by a particular trust?

It might give future parents more options in the event of an upturn in the birth rate or the building of a new housing development that pushes demand up.

“The academy trust doesn’t really have that outlook. And if you close the school down, it’s almost impossible to open it again,” says Campbell, arguing that local authorities are best-placed to plan school places.

“I think it’s really important that the government plays its role in protecting the future for children and families, and if that means that some schools have to share that burden of responsibility, then they should,” he adds.

Seamus Murphy, CEO of Turner Schools, which has eight academies, points out that many of the “forgotten third” - those who fall short of a grade 4 in GCSE English and maths - attend “less popular” schools.

The government is right to address the “deleterious” effect on these schools when an academy is allowed to expand, he feels.

Stifling the growth of popular schools

The bill’s impact assessment acknowledges that the legislation could “limit the ability of popular schools to grow” but adds that the numbers affected are likely to be “low”.

This has failed to stem fears that the bill will give local authorities leeway to restrict pupil numbers at high-performing academies for ideological reasons.

“Politicians in some local authorities - this is not a secret - have never much liked the academy programme or school freedom,” O’Brien said during the bill committee stage.

“It would be very tempting for them to try to push down numbers in academies, particularly to protect the schools that they run, even if they are not the best ones or the ones that parents want.”

Campbell points to the fact that most secondary schools are already academies, and that many areas are fully - or mainly - academised. “I think the ship has sailed on ideology,” he says.

To secure the support of local authorities, trusts simply need to offer assurance that they are serving the needs of the community and local children, he adds.

While O’Brien has described the admissions change as “revolutionary”, Campbell would have preferred the bill to remove altogether the rights of academies to set their own admissions criteria. “I think the school bill could go further,” he says.

Will good schools have to close?

There is also a concern that the bill could force a good school to close outright; for example, if the adjudicator set a PAN to zero.

Asked about this in Parliament, McKinnell said: “I cannot foresee a circumstance where that might be the case,” and pointed out that any decision to terminate an academy’s funding agreement sits with the secretary of state.

So is the risk of closure far-fetched? While setting a PAN to zero might seem unlikely, reducing it to a point that a school becomes unviable could still have the same effect.

There is also a fear that setting the PAN at zero could be used to prevent a school from even opening in the first place; for example, if the adjudicator felt it would create excess capacity in an area.

Former education secretary Damian Hinds raised this question during a parliamentary debate, with the schools minister offering to respond in writing. Tes understands that this response is pending.

Where is this most likely to be controversial?

In areas where school choice is already limited or entirely absent, such as in very rural areas, the new measures may have limited impact. They are most likely to come into contention in areas where there is fierce competition for places - such as London and other urban areas.

Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokesperson, whose Twickenham constituency lies in the capital, says giving the adjudicator power over PAN is “a step too far”. She fears that successful schools could be “punished” under the new system. “I want parents to have choice,” she says.

The result of this change, she says, could be “a politicisation of admissions, which I don’t think has been fully thought through or debated”.

Restricting the intake of popular schools in sought-after catchment areas - even where there are good alternatives nearby - is unlikely to happen quietly. Hertfordshire County Council discovered this last year when it removed a temporary extra class at the over-subscribed Beaumont School in St Albans, resulting in a bitter local battle that played out in the national media.

“I don’t think the government has quite realised how potentially explosive this change could be,” Wilson says. “We’re going to see real repercussions at local level.”

Duty to cooperate

Underlying the changes to school admissions in the bill is a new “duty to cooperate”, which aims to encourage schools and local authorities to work constructively together on admissions, and is widely supported, including by the Confederation of School Trusts (CST).

Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the CST, feels this duty goes far enough in guaranteeing good local planning, “without cutting across trusts’ ability to plan ahead on things like staffing and finance”.

She has “serious concerns” about local authorities being able to intervene on academy admission numbers.

This, she says, “clearly risks conflicts of interest where councils are responsible for neighbouring schools themselves”.

The plans could also put the schools adjudicator in the position of deciding on questions of policy and finance “that are well outside their usual remit”, Cruddas says.

The details to follow

And here lies one of the biggest difficulties for those tasked with scrutinising these changes: many of the details are yet to follow, and would be set out in regulations after the bill has passed.

For example, what criteria will the adjudicator have to consider in determining an academy’s PAN?

One amendment to the bill, supported by Lib Dem and Tory MPs but ultimately voted down, would have required a consideration of the school’s performance and whether it was over-subscribed.

Explaining her opposition to this amendment, McKinnell said that these were “clearly important factors that adjudicators should consider” but that “specifying that the adjudicator must only take account of these factors and no other factors could hinder effective decision making and damage the interests of schools and communities”.

Meg Powell-Chandler, director of New Schools Network, argues for a clear focus on standards in any decisions on PAN. “Whilst the move toward collaboration around school places in the bill is welcome, there are real concerns about quality of education not being prioritised,” she says.

“If the government really wanted to focus on education standards, it would take action to ensure this bill does not reduce the number of good school places available to parents,” she adds.

As well as school performance, what other factors could the adjudicator be asked to consider? All to be revealed in secondary legislation.

Meanwhile, the bill is making its way through the House of Lords, where the clauses on school admissions may be amended if Tory and Lib Dem MPs vote together. Of course, any such amendments could well be overturned in the Commons before the bill is passed.

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