Labour reviewing school admission criteria

Kids should go to their local to make it easy for them to get there and create a sense of community. All schools should be providing an equally good education level.

It won't solve anything. All it will end up doing is moving problems around. The issue isn't what school a child goes to. It starts long before that. It's related to class, lack of social mobility, poor cultural capital, deprivation, etc. Bad schools are bad due to them being in deprived areas, where there are typically more behavioural problems, higher staff burnout, etc. You need to tackle the root cause, which is unfortunately very difficult.

Exactly - instead of doing this, it would be better to fund the schools better, not to pretend that somehow if you jiggle a few kids around that’s “levelling up”. Improving opportunities requires investment, social change, good teaching and opportunities in deprived areas. Not this.

Exactly - instead of doing this, it would be better to fund the schools better, not to pretend that somehow if you jiggle a few kids around that’s “levelling up”. Improving opportunities requires investment, social change, good teaching and opportunities in deprived areas. Not this.

…just about sums up all that’s wrong with the country … this thread is just a chorus of “me me me me”. Not interest in how we improve society as a whole, how we make things better for everyone. It’s goes back to Thatcher as her “no such thing as society”

Thank goodness we weren’t like this when the welfare state was formed…

It seems like an attempt at a cheap (free?) way to raise standards that could surely be achieved by increasing the payment to the school for each FSM child? Or payments based on postcode?

Also a PP mentioned it being hard to get on FSM now - this is true but I found out from a recent thread that once on FSM you don't get taken off them for much longer. Mine were on FSM while I did a degree but at soon as I got a job they were removed 6yrs later they were no attracting longer pupil premium funding. So I don't know if PP covers a much wider range of families now than it did/ could be a blunter tool for assessing deprivation?

The catchment for our school is about 500 metres. There's a lovely community feel with all the children living so close together. It would be gutting to miss out on a place and not be part of it because of some stupid fucking labour policy.
What about the benefits to your health and the environment when you can walk to your local school?

Surely they could resolve this by lottery based application eg places allocated randomly within x miles of the school.

I hope as feck any policy doesnt supercede sibling priority. I've got 2 years until my youngest joins his brother!

I live in an area which is in the catchment for the only excellent secondary in the area. I know our houses have a premium because of this. Several parents I know personally also rented for the duration required then moved after securing the school place. Sibling rights are still a thing here so they only had to rent for about a year.
I also know plenty who've spent years sitting in church to secure the vicar's nomination for faith schools. There's always a loophole if you look

I think there'll be some temporary seperations, resignations and sabbaticals of parents gaming the system to secure places if this goes through. If someone was prepared to pay over the odds for a house before, taking a temporay drop in income is probably cheaper in the long run.

So it will improve equality, in that people who have purposely bought a house in the catchment area of a reasonably good state school, will now have to send their children to (probably) a worse one in a rougher area.

It’ll be interesting to see how any councils that adopt this, will fare in future council elections.

And meanwhile, I dare say anyone in any government position, whether local or national, who be adversely affected and who can afford it, will send their kids to independent schools instead.

…as a Governor at a Catholic School this is ever present to us. We have a wide demographic, and try absolutely to take in, and support, children from all backgrounds. We have a high number of pupil premium young people, Looked after children, SEN (diagnosed and Undiagnosed). Our job is to instil ambition in them, to help them see other options, support them to be the best they can be etc. We also support the parents, who have often been failed by the education system.

I can’t believe that we think children shouod be kept at poor performing schools due to “traffic” .. maybe the “best” school is the local school, but they are kept out due to restrictive admissions policies ? Why the assumption that children will be bussed in from all over?

Surely the remit of education should be providing the best experience for all young people.

But no where else in the country has the same public transport infrastructure as London.

Level the playing field? Get rid of church schools then. Massive hypocrites.

"I can see people taking a sabbatical from their job as a solicitor and working in min wage retail for the duration of the school application cycle in order for their child not to be de prioritised.,"

That won't happen.

The right-wing press is full of wild speculation about what "could" be the impact of proposed changes, trying to whip up a fury of opposition against a straw-man.

The proposals will not stop childen in leafy suburbs from going to leafy-suburb schools. They will require LEAs to carefully direct their publicity budget to ensure that more disadvantaged children don't miss out on places they might already be entitled to due to their parents/carers not being as well-informed as the sharp-elbowed middle classes.

The obligation will be to ensure equality of opportunity. There is no proposal to remove any rights from comfortably privileged families. The nice schools will not fill up with loads of nasty poor people. Schools which are located in areas where poor people cannot afford to live may be required to reserve a number of places equal to or close to the LEA average for pupils receiving pupil premium. You need a lot of cognitive dissonance in your head to object to that and not acknowledge that what you are saying is "we want there to be taxpayer-funded state schools that only wealthy families are allowed to use, poor children can go to schools that are just for poor children" - if you actually believe that your children need to only attend schools with other wealthy children then you need to use private education, not state education.

The new social contract for middle and higher earners: your tax will keep increasing but you will be both excluded from using public services, and taxed again if you opt to fund private provision.

Charging VAT on private school fees and then discriminating against middle class parents accessing state schools in the next breath…

I’m increasingly radicalised against all of our political parties, as they seem happy to use me as a cash machine but increasingly exclude me from the social benefits I’m funding.

Agree with this. Sounds good and nicey nicely, but the consequences like this make it ridiculous. Spend money getting all schools up to scratch and keep kids local where possible.

A lot of Catholic faith schools were originally set up to educate the children of the poor workers; certainly in the north West of England which had a high Catholic population, predominantly of Irish origin and with a lot of children in each family

I live in Oxford which has a lot of indépendant schools. There are coaches but these maybe account for 40-50% of pupils, the rest are driven. I usually cycle to work but if I need to drive, it can take over an hour to travel 6 miles because of the level of school traffic. Buses from one side of the city to the other are few and far between, usually requiring at least one change. Loads of towns outside London just don’t have the infrastructure to support this.