Labour reviewing school admission criteria

Labour don't want aspiration

Confused why this would be allowed. Where do they propose to send the in catchment pupils? Our in catchment school offers pupils living less than 1 mile due to the amount of children applying in the area. If the FSM out of catchment area children are offered a place first and have to travel by car or bus then where are the children who live locally meant to go? The nearest (based on this criteria) would most likely be 3 miles away and the in catchment children will also need to travel by multiple buses or car!
the school is over subscribed and will displace at least 50% of the in catchment children.
Like other posters have said, what is the point of working hard (I’m from a low income family, bad school but went to university) to move into an area for schools? I may as well have stayed in a cheaper house and not improved my life and stayed in a low income household so my kids have FSM and go to any school they want. Where’s my aspiration going to come from?

I took my child to breakfast club and picked them up from after school club.
You are living in fantasy land not reality. Saying parents "could/should" is just idealism. Most are too busy holding down jobs. Every child at my DDs primary school year group had both parents working FT in dual households and the single parent working FT in single parent households. No SAHP hanging around with the time to look after other children.

@twistyizzy ok, parents. So who is taking your dc to school? Could that person not take another child if their parent or sibling were ill. Would you never ask another parent to help you out if you were too ill to take your dc to school. Maybe your DH/p would do so but that isn’t the case for many..
My point is that if all the children in a locality go to the same school the logistics of the means and act of transporting them to school is simpler. I know of children being driven a few miles to a primary school when there are at least 2 others in walking distance.
Parents might well choose a school nearer to their workplace but that isn’t always in the child’s best interests and could be problematic if the parent changes jobs.

So if you are a decent earner is it really going to be no State pension, no good school for your children, university’s discriminating against your kids, limited or no NHS access? That is what the Telegraph is portraying? Dooms day full communism for the MC and if you have to pay for it all privately, then you pay double and VAT on top?
And this is to apply to anyone on a wage which wouldn’t even be that big anyway. Just a way of bringing those down to the rest on UC? Whilst the top elite benefit from the tech boom and everyone else is a minion on a low universal wage.

It is unlikely any government could ever do that without closing borders and full state control because literally no skilled person would stay.

The advance of AI should be prompting more preparation for “hands on” employment-the sort of things BTecs used to help prepare kids for. All the Mumsnet-derided Hair and Beauty, Construction, Horticulture. The things that will still be needed when AI has taken over all the “middle class” jobs!

I'll be honest, as someone who did that at university myself, I do think it's probably a mc hangup.

It's been interestingto me to watch my daughter who started at university, and while she did ok, it seemed like she was just further stuck in this not-quite-adult no man's land. She dropped out, got a job as a receptionist at a law firm which is a really responsible position, and now seems to be moving very smoothly into being an adult, planning for the future, getting some courses to progress her career, starting a volunteer initiative.

I am now not so sure the university time was even very healthy, and certainly not necessary.

Sounds like it would turn into the whole keyworker child allowed to school plus vulnerable fiasco that was COVID.

Yes, that’s right, it is.

Also, in our area anyway, the LA are trying to encourage ALL parents with children in KS1 who get free school meals universally (in England anyway) to apply for the FSM scheme. dont ask me how it works, I just hear dh venting about what a nightmare it is for him at work.

Thats the area my husband work in for the LA and it’s causing him a logistical and data nightmare with accounting and funding because at the moment, it looks like anyone who does do that is going to be lumped in with those claiming FSM due to claiming certain benefits. I think our area is one of the first to try it.

Also expanding the FSM to all on UC is causing a huge nightmare too, his work all crosses over into special needs/socail care and he said it’s going to create an even bigger mess for LAs than they are in now and the expense of the admin for all this is ridiculous. It all has a knock on effect to other children’s services and LAs just don’t have the data management in place to support it all.

Why mums?
Er no I couldn't because I work full time, I can't "help out" if other children are ill.

I’m glad my kids all went to our local schools with no messing about with transport. Going to a school further away means earlier starts and later finishes. Transport will be a must and that is costly both in monetary and environmental terms.
If all the local kids go to the local school, mums can help one another out if they or their other child/ren are ill. Local education can promote more of a community and helps to foster friendships outside of school hours.

