Primary school admissions - MNHQ needs your thoughts!

As a parent of a summer born child (due to start this September) I personally wouldn't consider holding her back.
There has to be a cut off date somewhere, if children were starting all different times of the year or schools were having to hold spaces open for a year it would cause mayhem.
I understand parents feeling uneasy, especially with August born babies but by the end of reception, all of the children tend to more or less catch up with each other.

"The only way these parents are guaranteed the same educational experience for their children as all other children is if they agree to enrol their child in school EARLY - i.e. before the child reaches compulsory school age (CSAge). "

Whilst I agree that there is an issue with summer borns PMHull, the way you are phrasing this is rather skewed. Almost all children start school before CSAge, or the classes would be empty in September. Your point is simply that summer borns have to start a greater amount before CSAge to be in normal application processes.

Parents of summer borns don't have to do a different application process. They have to do a different application process if they want their child to start at CSAge. The difference is that Autumn born children can start at CSAge without separate applications.

(I'm speaking as a parent of summer kids, BTW).

We live in an area that once LAC and statemented children have been considered admits on:
In catchment with a sibling at the school
In catchment
Out of catchment with a sibling at the school
Out of catchment

Which seems to me to be reasonable.

The system of preference falls down when the schools aren't able to grow according to demand. This government hasn't allowed LAs to build new schools but have forced them to let developers build new houses. One school near us was built to cope with a village that has expanded to double its size with no increase in school places. Next week is going to cause mayhem amongst parents there. I know of other parents who have moved out of catchment and believe they'll get sibling priority but I think they'll be shocked on Thursday.

MNHQ - can you raise the issue of the unfair allocation of primary school places for summer born children please?
Parents of summer born children have to undergo an entirely different and complex application process to other parents (DfE advice says they should apply one whole year earlier than the year they wish their child to start school), and their children are not guaranteed Reception class entry - or indeed a full 7 years of primary school education (DfE has confirmed both of these to be true).

The only way these parents are guaranteed the same educational experience for their children as all other children is if they agree to enrol their child in school EARLY - i.e. before the child reaches compulsory school age (CSAge). If they seek to enrol their child AT CSAge, they must seek permission one year early from their local council and all head teachers of the schools they are considering applying to.

If they are LUCKY, and the some schools and/or the council agrees to Reception class entry at CSAge, the parent can ONLY list those schools with head teacher agreement on their application form. This adds another layer of criteria that no other child is subject to - i.e. if the head teacher wants to insist on a Year 1 entry at CSAge, the parent cannot list that school on their standard primary school entry application form. Their statutory preferences are limited.

Some councils are even sending educational psychologists out to 'assess' 3 year-old summer born children to see if they 'need' to wait until CSAge before starting school - even though this decision is legally the parent's. The stress, worry and uncertainty is immense for these parents, and they're having to fight for what is an automatic right for every other child - Reception class entry at CSAge and no threat of being made to leapfrog a year at any point later on, simply in order to be educated in the 'correct' 12 month chronological age 'batch'.
Please see the website summerbornchildren.org for more information - Labour MP Stephen Twigg and (now retired Liberal Democrat MP) Annette Brooke have both categorically said summer born children's primary school application should be treated equitably.

The current situation is wasting tax-payers' money (NHS, Education and Councils), and we see councils who would rather pay for additional SEN 'support' in a forced Year 1 start than simply allow a summer born child to enter Reception class and be significantly less likely to need any SEN support throughout the whole of their education. It's an unfair and illogical DfE policy that could so easily be fixed with a School Admissions Code update. The best interests of children and their parents should come before the views of school and council administrators.

Holy Spirit- God. Ghosts- apparition of a dead soul. Catholics believe in the former, not the latter

Strict Catholics will avoid drinking and smoking as will Muslims, most certainly won't waste their time being judgemental if not do it themselves. Suicide is technically a sin, but in this day and age most churches would support any individual and their family and friends touched by suicide, the whole point of religion after all is to bring people together and offer them comfort in difficult times. I'm not aware of any food I can't eat as a Catholic. To my knowledge being Catholic doesn't make me particularly more judgemental than the non Catholic population, either.

I don't have any issue with parents who choose faith schools; I went to a Catholic school (I'm well and truely lapsed now!). The schools are there so of course they can choose to use them. Nor am I blind to the fact that by choosing a private school for my DC I am engaging in economic selection, so I am not in a position to judge others.

