Brighton & Hove receives gold Sutton Trust Fair School Admissions Award

Brighton & Hove City Council has been granted the Sutton Trust Fair School Admissions Award at gold level. 

This is awarded to organisations who have made significant changes to their school admissions policies to ensure there is fair access to all pupils regardless of socio-economic background.  

The Sutton Trust is an educational charity that aims to improve social mobility and address educational disadvantage across the UK.  

Free school meals priority  

The attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils in Brighton & Hove is greater than the national average.  

In January 2025, 26.3% of secondary pupils in Brighton & Hove were eligible for free school meals, but the distribution of disadvantaged pupils in our secondary schools ranged from 19.1% to 49.1%.  

To tackle this, we introduced a policy in 2024 giving pupils eligible for free school meals priority to a proportion of the places at each school. The Sutton Trust praised this particular element of our school admission criteria. 

The Sutton Trust thanked the council for its commitment to social mobility and for ensuring that all young people have access to the best education possible. 

Tackling inequality 

Councillor JacobTaylor, Deputy Leader of the Council, said: “I’m delighted that the Sutton Trust has recognised our efforts to tackle inequality, create greater equity of opportunity and improve educational outcomes for young people in Brighton & Hove. 

“We are one of the first councils to offer a free school meals admission priority to help ensure pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have access to a better choice of secondary schools. 

“Reviewing our school admissions arrangements is one of many ways that we're making Brighton & Hove a fair and inclusive city where no child or family is left behind.” 

The Office of the School's Adjudicator 

Earlier this year we agreed a series of changes to our school admissions arrangements for the 2026/2027 academic year following a public consultation. This included: 

  • amending the catchment area boundary for Dorothy Stringer, Longhill and Varndean
  • reducing the Published Admission Numbers (PANs) at Blatchington Mill, Dorothy Stringer and Longhill
  • introducing a 5% ‘open admissions’ oversubscription priority to give applicants from single catchment areas priority when applying to schools in dual catchment areas 

The Schools Adjudicator considered a number of objections to our admission arrangements for September 2026 before coming to a decision last month. The majority of the objections were not upheld.  

The only objections that were upheld related to the PANs for Blatchington Mill and Dorothy Stringer. The adjudicator decided that we must increase the PANs at both schools from the planned 300 back up to 330 for the 2026/27 academic year.  

Admission arrangements for 2027/28 

We have launched a consultation to find out what residents think about further changes to school admission arrangements in Brighton & Hove from September 2027.   

These include proposed changes to the admission priorities for secondary schools to enable the sibling link to be applied regardless of catchment area; reductions to the PANs of Rudyard Kipling Primary School and Downs Junior School; and changes to how waiting lists are operated.   

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