Asked by: Noah Law (Labour - St Austell and Newquay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps with local authorities to that ensure travel distance is taken into account when (a) calculating school catchment zones and (b) offering school places.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Admission arrangements are set and applied locally by a school’s admission authority, which for academies is the academy trust and for maintained schools is either the governing body or the local authority.
Admission authorities must determine the criteria that they will use to allocate places if a school receives more applications than it has places available. These must be fair, clear and transparent, and comply with the statutory School Admissions Code.
Admission authorities are already able to prioritise applications on the basis of distance to the school, including through the use of designated catchment areas. In setting such criterion, admission authorities must ensure they are reasonable and clearly defined, including making clear how distance from the child’s home to the school will be measured.
Where a school is not oversubscribed, every applicant must be offered a place.
Asked by: Noah Law (Labour - St Austell and Newquay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what her planned timetable is for the roll out of free breakfast clubs to all state‑funded schools with primary‑aged children; and what support her Department plans to provide schools to facilitate implementation of that programme.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to delivering on its pledge to provide a free breakfast club in every state funded school with primary-aged children. This will ensure every child, regardless of circumstance, has a supportive start to the school day.
From the start of summer term 2025, the department has funded 750 schools to deliver a free breakfast club to early adopters.
We are currently working through the outcomes of the latest spending review and the departmental business planning processes. Further details will follow in due course.