Younger brothers and sisters will no longer get priority at their older siblings’ school if their family moves, under changes to a borough’s education policy.

Redbridge Council’s cabinet last night unanimously approved a series of alterations put forward by cabinet member for children and young people Cllr Elaine Norman.

Under the changes, staff at particular schools who have always been granted a place for their child up to the age of 16, will now be granted a place for their child at sixth form as well.

If a family moves after their first child enrols at a school and they now live beyond its one-mile catchment area, younger brothers and sisters will no longer be given priority places.

In future, looked after children from outside England and Wales will also be given the second highest level of priority when being allocated school places.

This includes children who have been adopted from outside those areas or whose adoptive families once lived outside those areas and have moved to Redbridge.

The size of new year groups will also be altered at both Cleveland Road Primary and Mayespark Primary schools, going down from 120 to 90 places.

Cllr Norman explained this was due to a surplus of school places and examination of prospective class sizes.

She said there were concerns that maintaining larger class sizes would result in the need for more classrooms at Cleveland Road in particular.

The change in class size at Mayespark came about after a request from the school’s governing body for a downsize.

According to Cllr Norman, there are 161 surplus school places in the south of the borough and all proposed changes to admissions were in line with the authority’s equality impact assessment criteria.

All changes were part of a compulsory public consultation that lasted six weeks.