Absolutely. First work out how to get wealth creation and have it here at all to tax.

I think the point with AI and tech is that the Government should be doing all they can to make sure the population can benefit from this growth area and that starts with education and then creating the right business environment. At the moment it is the US, China and India coming up with the biggest wealth creators in this area. I think you first worry about the wealth being created and then you address the sharing element. You have all these new billionaires and potentially less workers and sharing will have to happen one way or another. But you do not cut of the growth opportunity because you worry about people not sharing!

This poster's DCs won't be impacted by the policy.

The rest of middle class MNetters should welcome their kids being denied places in local to them schools and send to rough ones or having significant number of kids from those rough areas to join their DCs in their better schools. Why would anyone be against it? it's for the sake of social mobility!
🙄

The only thing that confuses me is FSM not changing next year ?

at the moment it’s not everyone on benefits it’s only those earning less than 6k ? I thought it was changing to anyone from next year ( September 2026 ) to anyone on UC etc so this will include single parent nurses / teachers etc depending on how many children they have.

The only thing that confuses me is FSM not changing next year ?

at the moment it’s not everyone on benefits it’s only those earning less than 6k ? I thought it was changing to anyone from next year ( September 2026 ) to anyone on UC etc so this will include single parent nurses / teachers etc depending on how many children they have.

My eldest did the police degree apprenticeship (although I think that was scrapped last year, where we are at least).

I had a few comments from friends and family about missing out on uni.

For him, it was a way of getting a degree and not having huge debts. He didn’t want to stay in the police, he wanted to go into the military (which he did), but he needed a degree for the route he wanted to take. He thought the police would be great life experience, as well as getting paid to complete a degree.

Unfortunately, it was very tough. He might not have debts, but he paid for it in other ways. He was working full time as well as having to do his uni work. They got a couple of months over the summer to attend some lectures (mainly online), and to do work, but during that time, he was still getting phone calls of cases he was working on and had to give information on and wrap up. He found it really stressful. He didn’t have time to go out and be young, he was always under pressure from work.

He wishes now that he’d gone to uni. Yeah, his friends that did have debts, but they had fun, travelled, whereas ds had the responsibility of being a full time police officer, working shifts and doing uni work around it plonked on him from 18.

“I'm encouraging mine to take apprenticeships over degrees as they'll be earning and won't have a load of debt.”

@GAJLY - my younger 2 are also keen on this path but I feel Covid has set them back socially and emotionally and real world experience wise, so I worry about them missing out on the whole university and growing up/forming social relationships phase that is university.

But maybe that is another MC hang up I have. We went travelling to Asia and Africa and to university etc. However, we never had a parallel virtual social world. DD who is 16 tells me she knows our whole area and everyone in it across all schools “virtually”, whatever that means.

Good point. Hopefully we’ll realise it.

I am not so sure about AI. LLMs is just text prediction that relies on human input to learn. If they draw too much from AI they descend into a doom loop. I think that fatal flaw will become more apparent as time goes on. Of course there will still be a role for AI but there will still be a need for a large amount human input.

I think this has changed somewhat now. And probably will do even more if / when AI take out a chink of jobs.

Yes, Labour are stuck in 1970s class warfare whilst rest of the world is hurting through 21st century.
They have no ideas or interest past the 1970s gripes!

I think it's the older generation who look down on blue colar jobs. I'm encouraging mine to take apprenticeships over degrees as they'll be earning and won't have a load of debt. Obviously it depends what they want to be, as some degrees are manitory for certain jobs. My husband's friends range from electrician to plumber and they are definitely higher earners.

AI is apparently going to destroy middle management so trades will be more important in the future? Educationally, we are potentially on a cusp, with all these technological changes and Governments aren’t really thinking ahead with this social mobility agenda. They should be speaking to experts about skills required in the future including soft skills and changing the education system accordingly.
The reality is that in just a few years most MC DC will have outstanding EdTec and an AI tutor to their specific needs so no need to panic about what school they go to.
It was also obvious that they would first have a go at private schools and now outstanding comps where people have bought their way in via catchments and there are massive differences in cohorts and affluence. That is an undeniable fact in some schools.

Yes you said. “ “