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.

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.