Consultation on Cardinal Newman Catholic School admissions 2027/28: Class Divide response
Cardinal Newman Catholic School is consulting on changes to its admission arrangements for 2027/28 entry.
This consultation is happening in a wider city context. At a council meeting last night (29 January 2026), councillors debated and voted on this year’s city-wide admissions changes. A proposal to add a sibling link to last year’s reforms was voted through and received cross-party support. All Green councillors supported it, and two spoke in support of last year’s changes.
In other words: there is clear democratic backing for a fairer admissions system, and for improving access for children who have been shut out for too long.
As Class Divide, we welcome any move that improves access for children from lower income families. Brighton and Hove has already taken an important step by giving Free School Meals (FSM) pupils priority in admissions across the city’s eight community and academy secondary schools. That policy aims to ensure every school offers places to FSM children up to the city average, broadly understood as around 30%, as long as enough FSM children apply.
In that context, Cardinal Newman remains an outlier. Its current position and the approach set out in this consultation risk denying what the city has signalled, clearly and repeatedly, that it wants and needs: admissions arrangements that are socially inclusive, transparent, and fair.
Cardinal Newman currently sits well below the city average for disadvantage. The Schools Data service shows that in 2024/25, 21.1% of pupils at Cardinal Newman were in receipt of FSM, or had been at any point in the last six years. That is the third lowest of Brighton and Hove’s 10 state-funded mainstream secondary schools.
That matters because Cardinal Newman is the city’s largest secondary school, and admissions patterns at a school of this size do not just affect that school. If Cardinal Newman does not admit at least the city average proportion of children in receipt of Free School Meals, the consequences ripple across the whole system.
Equality of access is narrowed for disadvantaged children, and the proportion of FSM children at the city’s other schools is effectively forced above the city average to compensate. In plain terms: if one large school sits well below the city’s average level of disadvantage, other schools must carry a higher share.
This is not just an abstract fairness issue. It shapes intakes, resourcing pressures, inclusion needs, and the daily realities of school leadership and classroom life across Brighton and Hove. A city-wide FSM priority cannot work properly if the largest school in the city is effectively outside the mechanism.
Why FSM priority matters specifically at Cardinal Newman
Cardinal Newman has been oversubscribed for several years. Most children gain a place via documented Catholic faith, attendance at designated feeder schools, and sibling links.
But access to feeder schools is not evenly spread across the city.
Two of Brighton and Hove’s most deprived areas have no Catholic feeder schools: Moulsecoomb and Bevendean, and Mile Oak. For families in those areas, attending a feeder school often means longer travel, higher cost, and more time pressure. That is a real barrier, especially for parents already under financial strain.
So without a meaningful FSM priority, disadvantaged children in those areas face multiple obstacles at once: fewer nearby options, higher travel costs, and fewer routes into an oversubscribed faith school.
A question for the rest of the system
This consultation is framed as a set of technical adjustments to Cardinal Newman’s admissions wording. But there is a bigger question sitting underneath it:
What do Brighton and Hove’s other secondary schools think about one school of this size remaining significantly below the city average for FSM, year after year?
Because the impact does not stop at Cardinal Newman’s gates. When one school is structurally less accessible to disadvantaged pupils, other schools take more than their share. That has implications for admissions balance, support needs, and the wider goal of a socially inclusive school system.
If Brighton and Hove is serious about fairness, this cannot be treated as an isolated policy choice. It is part of a shared system, with shared consequences.
What Cardinal Newman is proposing for 2026/27, and why we are concerned
Cardinal Newman’s consultation proposes to include “Children who are in receipt of free school meals up to the city average” as an oversubscription category.
The key issue is that the proposed FSM priority is not a stand-alone priority. It is a “category within a category”.
In practice, this means FSM priority only has an effect within the single admissions category where the school finally runs out of places. Even then, siblings would still be prioritised above FSM children.
So the proposal may technically include the words “up to the city average”, but it does not operate in a way that could actually move the school towards the city average.
What this looks like in real terms
To show how limited this would be, we can apply the same approach to recent years as a guide:
2025 admissions
The school ran out of places in category 11: “Children of other Christian denominations whose membership is evidenced by a minister of religion.”
4 children were admitted in this category.
If FSM priority had existed as a sub-category within that category, between 0 and 4 additional FSM children might have been admitted.
That is, at most, around 1% of the year group.
2024 admissions
The school ran out of places in category 12: “Children of other faiths whose membership is evidenced by a religious leader.”
11 children were admitted in this category.
Under the proposed approach, between 0 and 11 additional FSM children might have been admitted.
That is, at most, around 3% of the total year group.
This is not a meaningful lever for change. It does not create anything like the city-wide FSM priority now operating in other secondaries.
Why this could mislead families
Because the wording mirrors the city’s “up to the city average” policy, parents of FSM children could reasonably assume they have a real priority.
Under the current proposal, they do not.
If you are an FSM family reading that phrase, you might believe Cardinal Newman is offering you a comparable priority to other schools in Brighton and Hove. In practice, the effect is likely to be marginal, and in some years potentially zero.
Our conclusion
We welcome Cardinal Newman Catholic School’s ambition to introduce an FSM priority.
But the proposed 2026/27 policy is ineffective. It will not meaningfully increase the number of FSM children gaining a place at the school, and it risks creating false confidence among families who most need clarity.
We urge Cardinal Newman not to adopt the proposal in its current form, and instead develop a policy that can genuinely increase the proportion of FSM pupils admitted to at least the city average, aligning Cardinal Newman with the admissions approach now used by Brighton and Hove’s community and academy secondary schools.
