WORCESTERSHIRE County Council is powerless to stop its first academy introducing an entrance test which some fear will result in it cherry-picking pupils.

More concerns have been raised about Tudor Grange Academy’s system to manage over-subscription to the school.

We previously reported in your Worcester News how the school wants potential pupils to sit an ability test with the results used to sort the children into nine bands.

Headteacher Claire Maclean said the system, called fair banding, is the fairest way to ensure the school is “fully comprehensive”with an equal spread of pupils of differing abilities.

But some parents and governors are worried it will result in children who might have previously attended Tudor Grange having to commute to another school in the city.

Responding to a question asked by Councillor Alan Amos about what powers the council has to ensure children attend their school of choice, Councillor Jane Potter, cabinet member for education and skills, said all taxpayer-funded schools have to comply with the Schools Admissions Code which, by law, gives priority to children in care.

At a meeting of full council she said: “County council officers are under an obligation to monitor and object to policies which don’t comply with the Schools Admissions Code but this does not include catchment areas and local children receiving priority.”

Coun Amos, a Labour member who represents Warndon and Gorse Hill, said: “Isn’t this mess that certain schools are about to witness in the months ahead the direct and sole consequence of the Government’s policy to destroy local education authorities and state secondary education by bribing schools to become academies which are clearly now setting their own admissions criteria at the expense of everybody else to the advantage of pushy middle-class parents and basically to hell with everyone else even if they live near the school?”

Coun Potter, Conservative, said: “The short answer to that is no.

“Academy schools also have to comply to the School Admissions Code but we aren’t able to interfere with it if they do actually conform to that code.”

As previously reported, two other Worcester secondary schools – Nunnery Wood High School and Christopher Whitehead Language College – have also been approved to become academies this year.