Hell hath no fury like a middle-class parent scorned

Evenhope it's amazing how quickly schools can change! I know of at least one teacher to leave the profession due to the state of leadership now. It's so sad. This is such a rubbish area for sec schools, especially if like us you live in a village in the middle of nowhere therefore you're bottom of everyone's list.

Swedishmum my DS went to that appalling school !!

He left 4 years ago and it has rapidly gone downhill in that short time following the ill health retirement of the fab Head and the death of the Deputy.

While DS1 was there, there was a waiting list to get in.

Our council has used the 'lowering' birth rate as a convenient excuse for not expanding the popular schools. What they have ignored is the fact that our area is one where family homes are more affordable than the nearest town hence there is more pressure for school places. They don't look at the demographics of individual areas just the birth rate overall and the number of places overall.

Did someone call the Pedant Police?
I think fizzbuzz meant fewer schools ...

Shame on them for so obviously caring about their dc's future!

Wait till you are there yourself UD, your OP sounded rather nasty tbh

Aaah, but the birth rate is dropping round here UD, we have had lots of bumpf through our school from the council about this

I think there are something like 3000 less children in primary/infant school than in scondary ATM.

The council will be looking to make less secondary schools available because of this. The merger you are talking about is the start of it. I think there will be other closures/mergers of secondary schools soonish..2011 I think is the year....

I remember gtting the info on this because started thinking...hmmm will I still have a job then?

Dunno about the generational thing UQD. My mum made a lot of effort to get me into the secondary school I went to, and certainly looked at schools before moving to the area I grew up in. That was all encompassed within the 70s.

Surely quite a lot to do with population changes? I was born in 69, so beginning of a drop in the birth rate, hence not a huge amount of pressure on school places. But AFAIK the birth rate has bumped up a lot just recently, though I don't know exactly when the rise started, plus the I word has increased numbers of children as well. Can't just magic up a school from nowhere.

I was a middle class moaner a few weeks ago - fortunately I won ds's appeal. I was appealing against an appalling school - nearly all 4s and notice to improve on recent Ofsted (though I know Ofsted can make mistakes), recent pepper spray incident (Y7 and a couple of parents arrested), abysmal results and most importantly for us, no support for dyslexic ds as due to his extremely hard work, he'd be going in with well above average results for the school. I went to look round as a prospective teacher - on my way in a girl swore clearly at HT who didn't pick her up on it. The school is in an area the Cat Protection League won't rehome cats in because too many of them get abused. AND it's miles and miles away from home - in our rural area we end up on the bottom of every list because the town's expanding and places are being filled. No way would my ds have gone there. Luckily he's off to a selective school.
I've worked in all sorts of challenging schools and enjoyed it. I become a little less left wing when it comes to damaging my son's chances in life.

Well where I grew up there were no sixth forms at all in the borough so it was tertiary college for my a-levels.

oops

have just realised i answered a post by nkf from much earlier today - I see there is a whole page of posts since then.

must concentrate!

true nkf - otherwise why do people apply to schools that they clearly have very little chance of getting into - there seems to be some kind of belief that their passionate desire that their kid goes to x school will somehow translate itself into a place. I have seen lots of people disappointed because of this lately.

But why wouldn't they want to???? Why would they want to go to 6th form, when they have all that stuff available?

They have much better facilities and equipment than 6th forms. I and a colleague have had to teach 6th form and GCSE in the same room at the same time due to not enough space in the school. An interesting experience..........

But UQ, there is the shiny new 6th form college at Hillsborough.....I teach 6th form in one of those ...affluent schools . Some of us just grew up here before everything took off....

Pretty bog standard equipment throughout, no glossy expensive 6th form college stuff.

Well, I'm ancient and there was a pecking order in the schools in my town. I think the difference now is that we have access to moe information that we have to weigh up. Before, you went on results and behaviour and local gossip. Now, there are league tables and contextual value added and OFSTED reports and so on....

I think you can trace the beginnings back further than that, UQD. When I was little our local primary school had a reputation for no-one ever passing their 11+, so middle-class parents used to send their kids to the next school along.

I think it just wasn't formalised in the explicit way it is now, so only reasonably clued-up parents worked out that there was a system to be played. Which worked in their favour but against everybody less devious ambitious.

I think it is also more of a city thing uqd. We live in West Yorkshire so theoretically a metropolitan area, but we live in a smallish village with one one-class-entry primary school. We are also right on the border between Kirklees, Wakefield and Barnsley which, of course, also throws up the cross-boudnary issues. There is an extremely low chance of DS and DD going to any other secondary than the nearest one that is about 3 miles away. But that is some time away as the children are 7 and 4 and we have the middle school system here - so no secondary until 14. But middle school also pretty much mapped out.

Allegedly, UQD

Our (male) local vicar is, ahem, rather fit - but also extremely happily married. Doesn't stop the local mums trying on the charm though ....

Well, UQD, I looked a bit like that last year.

Because everyone else had moved house/gone private/slept with the local vicar whilst I couldn't/wouldn't. Got in to first choice eventually via waiting list. Not getting first choice was not disaster but certainly not good - especially when everyone else had got exactly what they wanted (at a price)