School admissions transport help

How does this comment help the OP??

The section about school transport was buried in the middle of the school applications guidance. I found it after I’d rang the school admissions team to talk about it.

So it was there online but not obvious or easy to find.

This information should be on the front page of their school application form.

I rang up the school admissions team at my LA (not Kent) to ask about how the free transport worked before we put in our secondary school application.

They basically said that they were only obligated to provide free transport to an offered school if we had our nearest schools as higher preferences on our application form.

So no chance of free transport anywhere if our nearest school wasn’t listed as a preference, regardless of whether we’d have actually qualified for a space there.

They will have allocated your closest school to those who applied, before allocating any remaining places to people such as yourself who did not apply but had no other place.

So there may be people who live further away than you do who listed it, and got a place.

But at the point your place was considered they had become fully or over-subscribed.

However, you should be high up the waiting list if you live relatively close.

Better to be at a poorly performing school nearby, where friends will be close, than one miles away with such a journey.

Good luck: I hope a waiting list or appeal place for one of your preferences will come up.

Fair banding has been around for at least 15 years. Some campaigners pushed for all schools to adopt it on the basis it would give pupils from poor backgrounds a better chance of gaining entry to high performing schools.

Most of the academies in Kent that use fair banding use distance as the tie breaker. Most of those that don't prioritise pupils living within their catchment area. I can only find one that reserves a proportion of places for those living outside their catchment.

For your allegation to work, the schools concerned must be getting a lot of applications from high performing pupils living outside the immediate area and few from such pupils living close to the school. Is that what you are saying?

No idea where you’re from or what schools that have this system in place you are familiar with, but, the two academy schools I am specifically basing my opinion on are not in areas with an, overall, well off demographic. The pupils nearby, who could have walked to the local schools in question in less than ten minutes, are not from families that live there because they can ‘afford’ it, it’s an established community of people whose children went to the local primary schools that previously (ie prior to this change in admission policy) could have expected to have been admitted to their local high school. Instead there are significant numbers of them now being bussed out to out of area schools. This is very much because those schools are competing for academically able students who might otherwise have chosen to go to the grammar schools out of area. They may not be ‘businesses’ but this is a business decision. ‘Fair’ banding sounds very much like a rebranding tbh. Maybe it’s different in non grammar areas.

Fair banding is not selection by the back door. Rather the opposite. It is intended to ensure that the school is truly mixed ability. It ensures the school gives as many places to pupils of middle and lower ability as they do to high achieving pupils. The people who win are the pupils of all abilities who get places at a school where they would otherwise miss out because their parents can't afford to buy a house right next to the school. Since high achievers are more likely to come from better off families, if academies didn't use fair banding the likely outcome would be that more of their intake would be high achievers.

Academy trusts are not businesses. They are charities.

I’m not sure it is a quirk of the Kent system tbh, it could be happening at Academies all over the country for all I know. It’s selection by the back door and the whole reason it’s happening here in Kent is so academy high schools can ‘compete’ with grammar schools. They can offer a ‘grammar stream’ (which they call an ‘accelerated learning’ stream) and select via their, apparently, totally legitimate, Banding Assessment test to get the students who couldn’t get places in the grammar schools but also wouldn’t have otherwise qualified for these local high schools. No one wins from this back door selection except the academy trusts business models.

You get free transport in that situation. As long as you included your nearest school as one of your choices, you are entitled to free transport if you end up being allocated a school that is more than 3 miles away.

So what happens if all your choices are the closet schools and you get allocated one fifteen miles away but there is another ten miles away you would have got in but didn’t apply to because you applied to closer ones that you may or may not have had a hope of getting into?

Plan of action:

• ask to go on waiting list for your local school, and any others you prefer to the allocated one
• think about which schools you want to appeal for, and reasons for appeal. Ofsted rating, GCSE results and travel don't normally figure. You need to be thinking about extra curricular and subjects offered. Though grounds to appeal for grammar school may be different, I haven't seen them mentioned so much, especially when she didn't pass the test
• start talking up the allocated school just in case, there must be something positive to say about it

Put your name down on the waiting list for all acceptable schools closer than the 13 mile school. This might be a better strategy than appearing for the grammars.
In a few weeks you will be able to find out where you are on the waiting list. Remember that your position can go up or down. There is a forum for 11+ exams. The people on there are very knowledgeable about the data like marks and waiting lists so you may get some clarity on likelihood of a place.

