The recent awarding to Reading School of The Sutton Trust’s ‘Fair School Admissions Award’ at Gold level celebrates the determined and significant changes we have made to our approach to admissions. Through the changes outlined below, we have aimed to create social impact through being inclusive to all local primary students, regardless of socio-economic background:

• Granting maximum and unlimited priority to families eligible for the Pupil and Service Premiums (and those with Social or Welfare needs) 

• Redrawing our catchment area to prioritise postcodes in the most deprived local communities;
• Inviting children (both boys and girls) from under-represented local primary schools to receive mentoring from our senior students throughout the year;
• Collaborating with primary schools and the local authority to update and shift perceptions of selective education;
• Promoting a healthier narrative around entrance test preparation - FSCE - 10 Tips for our Year 7 Entrance Test
• Aligning our entrance test more closely with the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum – for example removing Non-Verbal Reasoning whilst incorporating content from KS2 Foundation subjects;
• Innovating and diversifying test content to reduce any advantage gained through tutoring for predictable test formats (Familiarisation Guide and for parents);

Relentless in our pursuit of social impact, we now want to go further. We invite your views on the following changes, which we believe to be fair and made on reasonable grounds and are accompanied by brief explanations for the purpose of transparency. All of these proposed changes ensure the retention of high academic standards.

The consultation period will run from Wednesday, 28 November 2025 until Wednesday 28th January 2026. You are invited to express your views about the admission proposals during this period. Your views are welcomed and should be sent to either this short survey or via email to consultation@reading-school.co.uk before midnight on 18th January, including your name and relationship to the School.

Academy schools such as Reading School are required by their funding agreements and by section 1A of the Academies Act 2010 to provide education for pupils who are “wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which they are situated.” This proposal aims to better meet this requirement so that Reading School can be Reading’s School for the most curious and creative boys. The proposal is easily understood, naming all 134 state-funded primary schools within the named postcode districts. For the purposes of the Admissions Code, this is technically a ‘feeder school’ arrangement, but in contrast to other schools, there will be no formal connection between the named primary schools and Reading School, it is simply a method by which to enhance the prospects of school entry for local children.

One option considered was to tighten the postcode district catchment area of permanent home residences. However, every year, the Admissions Office has to investigate around 10 applications based on potential fraudulent addresses; each of which requires unannounced home visits, significant resource on an investigation and likely admissions appeal (none of which have ever been upheld). Any tightening of the catchment area is likely to exacerbate this trend, leading to increased resource opportunity cost and more importantly, greater chance of a fraudulent applicant gaining admission over a local bright child. We therefore have broadened the circumstances in which an application may be suspected as fraudulent, as seen in the policy appendices.

The Greenwich judgement of 1989 made it illegal for a council or school to give priority for school places based on residence in that local authority area. In response, some local authorities carried out reviews to ensure that catchment area boundaries and local authority boundaries did not coincide without justification. This is therefore not an avenue we chose to pursue. The postcode districts are chosen for Reading’s sphere of influence as a town on them, rather than arbitrary distance alone. This can be seen by a range of indicators, such as transport connections, the strength of our existing outreach relationships with some of these primary schools and the number of historic applications from them. Equally, where application numbers have historically been low, we name them in an attempt to remedy this pattern by changing prior stereotypes through more effective messaging and outreach, especially as they typically have no access to an alternative boys’ grammar school.

Furthermore, by selecting 13 postcode districts that encompass 134 different primary schools, we aim for this change to have negligible impact on the cohorts of other local secondary schools. Our status as a grammar school does not confer any sense of superiority and we wholeheartedly wish to maintain positive relationships with our secondary school neighbours. Additionally, the broad range of primary schools encompassed poses little risk of a ‘rush’ for the named primary schools, and this is something we would wish to avoid, for fear of local bright children seeing their chances of admission to their local primary school diminish.

We are unable to include independent schools as part of this particular oversubscription category, as it is prohibited by section 1.9 of the Admissions Code (“It is for admission authorities to formulate their admission arrangements, but they must not [...] name fee-paying independent schools as feeder schools”). While there is an argument that by their nature, those children attending fee-paying schools suffer significantly less of the disadvantage that the School’s admissions mission seeks to reduce, and therefore the opportunity that a Reading School education provides may be better offered elsewhere, this addition in no way excludes children from independent schools. Local students attending a fee-paying independent school are still able and welcome to apply through the other oversubscription categories. In particular categories 4 and 8 but not excluding categories 2 and 3, assuming significant disadvantage can be evidenced. A similar argument for Category 3 could be made for any children with siblings currently at the School who can evidence significant disadvantage from this change.

For the avoidance of doubt, this addition is an oversubscription criteria of the policy only. Admission to the School would remain contingent upon achieving an eligible score in multiple elements of an entrance test. This means that academic ability, regardless of location and school would remain the fundamental driver behind admission to Reading School. This proposed addition only applies to Year 7 entry, not In-Year nor Sixth Form or Boarding policies.

The proposed list of postcode districts and primary schools can be found in the Year 7 Day Policy below.

As a grammar school, we are required to select students by ability, which necessitates an entrance test. However, we believe that this should have as low an impact as possible on the wellbeing of the 10 year old primary school students. We want these children to spend their 6 week summer holiday playing, exploring, reading and running, not cramming for an entrance test. Equally, we want all children to have a fair chance of success, which is best enabled when they have all been studying in primary school during the Summer term, minimising the risk of any ‘summer learning loss’ (which is suggested to most impact children from disadvantaged backgrounds) and negating any benefits accrued only to those able to afford 6 weeks of intensive and stress-inducing tutoring.

We know that parents and children will make an admissions decision that is right for their personal circumstances, and are aware that some twins may indeed thrive separately. However, we believe that acknowledging the potential emotional and practical challenges of children from multiple births going to different schools, we may be able to remove from parents a layer of complexity and worry in the secondary school admissions process.

As with any state-funded school, we are vulnerable to, and have been directly impacted by, the challenges of teacher recruitment and retention, with England having a high teacher attrition rate compared to other OECD countries. Alongside     our existing wellbeing, flexible working and financial efforts, this proposal will seek to ensure that school admission for a child is not a barrier to recruiting or retaining high quality teachers or associate staff. We would envisage the number of     instances of this occurring being very small (one every 5+ years?) but the impact on the staff member (and School community) being profound. For the avoidance of doubt, this addition is an oversubscription criteria of the policy only.       

Admission to the School would remain contingent upon achieving an eligible score in multiple elements of an entrance test. This means that academic ability would remain the fundamental driver behind admission to Reading School.

1. Clarifying what might come under ‘exceptional circumstances’;
2. Clarifying the process for identifying and investigating fraudulent applications;
3. Simplifying the postcode areas included in the catchment area;
4. Clarifying details of Subject Entry Requirements at Sixth Form;
5. Adding details of ‘Suitability for Boarding’ process.