Yavneh College will officially drop its feeder school system in September 2017, it has been announced.
The Borehamwood school released its new admissions criteria on Thursday, after spending the last month analysing responses it received during its six-week consultation.
Among the changes to the admissions code, the school will remove the feeder school status of Hertsmere Jewish Primary School and Clore Shalom Primary School; priority status will be given to the children of all Yavneh staff including part-time staff; and priority will no longer be given to children for whom Yavneh is their nearest Jewish school. Instead, preference will be afforded to applicants with a WD or AL postcodes in Hertfordshire.
The governing body passed three out of the four proposals that were put forward at the beginning of the school’s admissions consultation. They rejected one proposal: to amend the definition of “sibling” to include the siblings of children attending the soon-to-be-built Yavneh Primary School.
A statement released on the school’s website on Thursday said: “Our starting point was to recognise that we simply cannot offer every applicant a place and that those who ultimately miss out will often instinctively feel that the system is unfair. Nevertheless we have a responsibility to create the most objectively reasonable set of criteria for admissions.
“This has been a robust and thorough process, including lengthy meetings of the admissions committee and governing body, supported throughout by appropriate legal advice. We have carefully considered the complete range of responses.”
The statement concluded: “The governing body consider that these proposals [which it passed] are in the best interests of Yavneh College and are the fairest and most appropriate way to serve the local community.
“We are required to review our admissions arrangements annually and the admissions committee and governing body will of course continue to keep the impact of our admissions arrangements under review as we have always done.”
Yavneh’s admissions have been mired in controversy since last November, when the school first announced proposals to change its admissions criteria.
At the time, it said that the suggested changes – removing feeder status of some schools and introducing the postcode criteria in particular – would create a “level playing field for Hertfordshire families”.
But parents whose children attended Clore Shalom and Hertsmere were infuriated by the plan, fearing their children would lose out. A Facebook group representing 400 parents was created to co-ordinate protests.
