Random allocation of places (not by distance) : thoughts and experiences?

"Or am I missing something?"

Yes. In fact, you mentioned it yourself:

"I am talking about densely populated cities with good public transport"

[emphasis added]

So, you're basically just talking London here?

I mentioned earlier on this thread that I live near a city of 220,000 people which has 14 secondary schools.

There is a reasonable bus service in the city but all of the routes are generally via the central bus station in the middle of the city.

So to go from one part of the city to another it is necessary to go into the centre of town and then get another bus to whatever your destination is.

If a pupil were to go to a school in a different area of the city that may well involve a 10-15 min walk to the nearest bus stop, wait for the bus to arrive and then a 15 min bus ride into the centre. Wait for another 10-15 mins to catch another bus followed by a 15 min bus ride and then a 10-15 min walk to the school.

In contrast, most school catchment areas in the city have a radius of no more than one mile. That is going to take maybe 20 minutes to walk.

Creates way too much traffic.

My dc went to secondary 5 minutes walk away. They left at 8.50 and got home at 3:40. Plenty of time to do other stuff. I would have hated them having to travel.

I think it's a terrible idea, but I'm in Scotland with fixed catchments, so it's a bigger leap.

One if the best things about fixed catchments is knowing everyone in your local area, the huge number of friendships made on the walk/bus to school. Nobody is driven to our high school and less than 5% drive to primary.

Private school pupils come from all over and the driving just completely ruins the whole area around them. A school should be part of society/community and not totally separate. There is so much interplay between our local shops, theatres etc because the school is part of the same community.

The schools just represent the areas, most people are happy moving for am extra two bedrooms and the school only being a bit worse. It's all on gradients rather than fixed lines. You are kidding yourself if you don't think that richer parents wouldn't play the system, whatever it is.

Thats an argument for aptitude testing really.

My child goes to a lottery based application school and two of their friends from primary go to a different lottery based secondary school.

They are all really happy with the school. The only downside I see so far is the "local" friendship group. Because it is lottery based, kids come from all different directions and week end and holiday meet ups are not easy where as at primary school everyone is local and lives within a few streets.

I don't live in Brighton, but where I do live, the outcome in that scenario would depend on which (if any) schools were over subscribed and how close you each lived to them.

I live near to a city of around 220,000 people. There are 14 secondary schools covering the city and surrounding rural areas (along with 5 special schools).

Some of these schools have a specified catchment area and others don't. There are 8 with catchment areas and 6 without (two of those six are religious in nature).

But when you look at the over subscription policy of the schools, even the ones with a catchment area, then they all state that if the school is oversubscribed at any particular criteria then it will be proximity to the school that will be the tie-breaker.

Kingsdale can indeed have pupils applying from living across the road and from 25 miles away and the 25 miles kid can get a place and across the road kid doesn't.
I think it's an awful system.
I believe they are changing it so pupils attending certain local primary schools will get higher priority.
For primary and lower secondary everyone should just go to their local school and all schools should be as good or bad as each other.

But presumably this is also a problem with the current system, that typically allocates on distance, as the pupils wanting to study music, MFL etc may not be the ones that live closest to that school? Is there a reason why it would be worse under the random system?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5149998-scrap-school-catchments-now

It would only really work if all schools had the same offer available though.

DD's school offers music, 3 MFL, Latin, Classical Civ and a huge range of sports and extra curriculars.

Of our 3 local options, only 1 offers music. One offers 2 languages. None offer Latin or Classical Civ and the extra curricular offer is pathetic at all of them.

Lots of parents won't care about Music or MFL or Latin, a significant number will.

Are we just saying to kids, tough... parents can fund music and languages out of school because our ideology of restricting choice makes things fairer?

In the end it doesn't - some parents will have the resources... time and money... to send their kids to private music, JDs and orchestras. Some won't and so their kids will just miss out.

There is already a State Plus system, this would exacerbate it.

It was on the concept of random allocation in general. Almost nobody was in favour.

I think that one of the down sides may be that if you didn't get the school you wanted it would feel more unfair than using a system (eg distance or whatever). It may not actually be more unfair (especially given your point about house prices near good schools) but it may feel unfair because people don't like to think that such a big decision was just down to random chance / bad luck rather than some kind of accepted system.

Alvin Roth has a great book on this, essentially no- everyone gets admittance to the highest school they ranked that also accepts them. It works similarly to the medical match but instead of 'ability' or the priorities usually given (distance, siblings etc) its based on random numbers.

There was a big thread on this a year ago and it wasn't popular.

There are also huge complaints locally about Kingsdale having lottery entry which means that kids from 20+ miles away get places and kids 200 metres away don't.

I think that, yes, the system could be designed to avoid the type of situation that you describe by allowing for people's preferences on their application form. Imagine that all the applicants to all the schools are ranked in order using a random method. Then you go down the list, starting from the top, and allocate each child to the highest school on their preferences that isn't already full. So you will be allocated a place in school A unless it's full, in which case B unless it's full, etc. If you are allocated C and I'm below you in the list, there's no way I could get B as it must have already been full when they were doing your allocation.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if the Brighton system works that way. I'm just suggesting an approach.

I think this could work well in my local town. Lots of schools, all pretty good but quite different from each other, reasonably good bus network. I have a feeling there may be downsides I haven't thought of though!

Do they? Are you sure? Those LAs transport costs must be a nightmare?

It will only work in areas where there is already a public transport network that allows students to get independently to and from schools. Otherwise, how are the children all getting to these schools? Do they rely on lifts which puts more traffic on the roads and means that parents need to change jobs/work patterns?

I live in a city where pretty much everyone goes to their local secondary school. In practical terms our other options (of every other secondary school in the city) were second most local school (2 miles walk/cycle); local faith school (2.5 miles walk/cycle) we were unlikely to get into as not of that faith or getting a bus into the city centre to get another bus out again (at least an hour's and often closer to two hours' journey).

It can only work for small groups of schools that are close together really. Mine go to the village Secondary... it covers 6 villages and surrounding areas up to 7 miles away in one direction. If they combined this with other nearby schools, some children would be travelling for ages, probably in taxis as the school buses wouldn't be feasible. It would be an expensive mess.

But I grew up in London, there were loads of schools within a few miles. Ironically, didn't live close enough to any to be guaranteed entry. Combining schools like that into a joint catchment area, with good public transport, could work.

You have misunderstood elements of the Brighton and Hove system for community schools. Parents still put in a form with up to three preferences on it, and the schools still have admissions policies which prioritise LAC and PHAC, compelling medical or exceptional reasons to attend that school, siblings, children with FSM in the catchment area, other children with FSM (complicated as number of places in this category determined by city average of children entitled to FSM), children living in catchment and finally other children. The difference with some other areas is just that rather than using distance as the oversubscription decider in each category, they use random allocation. But parents have still expressed preferences so this still applies if they would otherwise have more than one offer.