Labour reviewing school admission criteria

Wild suggestion: Maybe try to improve all schools rather than create a logistic chaos to all parents?

You won’t solve shit parenting in schools.

Policy might be difficult to implement. I read somewhere that definition of lower socio economic group is based on what job your parents did when kid was X age. The list of jobs not considered to be lower socio economic group were very wide ranging and would include people not on huge income. Then you have to ask - will they seek proof that parent did X job. What if they identify as lower socio economic group but their job according to the policy suggests otherwise.

I do think kids from lower socio economic groups are disadvantaged but identifying who is in that group is difficult.

‘Last year BBC had articles on how Brighton and Hove Labour council implemented similar policy, and now substancial % of school places goes to children on FSM instead of childre living closer to the school, making average % of FSM in them closer to the council average.’

thats not exactly what’s happening in Brighton, it’s a small % and was prompted by the fact that in the city most areas had a choice of 2/3 secondary schools but in the East area - the ‘poorer’ area - parents only had a choice of 1 secondary school, neither particular good at the moment though improving.

Speaking for myself alone, I don’t think that. At all.

What I do think is that changes to admissions policies is pointless and likely to be harmful to the better schools that supporters of the policy want shared around.

It wouldn’t happen anyway, because the middle class left would kick up a fuss. If your expressed values are to oppose fees and selection there’s no other way to seek advantage except through catchment chasing.

I really wish you were right @ACynicalDad but can you imagine the furore and attitude of SLTs if the new ‘posh’ families demand they improve. How can they anyway? Can’t change the teachers, can’t get more money, can’t make the other pupils attend more or be less disruptive IF these are the issues. Having been on a PTA, albeit non UK, there are only so many ways of engaging and making change happen, it’s not at the fundamental level in my experience.
It’s actually more likely these parents will be too afraid to complain and thus make things even worse for their children. They will put their heads right down and engage with tutors, tutors, tutors to make up the shortcomings. Their children will have a real opportunity to gain top school grades and awards ready for further education.

These threads often reinforce why we spend my whole income on private school.

It really is complex.

I live in such a weird area. It is a deprived town in the midlands, yet house prices have raised a lot. In the tiny area around our school we have two, huge, huge council estates (they are absolutely notorious though, you say you live near them and people wince), yet some houses that are £600-700k

None of the schools in the town are brilliant. They all have the same mix and all have issues. So we do have some families who really care and want things to improve, but not enough.

Our school has no PTA, no school events at all as they know parents will just fight. I’ve never experienced a school that has no Christmas/summer fairs, no school performances, no movie nights, no bake sales etc. it’s so sad, but I understand why they can’t do it.

My house is now worth £325k. We couldn’t actually afford to buy our own house if we were to have moved here now, prices have gone up so much in the past 5 years, but crime has gone up massively too.

I don’t understand my area at all.

I know that a lot of people think the way many o this thread do. Basically “I’m all right, Jack and devil take the hindmost.” It’s so exhausting and depressing and I wish they didn’t. You would think unenlightened self interest would make them want as well educated and engaged a population as possible.

God, this is complex. I think there is a lot to say for it, and I'm a relatively affluent person who would never vote Labour. I think there could be a lot of unintended consequences, and I hope they properly engage in any consultation. More kids travelling further will mean more cars and congestion, and a lottery will mean kids going to schools that are less suitable for them. I do think if the children of wealthier parents are better spread, there will be more skin in the game to demand they improve, and non-government resources will be directed at them, be that PTA but also spread the culture of kids with support from home into the classrooms. Still hope mine get sorted before this happens, ideally they continue to focus on raising standards and the falling birth rates may give some opportunities to close the worst schools.

Politics of envy shouldn’t be directed at school children yet again. Another ill thought through ‘quick fix’ to a huge societal problem that creates its own layer of problems. You can move children out of area, resulting in more traffic and tired children now joining the commuting masses both ways but it won’t fix the problem. Many parents from all walks of life and socio economic groups support and help their offspring, others don’t and can’t be bothered to ensure their children even attend, so how will making the journey longer help?
Yes, children can be punished for the audacity of their working and tax paying parents having probably huge mortgages on houses in the right catchments but are they guilty of anything other than hard work and aspirations for their children? Yes, of course there are many hard working parents on low wages too, I absolutely know this.
This is not meant in a controversial way when I say it absolutely is not the job of middle class parents and their offspring to ‘bring up’ school standards out of their expected catchment and it is ludicrous to suggest so.
Posters mention access to the best teachers in the better schools yet there is always outrage when it is suggested not all teachers are up to the same standards so which is true?
This is all about moving children around instead of admitting to and tackling some of the fundamental huge issues of poverty, generations of families disengaged with education and even their own children, lack of discipline, increased drug and alcohol use, non English speakers, huge amounts of SEN, a disillusionment with future opportunities to name but a few.
When schools are working don’t mess with them but start tackling the issues at the others.
The irony is that if parents are forced to have their children educated in lower standard schools they will then be able to use that to help gain scholarships to Private schools and eventually University. All with the help of tutors if necessary.

We live in a nice area with an outstanding primary school. The school was great with thriving pupils and long standing staff. Then children from a few miles away from low income families joined. At first it was just a few it was fine, then half the school was filled with them and children from the area went elsewhere. The kids were swearing and bullying children. The staff started to leave saying the children and their parents were hard work. Groups of these mums from the estate would ambush the teacher about their kids being told off. The care taker started to hang around just in case after school. When my children left, it became apparent the ratio of poor children increased to around 70%. Their parents would fight and swear at each other on the playground. One called another a C**t for looking!

