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New code designed to stop middle-income families moving near to popular schools – but other state schools miss out on cash Academy and free schools will be allowed to reserve places for children entitled to free meals under a new admissions code published by the Department for Education. It gives those schools – but not other state schools – the right to take children whose families’ annual income is £16,190 or below rather than those from better-off families. The current code forbids all state schools from choosing pupils based on their family income. Academies and free schools stand to gain financially over other schools. The coalition last year introduced the pupil premium , which entitles schools to £430 for each pupil on free school meals. A source from the Department for Education (DfE) said the move was designed to stop middle-income families moving near to popular schools and monopolising their intake. A spokesman said children eligible for free school meals often came from “the most vulnerable groups and had parents who often lack the resources to help them access our more successful schools”. It was one of the government’s priorities to break the “cycle of deprivation”. “We wish to give a permissive approach to those schools who believe that children eligible for free school meals would thrive in their educational care,” he said. The journalist Toby Young said he hoped the governing body of his free school in Hammersmith and Fulham, west London, which is likely to open by September, would set aside a quarter of places for children on free school meals.. He welcomed the change. “We want the West London Free School to be a genuine comprehensive, reflecting the social diversity of the local area, and this will enable us to achieve that.” But Fiona Millar, a founder of the Local Schools Network, said it was unfair that academies and free schools were subject to different rules. “There should be one admissions code. If schools that aren’t academies or free schools want to give more places to pupils on free school meals, they should be allowed to.” Ministers are likely to have modelled the change on KIPP charter schools in the US which specifically target poorer children. The DfE source said it would be up to individual academies and free schools to decide whether they wanted to offer a proportion of places to the poorest pupils and no quota would be imposed from Whitehall. They would offer places to pupils on free school meals who applied to their school, rather than select them. However, Alan McMurdo, principal of Thomas Deacon academy in Peterborough, said that his school already ensured a comprehensive intake by setting all prospective pupils a verbal reasoning test, dividing pupils into 10 “bands” according to their results and taking the same number from each band. “Although we welcome the flexibility that this brings, we feel duty-bound to keep to the admissions arrangements we have,” he said. “Our banding system ensures that we are not seduced into taking swathes of higher-income children.” Earlier this week, Michael Gove, the education secretary, told the Guardian that more parents would get their first choice of school under the code. He said the government planned to “remove bureaucracy” around the expansion of good schools. Weaker schools would feel the squeeze, he said. School admissions Academies Education policy Schools Free schools Poverty Liberal-Conservative coalition Michael Gove Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk