Primary school admissions - MNHQ needs your thoughts!

tiggytape I'm curious as to what your answer is to the original post, ie: your views on the admissions system? Are your children entering primary this year?

I would like to comment on the current situation with summer born children .r dutton makes some very good points . My la have no policy that they can provide me with and are suggesting that I need to prove why my son should be treated differently ! The current statutory admissions policy does not say we need to do that or that we have to provide professional evidence ( my la wants this too ! ) I do not feel I'm asking anything other than what is allowed within law ie for my son to start school at compulsory school age . Ie the term following his fifth birthday .

Im afraid you are contradicting yourself there my friend. You are amitting that delaying entry is "a better deal" but your reasons for oposing it is that " policy should not allow it"? And that "clued up parents succesfully delaying entry (almost unvariably for very good reasons not just because they dont want their child to be the youngest but because of the implications of it) have. again. A better deal?? Make up your mind and if you cant understand why a parent want to delay entry why do you opose it??? Its like being oposed to the big bang theory just because you cant understand it...

I've found it moderately stressful here. I'm fairly hopeful to get into our first choice school as it's only about 100m away but we've applied for summer born status which has dragged on. Although I was given encouraging noises by the LEA they did say they would let me know by Easter and I've still not heard anything. Rang and emailed last week and have had no-one get back to me. Places allocated next week and I've no idea if we will be able to delay for 12months or not :((

I'm the mother of a late August boy due to start this year age 4y 1w. At this age there is such a huge difference. My son is bright but he's not interested in mark making or learning to read - against children who are 25% older than him (have I got that right?) he's going to struggle and tbh I'm more concerned about his confidence taking a hit.

I live in a county famous among the summer born campaigners as being incredibly inflexible. I know with no developmental delays, not prem etc, there is simply no point in trying to get him to start reception next year.

As for other issues, I don't know what would be best. It's not fair that someone living literally next door to a school can't get in due to sibling numbers, but nor is it fair to expect people to pick up children from different schools at the same time - it's simply not possible without incurring expense for breakfast/after school clubs etc.

I do feel travel expenses for children allocated a school too far away do need to be reviewed to consider age/needs and funding a parent's bus fare etc. I wouldn't even consider sending DS on public transport alone when he starts school (who would send a just turned 4yo alone?) but bus fares daily for me as well would be ridiculous. Luckily, this shouldn't be an issue for us but for many it is.

Oh and to all the people that state that the Catholic Churches and Schools are full of the White MC, ou obviously have never step foot in a church.
Our parish and school is very diverse with lots of different nationalities and languages spoken.
DH and I both went to Catholic schools, were both very diverse, African, West Indian, British English, Asian, South American. We also had lots of families from Malta and there were no MC families and guess what the school was a top performing school.
If you read your posts back, what a lot of you are insinuating is that it is only white MC who push their children!
Absolute Rubbish, all the parents at our school want the best for their children and push their children to do well and they are not all white and none are MC.

Thank you tiggy, so you are not connected with LA admissions or DfE, right?

Have been out all day enjoying the sunshine, just wanted to come back to a few posts regarding the Catholic Schools.
Firstly would like to point out thy Cof E schools and Catholic schools have different criteria, if you were baptised in a C ofE church, you wouldn't get up the list for a catholic school.
I appreciate CofE schools allow in non faith children and it works, the reason for this is they are not as strict (on the religious side)
For example If you had 50% non faith children in a Catholic School, what would they all do in year three when the other children take their Holy Communion and the school are actively involved in preparing them for this.
I am sure the parents of the 50% non faith children would soon pipe up if class time was being spent on this. I believe one poster on here stated, she took the course and her son started attending church as he did not want to miss out on the Communion.
As far as I know the C of E schools don't don't do this, not do have as many masses or Church involvement so of course it would be fine to have non faith children. My point is this would be very hard to implement in a Catholic School.
It just seems that everyone automatically blames the Catholic schools for the school shortages, what about the fact that the government are not building enough schools to cope with the high birth rate. Let's face it, if the Catholic schools are over subscribed anyway and you took away all faith from schools there STILL wouldn't be enough places for everyone to go, so we would all be in the same position!!

PMHull - that quotation was mine. And I've answered below earlier today why I think it's naïve to believe that making deferral a simple 'on request' process won't institutionalise even greater privilege than exists currently. I don't think the current process is good, no. I think your alternative is sadly worse.

