Romesh Ranganathan - School Places & Entitlement

Interesting to look into how some schools are better than others.
It is basically a big building with lots of rooms - teachers are qualified to pgce - the curriculum is roughly similar everywhere.
Is it the children who make a school good or bad?
Highly selective - so children will tend to want to learn and end up with good results so parents want to send their children there school is labelled as fantastic.
In an area of high deprivation parents unsupportive children with behaviour and other problems school is labelled as poorly performing.

But this school doesnt have a sibling priority. If everyone with a sibling at the school could successfully appeal on the basis thry HABe a sibling, it would make a mockery of the idea that the school can set its own admissions policy.

We lost a secondary appeal on what I consider to be much stronger grounds than RR had. It’s really hard to win appeals otherwise everyone would be able to use the appeal system to get into their school of choice, which would be unworkable for obvious reasons

Maybe we should just move to the Scottish system where everyone gets their catchment school, no choice in the matter.

I think he has a valid point here.His older DC are at the same School.Its normal here in our local area to have siblings as priority. Looked after DC first,siblings 2nd .the fact he has moved is irrelevant. How can you get 3 children to 2 different places. The younger one will be going by himself to a School further away. I admire RR,as a former Teacher he is upholding the State system. My DD bestie came from private to DD secondary (not Grammar) Didn't get on well there.RR is quite entitled to use State and also has grounds to complain. DD Bbestie liked the secondary and flourished

I only have one but I would imagine I would pick a school that suited each child. Finding the right fit for my daughter was our top priority.

But nobody should have to accept sending a child to an under performing school. I do not know how the system can be fixed but again it is failing kids every day.

As an outsider looking in - the system does seem flawed and the most shocking part is the apparent disparity between what different state schools provide. How can one school be outstanding and another one a few miles away be failing with the same funding? (Of course life is more complex and educational policy is not my area of expertise but it seems very odd). When we were interviewing schools for our daughter, the schools had different “personalities” but the same high standards and I would have been very upset if I could not have sent our daughter to the school which would be the best fit for her. But I think it is good he is highlighting it as many children seem to not get a place in a decent school and no child should legally be made to go to a failing school - surely the clue is in the name. Don’t know the answers but UK education system is failing many children and families.

Do they have money to spare to provide coaches when not really necessary

It won’t be the council it’s an independent admissions panel that decides when you take it to appeal.

it doesn’t sound like there’s any suggestion that the admissions criteria were applied incorrectly, only that he didn’t know what they were.

And it is quite difficult to argue that you should have priority on the grounds you have a sibling at the school when the school has explicitly adjusted its policy so that siblings don’t have priority.

so it isnt a big surprise he lost.

If you listen to him in his podcast, you'll see that they changed the policy. It used to, like many school, take siblings into the school as one of the top considerations so he moved based on this rule and then they changed it. So yes, I'd be annoyed.

Maidenbower.

Exactly.

Oh god don't get me started - the school we didn't get into has fairly convoluted admissions criteria and (outside of the actual admissions criteria document itself, which isn't easy to comprehend) almost every piece of information the school shared (verbally and in writing) about it's own admissions was factually inaccurate. Documents with whole priority groups missing, false reassurances about 'guarantees' of admission, incorrect stats. And in this case they are their own admissions authority so should have no excuse! And then parents get the blame for not understanding.

@FishfingerFlinger Quite. In my experience even headteachers don't always know the ins and outs of their own admissions policies, especially if the school isn't its own admissions authority and they don't oversee the process directly. It's no wonder parents often get confused about oversubscription criteria and make assumptions about what works and what doesn't.

Unnecessarily snippy!

I can sympathise with him. Clearly he should have been aware of the rules but I can understand how you could have a good understanding of the admissions criteria at one point but then not be aware they have changed. The school has a duty to consult on changes to the criteria and failure to do so adequately can be raised with the school adjudicator (no idea whether the school in this case did an adequate job here, but there should have been letters home etc).

We've been in the position of not getting into a school we had a reasonable expectation of getting into and it was absolutely devastating, it's not just an "ah well shucks" thing, it's 5-7 years of your child's life, their wellbeing, education, future that is suddenly all thrown up in the air. However rich or famous or whatever you are it's not something I'd wish on anyone.

Crawley is awful. You couldn’t pay me to live there. All power to Romesh choosing to use the state system.

Geoff Norcott did a programme on the BBC about how some middle class parents gamed the school system. It's not currently available to watch, but he had points iirc.

No where in Crawley is THAT posh 😂

Maidenbower.

Yes maybe primary. Ha! Interesting question!

So many people have missed the obvious point here. He lives in a £3m house. And chose to MOVE OUTSIDE the area for his preferred choice of school. FFS.

No, not always the case. Perhaps read the full thread and educate yourself.

Posh areas do not equal good schools - I live in an expensive area and our local comp is inadequate.

Apologies. Got my dates a bit muddled. “During the election campaign.”