Investigating the bulge in catchment area of �14m primary free school

The former Hampstead police station, poised to become Abacus Belsize's permanent home

Why did the catchment area of a north London free school, poised to move to a former police station bought for it by the government for £14.1 million, feature a curious bulge?

This was the question which drew me, one bright autumnal morning, to Belsize Park, on the fringes of Hampstead Heath, to investigate.

As Education Uncovered reported last month, Abacus Belsize primary school, which opened in 2013 and is currently housed in temporary premises two miles down the hill in King’s Cross, is hoping to move to the former Hampstead police station. 

A planning application for it to do so as a two-form entry institution, growing to 420 pupils, was blocked by Camden council two years ago. But plans are being re-submitted, this time for the school to operate as one-form entry. I questioned last month whether this would make it the most expensive free school in England,on a per-pupil basis.

The admissions rules

Yet it was the school’s recent catchment area specifically which drew me to the area for a first-hand look.

On its website, the school sets out criteria for admission to its reception class, which feature an important difference from those which usually apply in the state sector.

If the school is oversubscribed, the admission rules state, various categories of children are given priority, from those with special educational needs to looked-after children, those with siblings already at the school and children of teachers there. So far, so – seemingly – standard.

However, after this, the school’s “catchment area” – which currently appears unique across the local authority - kicked in.

The rules stated that “children from within the existing catchment area originally designated to [the school’s] founders by the Secretary of State by random allocation”. This suggested that anyone living within that catchment would have an equal chance of admission.

It was only after children satisfying these criteria had been considered that the more conventional “children living outside of catchment on a straight line distance” rule – similar to that which features in most state school admissions systems - was to be considered.

However, even in this case, there was a curiosity, with the point from which this was to be measured being not either Belsize Abacus’s temporary home or its intended permanent premises, but a church in Belsize Park, three quarters of a mile away by road from the former Hampstead police station.

The catchment

But back to that catchment. As you can see, it featured that curious bulge, near to Belsize Park tube station. Why?

Well, there might be concerns that the catchment had been deliberately engineered to focus on more expensive homes, rather than poorer ones.

The bulge does certainly include some very expensive houses – the property website “Rightmove”, for example, lists four homes in Downside Crescent, in the centre of the bulge, as having sold for more than £4 million each in recent years.

In neighbouring Lawn Road, part of which lies in the catchment, one house went for £7.3 million last year while another sold for £5.8m back in 2012. Some council housing lies just outside of these streets, outside of the catchment area.

However, some public housing is also inside it, while other very expensive houses – celebrities Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow occupied a large property a few streets away while they were together – lie just outside it.

So straight claims of catchment gerrymandering might be difficult to stand up. In addition, it is possible to speculate whether residents of housing this expensive might generally send their children to private schools, even with the existence of any free school nearby.

So it seems likely that that “bulge” owes something more directly to the school’s origins, with that statement on its website seemingly being key.

To repeat, it said, in terms of residential admissions criteria, that priority would be given to “children from within the existing catchment area originally designated to [the school’s] founders by the Secretary of State by random allocation”.

In the absence of further information – neither the organisation CfBT, which operates the school, nor Abacus Belsize itself, responded to requests to comment – it would appear that the bulge was allowed to ensure that children of those who set up the school would be admitted.

As I reported in the original piece, there are six Ofsted-rated good or outstanding primaries within half a mile of the police station. Although it has been argued that children in the area need an option of another non-faith school, in fact only three of those six have a faith ethos.

Of the three closest non-faith schools to the police station, it appears that only one is operating with fewer pupils than its official capacity, according to government records. However, there also appear to be many other schools in the area: the government’s “Get Information About Schools” website lists Abacus’s temporary home, almost exactly two miles away from the police station site, making it the 58^th closest primary school from its intended permanent home.

Local sources opposed to the free school plan say that the area around which the school’s more conventional distance arrangements centres – St Peter’s Church in Belsize Square – does lack schools. But any attempt to house one in this area, if it were possible, has clearly not borne fruit; hence the police station plan.

The school’s admissions arrangements, published on its website, relate to the 2017-18 academic year, so are out of date. However, Camden council’s school admissions document for 2018-19 confirms that Abacus Belsize was still operating a catchment system for admission this September, which the document states was the only instance of this in the borough.

Those opposed to the plan wonder why the school cannot simply join Camden’s admissions system, a point which has been made in relation to all academies – free schools are a type of academy - even by some supporters of the policy.

Interestingly, also, the former police station itself lies outside the catchment area as currently listed on the school’s website.

It all seems to add up to a very curious situation.