Children’s futures are at stake. Families across St Albans depend on fair access to high‑quality education, and the current admissions system at STAGS and Verulam has long been the only way to guarantee that fairness. Both schools are proposing changes to their admissions arrangements that undermine this principle and risk excluding entire communities, denying children opportunities they deserve, and eroding the very justification for single‑sex education in our city.

If you sign this petition please also send your objection by email directly to the schools, by December 7th if possible: admin@stags.aetrust.uk and admin@verulam.aetrust.uk. You can use the text from this petition for your email if you wish.

As single sex schools, STAGS and Verulam have unique catchment arrangements, agreed in order to ensure fair and equal access for all girls and boys, across St Albans and the priority areas, to a high quality single sex education. In contrast to the usual approach of prioritising those nearest to the school, places were, and are, allocated randomly within parishes in the priority areas. This admissions system, which has been in place for many years, is the only way to ensure fair and equal access for all children in the priority areas, a vital justification for the continued presence of single sex schools in St Albans.

The change from random to distance-based allocation within parishes, proposed without justification, would be hugely damaging to the enshrined principle of fair and equal access. It would create a huge postcode divide and come at a massive cost-–completely excluding children who live towards the more distant edges of each parish—and thus denying hundreds of children across St Albans and the priority areas the opportunity (that they currently have) to access the unique high-quality single sex education provided STAGS and Verulam, that cannot be offered by other schools. The proposed change has no clear benefit, except to a small number of individuals who would be privileged by happening to live in the right postcodes, and no justification for the change is given. It cannot be justified by any argument that travel from closer to the school is preferable or more sustainable: the new admissions criteria will create spurious situations across parish boundaries. Children in houses that are next door to/across the road from each other will have drastically different opportunities to attend the schools, with a child in the further away house (being the closest in a parish further from the school) being almost certain to get in; while one in the closer house (the furthest away in a parish closer to the school) is extremely unlikely to.  

Allocating spare places unused in other parishes to those who are closest to the school (regardless of parish), rather than keeping the current pro-rata reallocation, only further unfairly biases selection away from children who live elsewhere in the priority areas, who deserve equal right to access single sex education at STAGS/Verulam.

While children in the more distant areas of all parishes will be affected we highlight the areas that will likely be worst affected as an illustrative example. As the most distant points in the largest, and heavily oversubscribed, St Albans ‘Parish’, children in the Verulam/King Harry Park/St Stephens area as well as St Julian’s, Cottonmill and Sopwell are almost certain to be denied admission; while under current admissions arrangements many children from these areas attend STAGS/Verulam. By contrast others who live further away from the schools, but just over parish boundaries, will almost certainly be admitted. The current random allocation principle ensures that these children (and all others) have a fair and equal chance of entrance. While the data is not publicly available, given the huge oversubscription for places at STAGS/Verulam it is almost certain that using the distance criterion in most recent admissions cycles would have resulted in no admissions from any of these more distant areas and complete exclusion of the children who live there (or for the less competitive parishes extremely few admissions). Indeed, effective catchment areas within parishes could potentially become very small.

It is not clear whether any modelling or analysis has been done on the impact these changes would have on access for children across all of the priority areas, nor whether an equality impact assessment has been done. This policy would hit hardest in communities that are already disadvantaged by restricted access to St Albans’ high‑quality schools, creating a postcode lottery that denies children equal opportunity. Detailed analysis of the effects of this policy on access to the school for all children in the priority area, as well as a strong justification for the reason for the change, would be necessary for such a significant change to be made to admissions policy.

It is vital that STAGS and Verulam remain schools for all children in their priority areas and not just exclusive to those who happen to live in small, effectively arbitrary, pockets closest to parish boundaries. The new admissions policy will create blackspots in which children living in these areas simply have no chance of gaining admission. Such a proposed system is no less exclusive than a conventional, single ‘closest to the school’ catchment; it just makes several distinct areas close to parish boundaries where children are effectively guaranteed to get in (rather than a single larger one), while excluding children in other areas.

We, the undersigned, oppose the proposed changes to the STAGS and Verulam admissions policies in the strongest possible terms, and urge STAGS and Verulam to maintain their current random allocation approach (with unused places reallocated pro-rata by parish, not reclaimed for the benefit of those closest to the school). Random allocation within parishes, not based on distance, is the only way to ensure continued fair and equitable access to all children in the STAGS/Verulam priority areas which is vital to justify the continued presence of single sex schools in St Albans. The proposed change has no clear benefit, the current system already delivers fairness and balance changing it would dismantle that without reason. This would come at a huge cost to a huge number of children who, due to their postcodes, will be completely denied access to a high-quality single sex education that can only be provided at STAGS/Verulam, undermining the very reason these schools exist.