@Judashascomeintosomemoney that’s interesting, I hadn’t appreciated the quirks of the Kent system. It should be possible for the council to reach a conclusion on whether OP’s child could have secured a place at a nearer school though, and if not they’ll offer transport I would assume.

Not sure exactly where the OP is in Kent, but that particular scenario isn’t, and hasn’t been, the case here in this particular area of Kent for some years. That’s because, although academy high schools are stating that proximity is still one of their admissions criteria (and usually high on the list after looked after children and siblings) in reality, because they are allowed to run Banding Assessment tests, children living very near to the school may not be admitted even if a child living further away from the school was admitted, if it was the case that the child living closer fell in to a Band that was oversubscribed.
The year my youngest DD started secondary, there were quite a few children in her year group that put the nearest Academy High school as their first choice, knowing full well they were unlikely to get a place there (based on what had happened the previous year when the banding assessment was introduced) everyone knew they’d most likely get allocated the undersubscribed school that was a half hour bus ride away whether they put it second, third, fourth or not at all. What did happen though was they all had their transport paid for by the LA as they couldn’t be accommodated at their nearest school. Must have cost the LA a lot of money, and is presumably still doing so.

Well no, you don’t have to go to an underperforming school because of a post code lottery, your case literally proves that as you have not been allocated the underperforming school.

You instead go to a different school in a different post code if your preferences can’t accommodate you.

My understanding is LA only pays for transport if you ask to go to your nearest school and they don’t take you, but your form made it clear that you didn’t want that school therefore you must have been willing to travel.

No, but, the system used to be (in my part of Kent anyway) that if you put your nearest appropriate school as your first choice (school 1 say) and you were then not allocated it but were allocated a school that you did choose but required transport to get there (school 2), the LA had to pay for your transport. Same if you did out your nearest appropriate school but were allocated a school you didn’t choose, transport was paid for. If you didn’t put your nearest appropriate school as your first choice, or indeed any choice, and were then allocated one of your four appropriate choices that needed transport you had to pay for transport yourself.

OP’s situation is different to that as she was allocated a school she didn’t choose (that requires transport) but she didn’t put her nearest appropriate school on her form so she doesn’t fit in to the criteria for transport to be paid.

OP, I think the answer is probably that, by not putting your nearest school as your first choice, and only choosing schools that require transport, you have tacitly agreed to pay for transport or otherwise arrange for your child to get there.

I'm afraid the others are most likely correct.

If you had applied for a place at your catchment (local) school and hadn't received a place then I would expect the council to provide transport if your allocated school was over a certain number of miles away.

Unfortunately you didn't put this school on your list for some reason.

You just need to hope you can appeal for grammars or get a place at a school nearer from waiting list.

I am sure it will all work out but if it doesn't you are liable for the transport costs.

Some parents think they can fiddle the system by only putting down schools they have no chance of otherwise getting into, on the basis that they have to be given one of them. As you're discovered, this is actually creating a risk that you get assigned to random other school.

I'd suggest putting your DC down on the waiting list of any closer school you think is the preferable to the one you've been allocated, and thinking about if there is anything you can appeal on. Transport generally won't work.

Its why the general advice is to put a "safe" school as last choice.
You haven't been offered a place as People who did list it, even in last place, got allocated it, even if they lived many miles away.

Not if she would have got in to the school one mile away had she put it on the form. It all comes down to whether there are any nearer schools suitable for the age and aptitude of the child which she would have been offered a place at had she applied.

It’s whether she would have got a place if she’d applied as part of the normal admissions round, not whether she would have got a place if she applied now.

Most councils publish data on how far away the furthest child admitted in the distance category lives from school. If that number is higher than the distance you live from school, it’s likely your child would have been offered a place if she had applied and so there is no obligation on the local authority to provide transport to another, further away school.

If this is the nearest school the council can find for you then surely you are entitled to transport? You have not chosen it over a closer school.

Well yes - that’s why people pay a fortune to be in a postcode area that has better performing schools 🤷‍♀️