Primary school admissions - MNHQ needs your thoughts!

Penguins...

summerborn parents wouldn't have to be 'clued up' if the CURRENT schools admission code was less subjective. Parents also wouldn't have to be 'clued up' if the DfE did their job and informed parents of their rights to request a reception start at CSAge; starting by ensuring admissions authorities have their school admissions legislation up to date (which many do not)!

The school starting age is a separate issue. The summerborn campaign is campaigning for fair and equal access to an education for children starting reception at CSAge. It's not about having the policy 'run around parents', it's about the parents not having to 'run around the policy'. It's the policy, the code, that is the problem.

It also becomes a problem when a child is forced straight into year one completely missing a years education. I don't think you get that there IS a compulsory school age in the UK and our children should not be penalised by starting at CSAge.

It's not a case of 'readiness' either. Children should not have to be assessed for starting school ON TIME at CSAge.

It is our absolute right to start our children at CSAge.

Brilliant point RDutton, somehow it is always getting missed. I don't want my child to start a year early not because of some idiotic competitive advantage over others that some seem to attribute to my decision-making process, but because after researching the subject I (and not some box-ticking LA bureaucrat) concluded that my child will benefit from one extra year of unstructured play, where she is given an opportunity to develop executive functioning - ability to focus, prioritise, assess risks, self-control... all those skills that are developing v rapidly in the early childhood, but totally neglected in a formal instruction-led setting.

Besides, she is very physical, her language skills are behind that of her peers (but we are a trilingual family, so I am not overly concerned), so she will really struggle if started school one year EARLY than legally obliged to.

All it would do is further institutionalise disadvantage. Great if you are the privileged child of engaged and educated parents who have deferred you to fall at the top of a 15 month age bracket. Not so great if you are the youngest in the year and have no such privilege.

Will all due respect this is utter rubbish penguin If you had any interest in how the system functions right now you would understand that this is precisely the situation when articulate, well-educated, resilient, well-off (because "evidence" costs money) parents are able to just through the hoops that LA and DfE created for them leaving vulnerable children of tired, poorly informed, disinterested parents at a disadvantage. If there was a universal right for the parents to decelerate, there would be none of this 1. Postcode Lottery and 2. Law of the jungle where the fittest parents win.

So would I Ice. I think we are a minority though. Which party is standing on a more tax ticket (for average people)?

Well I would pay more tax for that!

I want rid of faith schools.

Our only local outstanding primary is CofE. It's also really sexist in that very subtle so ingrained they don't even notice way that church related groups and activities often are.

I sent my child to a school that was a better fit for my child but is now in special measures.

I would have liked a better choice!!

Ice - that would be great. We would all have to pay a lot more tax. And there would be difficulties that children are not necessarily at the same point of development in all areas. Nor is their development a straight line - so they could jump ahead or lag back through the system.

RDutton - but public policy cannot run around every parent not wanting their child to be youngest. Someone has to be. And it certainly should not be facilitating clued up parents getting a far 'better' start for their child, and in the process making things worse for other summer children who start at just turned four . If the school starting age is too young then formal schooling should shift later. If certain children are not ready for school at that age they should be individually assessed - not eligible or not based on whether their birthday is summer or the last day of spring.

wouldn't it be fundamentally better to have children in a class that were all at a similar developmental point in a subject than all the same age?

If and when a parent turns up with a kid waiting to start school they could just assess them and put them in the right group?

Also find all the references to 'catchments' confusing as no schools in the two areas I have looked in to have catchments. They select on distance, so the 'catchment' effectively changes each year depending on the number of applicants.

I don't find comparisons between the overcrowded SE of England, and Scotland, to be particularly helpful, tbh. Can you imagine how large schools would have to become if they had to accommodate every Reception child in their catchment? Even if schools have the odd extra classroom, they don't have the space to expand indefinitely, and it would be a crazy waste of resources to do so. Scotland doesn't have the same population density and so does not share the same challenges. Some posters have already alluded to growing problems in areas where the population is growing there - I think that parts of Edinburgh have had some problems with catchments.
The issue is always going to be one of how to ration places when demand exceeds supply. In Hampshire in catchment siblings come before other catchment children, with out of catchment siblings following behind. There's still some cars driving to local schools here - but nobody will have dared move away while still needing places for some years now.

^^TiggyTape "Many parents with no concerns about maturity or readiness would also tactically delay purely for the advantage it would bring their child to be the oldest in the whole year. A lot of parents actively want that even where no delay or problems exist"

The thing is though, compulsory school age is what it is, the term after your 5th Birthday. Of course if starting our children at compulsory school age in reception is going to give our child an 'advantage' then we are going to take it. We want what is going to be in our child's best interests, don't we? It shouldn't matter whether or not a parent has 'concerns about maturity or readiness', it's about a point in law, primary legislation; compulsory school age. It is our absolute right to start our children at CSAge. You have said yourself it will give children an advantage, that's what we want isn't it...to allow all our children the best start possible (under law)?!

I know Tremolo. The reality is that the system would only get better with more slack - at the moment there are so few spare places.