The problem is, poor kids come from poor parents who display poor parenting skills. Those kids are not likely to be nice and hard working but rough and naughty. That schools ofsted rating has dropped to good recently. The head says she's never seen such horrible and aggressive parents like it before. She's stopped all discos and events because of the state parents causing trouble. There is a reason why good schools are in nice areas, because the parents are educated and parent well. Allowing lots of poor children to join will only bring it down.

Just to be clear the school doesn't make the child bright, that comes from the parents interaction and encouragement. I know many poor estate mums are going to be angry with this statement, but if it's not true why send your child to a posher school??! To get away from the local one filled with kids from the estate?! You know it's true, if it wasn't you wouldn't send them so far away! Poor mums who believes their child will become intelligent and nice just from mixing with kids from richer backgrounds. That is not the case at all. It comes from hard work and discipline.

Of course not all working class people are the same.

I wouldn’t consider a lot of the people I live around as working class as many don’t work.

I am working from home today (I use that term loosely as I am on mumsnet and looking out the window, slow day 🤣), and it’s very entertaining and sad at the same time to watch what goes on around me. I live on the main road into town and There’s always someone screaming at someone else, a fight going on outside the shop, cars screeching, those awful road bikes going up and down with people doing wheelies on them, police sirens. The council planed some saplings all along the road last week. It took two days for them all to be vandalised and snapped in two. Every single one of them.

I can only talk about what I see, day in, day out.

So it’s harder for any child to learn. Are you arguing for this for your dc? You’d like them to be in a school that has more disruption?

I’m not suggesting that the parents/kids who care have any duties towards others. More that if you spread the disruptive kids more evenly and therefore thinly across schools they will have less impact. And it’s fairer.

Currently we have some schools doing well because of a very involved demographic, and then some schools which get a very high % of the disruptive kids - as everyone who possibly can has avoided that school by moving house/faith/grammar/private. So anyone who wants to do well but ends up at that school because their parents weren’t sufficiently rich, in control of their housing situation, or clued up is stuffed. That’s not fair and not how the state system was supposed to work.

Yeah it’s a sorry state isn’t it.

I don’t think a lot of people realise how bad it can be. I certainly didn’t when I first moved here. The first day dd started, two mums in front of me at pick up laid into each other, there were hair extensions flying everywhere and a lot of the other parents were cheering them on. I went home absolutely shocked. I’d come from a school in the Home Counties that was the complete opposite in every way!

Now, five years on, it doesn’t even register with me. I’ve become so desensitised to it, a couple of parents scraping the playground doesn’t even interest me enough to glance over for more than a second. I sometimes don’t even notice. How sad is that?

I have to say though, I can’t fault the staff and teachers. Some children thrive at that school, mine have. They have been very honest with me at times, told me that they can’t support dd with her learning as much as they want to due to having to deal with behaviour issues in class. They gave me advice on what extra tuition to go for, what books to buy. Her year 5 teacher would email me extension work he thought she should be doing but that he just didn’t have time to support her with in class, he was also very supportive with 11+ and gave up one lunch hour a week to sit with dd and go through test papers.

So at my children’s school, if you want them to support you, they will. But that requires giving the teachers respect, speaking to them like they are human beings and not people who are out to get you, working with them for the benefit of your child, working with them all to try and make the school a better place, and ultimately, teaching your children how to behave by setting an example of how to act.

Unfortunately, there is a proportion of society who can’t and won’t do that. That’s does mean that other children miss out. My dd didn’t have a year. 6 residential. The school hasn’t done one in years due to behaviour issues. they say at the start of year 6 they will assess and they never go ahead.

They just can’t trust a lot of the children to be taken away, it’s not safe for them, the staff and the other children (another parent who had older children there told me that there was an arson attempt on the last year 6 residential they did, so they stopped them altogether after that).

We have just finished attendeding a small outstanding catholic school in a very middle class area and the parents were the issue 100 percent 🤷‍♂️ 75 percent of them were middle class though !

I just find it sad reading parts of this thread to see how working class people are viewed :( not so much on if you agree with this proposal or not but the way working class people are spoken about like they are all the same.

Schools are good (in my opinion) because of the parents. If parents don't give a toss, the best teaching in the world isn't going to change that.

Is it important that all dc face more disruption? How does a child who has parents who care instil that to any other child, and why should they?

There are barely any Surestart centres left. They were extremely effective when they were accessible to everyone.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68763942?app-referrer=deep-link

You can’t just swop teachers - it’s not the army, they are not deployed.
The solution would probably be to offer enhanced pay to work in schools in certain post codes to make the jobs more appealing, but that would be a whole can of worms to open.

There is absolutely a massive problem with the disparity between different state schools. And of course it’s down to the parents not the schools.

Parents who are more engaged and better off seek out a few particular schools, pay higher prices to be in catchment, the results of those schools rise. Meanwhile the less favoured schools go the opposite way.

Comprehensives are no longer comprehensive as a result.

How do you fix that? You definitely need to make changes at the intake level, but not sure this is the answer. Some kind of lottery for all kids within a reasonable commuting area of a school maybe? Oh and get rid of bloody faith schools obviously.

My local secondary is rubbish, but we will supplement at home. You really can't push the people who are paying for everything further to the back of the list - it's ridiculous.

So the middle earners get shafted again? Not the rich or those that don't work. OK. No wonder lots of young people are finding reasons not to work - there's no point. Have a shit quality of life and work or have a shit quality of life and don't work. No brainer.