Labour reviewing school admission criteria

It's sound bites.

They need to.improve standards rather than make it harder for everyone.

Typical Labour - drag everyone down to the lowest level instead of tackling the root cause - poor schools, lack of investment into parental education and the economy. Because those aren't the cheap, quick win votes that Labour are interested in. I'm so glad my kids will soon be grown up and I won't have to worry about this social engineering nonsense.

How do you plan on equalising opportunity when child A is brought up by 2 highly educated parents in a nice home with a nice sibling and is supported with everything in life from homework to driving lessons to emotional wellbeing with a supportive wider family around them and child B is the youngest of 5 born to a drug taking single mother in an overcrowded flat with no dad involved? You can’t. It’s ideology without any reference to what’s actually going on.

Will you make the better off family subsidise a car and driving lessons for the worse off kid for example? I actually know someone, aged 17, who has just been gifted a brand new very trendy car. Lives in a 2m mansion. Guess that family’s next move…….emigration (yes really it’s in progress)

Anyway pretty sure my local grammar does this anyway.

Except only a minute amount of kids on FSM pass the test, because they can't afford the tutoring anyway.

Mine is going to the local comprehensive that isn't popular cos it's got a bad rep.

Everyone told me not to send her there.

But it's easier cos it's a 10 minute walk from home.

But it's got a new headteacher and now part of an academy and I'm able to support my own kid woth schoolwork/ arrange tutoring if needed- she'll be fine wherever she goes. It's just easier if she can go to our local. It was rated inadequate for years.

But the new Policy is just shite.

And makes Labour sound idiotic.

Interesting how you see the removal of a privilege as “being screwed over”, rather than equal access to good schools being good for all and not just the rich

If anything, wouldn’t this push up house prices? Fewer catchment places = more desirable?

Im sure I read that Keir’s kids went to a school with a very small catchment of expensive houses. Wonder if he regrets that now.

The thing is a huge amount of us on UC or getting FSM work and we don’t have resources to pay for extra travel and we are short on time. This will make lives harder not easier

What a load of shite.

Even kids who have parents who work need to go to school.

I think this is another policy that is just gonna turn people against the Laboir Party.

People who go to work are not the enemy. They are just people who have kids and the same bills as everyone else.

Couldn’t agree more.

Yes it did.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdr5mr5l2d1o.amp

Great idea. Level across the classes. Stop the rich middle from hogging grammar school places

The irony, before the 60s politics of envy, the 'rich middle' didn't hog the places, there were enough to go round, thanks to Liebour we're where we are now, only a few brave areas have retained their grammar schools.

Mixed thoughts.

On the one hand, many families are priced out of the good schools because they cant afford the catchment area. Why should the children suffer for that?

On the other hand, parents who have worked hard to afford the catchment area are penalised so what is the point in getting a better paid job so you can afford a higher mortgage so you can get your kid into the good school?

On the third hand, schools in areas of poverty tend to do worse so by forcing wealthier families into those schools, it should (in theory) pull up the performance of those schools.

We live in the catchment area of an outstanding primary school and until they redefined the catchment area last year, an ourstanding secondary school (rare in this area!). We have a lot of (expensive) rental properties by us and you see at certain times of the year families moving in and then once their children are in the school, moving away again.

Didn’t the FSM entitlement criteria change recently? There are now a lot more pupils receiving FSM or will this go by pupil
premium ?

Lots of people who had no skin in the game, applauded vat on education for private schools. That wasn’t even a plaster. It’s a nasty envy policy.

And what is this latest one? A sticking plaster maybe but it will help thousands on FSMs for example.

No shit Sherlock 🤣

One assumes by 'faith schools' that you are referring only to Christian faith, others would be free to continue with whatever they do.

Of course. We can all appreciate I think, that Labour are not a good government.

no wont happen ever

Maybe the government term needs to be increased to incentivise making meaningful change with policies that they can start and make sure the outcomes are achieved .

A good Government should have ‘long term thinking’

We should never applaud the sticking plaster technique
Look at the mess we’re in with pensions

They are dressing it up as better schools for children but the reality is it will be a fall in standards for some children. That’s not acceptable. If they are saying that regardless of background all children deserve a good school place then it works both ways. They need to redirect their time and energy away from this ridiculous scheme and improve ALL schools .

Does this not result in more travel emissions?

There’s a secondary I pass sometimes that uses a lottery for places and the traffic around it is absolutely insane. Everyone has to use cars as it’s too far to cycle and the roads are scary.

Yes that’d be the ideal. However it’s not going to happen in their short term in government .

Labour need to make immediate seemingly impactful change, a bit like the almost immediately imposing VAT on education debacle. This is similar.

They can implement it quickly. It will work for a few of us, but long term thinking like improving all state schools via xyz.. no.

Does it not occur that there should be no schools that aren’t good

Why shouldn’t all kids be able to attend good schools

This policy is ignoring the very real issue that we have a problem within the education system that needs addressing. Money would be better spent dealing with that

This type of policy may be workable in big cities but outside of that it would be logistically impossible.

I’m also not sure there are as many people desperate to travel further to access better schools as you might think.

My DC is starting at an extremely highly rated Primary school in September. I don’t live in catchment and nor do the majority of the other families. The reason being that the school is in a very sought after village with much higher property prices than the local environment. Public records show that only 3 children were born in catchment in 2021.

I assumed that the school would be oversubscribed but that isn’t the case. They have a PAN of 30 with only 24 due to start next month.

Quite a few parents are one’s who are using it in place of a private pre-prep or prior to using a private secondary school. All are willing to travel a few miles extra to access the school. There is a large council estate in the nearby town which is no more than 10 minutes drive away. One child from there has joined for this year despite there being places for more. I asked the parents of that child why more of her neighbours hadn’t applied as their own local school is pretty poor. She said they couldn’t be bothered and would rather walk to a rubbish local school than drive 10 mins to a fantastic school that’s get excellent results.

This idea that hoards of parents are desperately trying to get into better schools just isn’t replicated in my experience. It may of course be different in cities where the excellent school is only a few hundred metres away from the under performing local school.