I agree with this one:

1. LAC and SEN
2. catchment children
3. non catchment siblings
4. non catchment

In our area it a joke how many well off parents suddenly buy a local (i.e. practically next to the school) run down house and pretend to live there for a few months, renting it out as soon as the place is achieved and the coast is clear. Always make me laugh when you see a range rover and a merc outside a run down 2 bed semi. Our local schools are very good and although the primary intake year for my son was low by the end of year 6 it was full as so many kids had transferred out of private schools.

Penguins Yes, of course, you're right - there is just no good way to sort that problem out that I can see.

You'd think the Christian thing to do would be to provide a high quality education to anyone, regardless of their parents' faith (or lack thereof), wouldn't you.

Where I grew up, the catholic schools dod all the religion for the parents (and may well still do). Your P3 teacher would do all the prep for your first communion and the event would take place in school time (with proud parents turning up to the church to watch). In P7 the school would see you confirmed. I suspect the numbers of children actually doing either would drastically fall if it were up to parents to make sure children went to Sunday school etc to be prepared. I didn't realise that English catholic schools didn't do this until DH (who went to catholic school in England) laughed at me about it.

Yay to DocHollywood above regarding faith schools. Good idea imho and I say that as a card carrying Catholic of a child in a faith school.

My child got a place at an oversubscribed faith school simply because we moved 170 miles during his Reception year and it was the only local school that had a space at that point. More to the point I was not Cathokic and nor was DS. He is now and so am I simply because he wanted to go to church and do his Holy Communion with some friends. I did the adult Catholic course at that point as I wanted to know more about it. I got co-opted into the church choir rapidly and love religious music generally so enjoyed this. Four years on and the religion ship has well and truly sailed for DS but now he HAS to attend church as I am in the choir haha.

Recently the other Catholic school in the town failed their OFSTED (okay about four/five years ago) and there was panic by the Catholic Eductaion people as pressure came onto the school to become an Academy. They didn't want that as apparently that would mean they would have to reserve 50% of spaces for non Catholic children. Personally I would not have been upset to see this, our school already has a large number of non Catholic children in any case including a 5% Muslim intake.

I find it ridiculous tnat a non Catholic child in a house right by the school gate can be refused a place and end up traipsing a mile away to another school. Madness,

Tremolo- I don't think you could get into value judgments. What if you lost your job and your house was repossessed? What if you were bereaved or divorced? What if you had to move to a bigger house so a disabled sibling could have a ground floor room? It would get very subjective very fast.

I agree about not knowing anything with the first! If you are not in the loop, where do you find stuff out?
This is where GPs' registers need to be used. Every year LAs could get surgeries to send in the amount of pre-schoolers and their ages that they have on their books. This way, booklets could be sent to out to relevant families detailing the application process.
Of more importance, would be the amount of 2 year olds that will need a school place in 2 years time. It's not until the applications are in that the LA realises they are short of school places for that year! Ridiculous.

I think that there should be more of an effort to inform parents about the process well in advance.

I'm thinking mostly of those parents of a first/only child who haven't had any real contact with the system previously. I remember from sorting out DD's school many years ago how bewildered I felt in trying to get the right information. We ended up simply putting in an application for the catchment school. none of this making a few choices and hoping.

It didn't even occur to us that you might want to select a school other than the catchment, so it was lucky for us that the school was good for DD, and later for DS. so this summer will mark the end of 11 years associating with this primary school.

Perhaps the question of whether you are considered under the sibling or distance/catchment rule should depend on whether you can prove 1. you have been renting the whole time and 2. you were served with an eviction notice on your 'in catchment' property.

If faith was taken out of schools completely, vicars and other leaders of the local churches could step up and offer after school classes for those parents who so can't imagine a non-faith education for their children. It would be interesting to see what the take up was.

And conveniently seem less gripped by the faith they discovered once they've secured the schools place.

I honestly don't see why any places should be of children whose parents practise a particular faith. Educating any and all children is exactly what the churches should be trying to achieve.

yes, yes to JassyRadlett's post.

Round here, the CofE and RC schools are disproportionately white British and MC. They are attached to particular churches. So even if you're a devout Christian, if your preference is to worship at one of the other churches that has a gospel choir, or where a large number of other Nigerians go, or has a Priest who speaks Polish, then you miss out to the congregation of St Cuthbert's (including the sharp-elbowed parents who 'rediscover' or 'find' their religion when they have children).

Why do we have the age cut-off date at end August? Why not make the cut-off date end March? That way no child has to start school within days or weeks of turning 4. The youngest child in the year would be 4 1/2, and premmies would be closer to their adjusted age when they started, altogether more likely to be school-ready. The oldest children in the class would be 5 1/2, which would not disadvantage them. Of course nurseries and pre-schools would have to provide more differentiation for some of the older children.

You can lift share- this is what I did with my two. Neighbours, friends, other parents etc. You can use before and after school care if it's available. You can use a childminder. One parent can drop off one and one the other en route to work. If the schools are close enough you could probably drop off one and then the other- DH could do that when he drove them to school. Older ones can walk/cycle by themselves- my DS did that in year 6. Often if the only available school place is miles away the LA will organise a taxi, the child doesn't need to be accompanied. I'm not saying it's an easy option, but it's doable, and the flip side is local children are forced out to give way to siblings out of catchment. There needs to be a balance.