As for the idea that funding would be forthcoming for childcare to help people to defer. I can't even begin to express how unlikely that is given how little help exists at present and the economic circumstances.

tiggytape can you please categorically confirm that you are NOT working for an LA or connected to LA or DfE admissions in any way. I have hard time reading your very well-informed, yet biased posts. It will just make it clear which side you are on in this matter.

Reception class is NOT play based. We went to our preferred school and after the claim it is all "playbased" we were invited to go to the classroom one of the reception classes where the kids were sitting in semicircle, pads/pens in hands writing down 3+0=... 2+4=... or some such. Next door in year 1 there were examples of written work on the walls - "reception" handwriting and "year1" examples for the same kids side by side to demonstrate improvements. Sorry, it is either ALL playbased or please make sure that children who start at CSA have access to this year that clearly contains formal phonics/writing/arithmetic instructions.

tiggytape
Re: "As I've been saying repeatedly, it takes a fair amount of educational and societal privilege to engage with the system enough to consider deferring and to have the financial and other resources to do so. An option to defer is likely to just result in the most vulnerable still starting at just turned four."

Firstly, what you describe is what's currently needed to battle against schools and councils in order to try to achieve CSAge entry into Reception. The DfE's Code means that what you describe is PRECISELY what is happening - so surely you'd agree this is unfair?

Secondly, if the DfE made it absolutely clear that a CSAge start in Reception is possible, and this was communicated widely through Surestart centres and media articles, and parents knew they wouldn't have to fight for it or fear loss of a school year later on (the latter has already put many off), then this would also improve the situation.

Finally, the IFS said in 2007 that there may be a need to ensure extra financial funding for some families who may otherwise feel pressured into enrolling their child at age 4 (and therefore not really have a real 'choice').

So all this is possible, and the answer can no longer be 'just leave it the way it is' or 'better the devil we know'.

We've not even applied yet and I'm already stressed. My August born is due to start in 2016. I don't know yet whether he will be ready but I've been shocked to learn that it will be very difficult to allow him to start reception a year later if we decide that he's not. We live in an area where schools are over subscribed so most likely we will just be grateful to get him a place rather than fight for what is best for him. It's a crazy system!

tiggytape

Reception class is not simply "play based".

There is a significant amount of formal education; numeracy and literacy (including a controversial emphasis on phonics), not to mention the fact that the child is 'in school'.

I agree with everyone that has posted to say that the system is not ideal (part-time attendance can even be difficult to negotiate for 4 year-old children), but early years experts have been trying to make governments listen to them for years, and the political will is simply not there to increase our CSAge.

Therefore, in the meantime, we need to work with what we CURRENTLY have, and this is a CSAge that means summer born children at least - who after all are the group of children MOST adversely affected by the current system - should be able to choose between starting school at age 4 or age 5.

Remember there are parents of September-born children who will say their child was 'ready' to go into Reception at age 4 but had to 'wait' a whole year and be bored in pre-school. This demonstrates that there WILL be summer born children still entering school at age 4, and hence the avoidance of creating a new cut-off line for spring-born children.

"PenguinsandtheTantrumofDoom yes but clearly starting school is much less damaging at 4.5 than at 4 (just look at the statistics). The older children start school the less important the birth month would be. If you also introduce flexibility you further reduce unfairness as those that are less developed will be the eldest."

I've said quite a few times I see the benefit in starting later. Yes, if the youngest was 4.5 that would help.

You don't ensure that the less developed would be the eldest by giving a parental option to defer. As I've been saying repeatedly, it takes a fair amount of educational and societal privilege to engage with the system enough to consider deferring and to have the financial and other resources to do so. An option to defer is likely to just result in the most vulnerable still starting at just turned four.

TwoOdd - No. Other areas generally have one of two approaches. They either make everyone start later. Or they are able to be more flexible by having much lower population density and slack in the system. It isn't impossible to change things. But not enough people want to to put it on the political agenda.

PenguinsandtheTantrumofDoom yes but clearly starting school is much less damaging at 4.5 than at 4 (just look at the statistics). The older children start school the less important the birth month would be. If you also introduce flexibility you further reduce unfairness as those that are less developed will be the eldest.

I started reception in 1960. You started the term before your 5th birthday so I started at Easter as I was a July birthday. After September us summer borns did an extra term in reception before joining the rest of our class in year 1. We didn't have a frenetic curriculum, just the 3Rs and country dancing if my memory serves me right, so we caught up easily

Those claiming it's impossible to create a fair system to all children completely fail to address the point that this "summer born" issue does not exist elsewhere in the world.