My issue is that State Funded services should be available to all; with allocation based on limited non-discriminationatory fair criteria. It is the system that is the problem not the individuals using it.

a few years ago, we lived out of London and dd1 got in to the local school with no trouble.

now we are in London, our nearest school is CofE with strict criteria (3 years of church for 90% of children) and several other nearby schools have similar criteria. But we are not CofE and not prepared to pretend either. So our school options are substantially restricted.

I think the best fix would be removing all faith admissions criteria (see fairadmissions.org.uk/ ). It just doesn't make sense to discriminate between children on the basis of what their parents do on a Sunday.

karen not really.....certainly I will admit that I don't actually know what the catholic stance on smoking is (although suicide is a sin isn't it?). Nothing anyone can say would make me believe it isn't very judgemental though, and surely belief in the Holy Ghost is essential?

I secretly think my DD could make quite a good catholic - she believes in ghosts and is very judgemental about eating the wrong things, swearing and smoking

Don't think you know much about religion, our priest is a heavy smoker, and most priests I know, esp Irish Catholics, love a good tipple. In fact all catholics I know are laid back jolly people.Cant speak for the other religions though.

In fact most Vicars love a tippple too.

Icebeing did you mean to be so rude? I agree that allocating school places on a religious basis is unfair but it's not the Catholic population that's responsible for the system

My tuppenceworth - faith schools are terribly unfair - as Tiggy said, it wasn't an issue until school places became difficult. Now the crazy situation of people being unable to send their children to any of their local schools - which is real and really happening, not just a made up scenario.

And the centralisation of schools planning is an unmitigated disaster, and I have no idea why it's been allowed to continue down the route it has taken. It is going to get a lot worse before it can get any better, even if corrective action is taken now. Free schools are a total joke - why on earth not let councils assess and plan their local education needs? Oh no, there's no profit in that

Someone else up thread commented that we pay taxes for schools to be built, run, staffed and available for our children - it's a disgrace that it's turned into this lottery.

I secretly think my DD could make quite a good catholic - she believes in ghosts and is very judgemental about eating the wrong things, swearing and smoking.

Unfortunately DH and I are staunch atheists and refuse to allow her to practice her religion....

DS1's previous high school was a language specialist school. That's very, very low down the list of specialisms you'd choose for DS1. But given that admission is all about which feeder you went to and where you live, you just have to go with whatever specialism your local school has chosen.

I suspect the proliferation of pointless specialisms was all part of new labour's pretence of increasing parental choice (see also expansion of faith schools). It was all very poorly thought through.

tiggy are you lumping all those together as comparable selection criteria? Or just listing it as facts?

I wish it surprised me, but it doesn't, that the one thing you don't see is selection by race.

Somehow racism is seen as the worst of the isms.

I can cope with selecting by geographic area (because that is improving efficiency) and by sibling entrance (because it must be nightmare getting siblings to different schools). The others seem morally wrong to me, for government funded schools in any case.

Some of those are more reasonable than others, tiggytape. Again, using the "would this be legal in an employment situation" guideline, if I was recruiting for an orchestra, then musical aptitude would be relevant. Throwing away all applications from, eg, otherwise qualified Hindu trumpet-players on the grounds they were Hindu would be neither reasonable nor legal.

(And of course in any case faith schools aren't ever actually measuring the child's faith, but the parents'.)

I disagree vehemently with state funded faith schools. However, people love anything that allows them to achieve social selection no while pretending to be against it, so I gues we're stuck with the awful things.

I do have a big issue with LAs giving planning approval to enormous housing developments without properly thinking through the school provision. There is a huge development of news houses (essentially building a whole new area of the city) near me. The developers want to sell it on being in this area (with the sought after schools) but there is not simply enough space for the children in the new houses.

It's a serious issue here and it was obviously going to happen. They should have planned a whole new school system part of the new development from the outset.

The other thing I have an huge issue with is specialisms within the current admissions system. It is absolutely nonsensical for secondary schools to have specialisms when you can only get into the school if you live within some tiny distance and/or got your children into them correct primary school. It means that you either need to decide what specialism your teenage child will excel in at 3/4 when applying for a reception place or when you choose where to live (whichever is sooner). Silliness.

If schools are going to have specialisms they need to sit outside the ordinary schools system a bit, be centrally located do people can acfess them and allocate places fairly across a large area. Ds1's school, for example, is in they it's centre and has a catchment of several counties. They're brand new so aren't full yet, but the plan is to allocate places by lottery so that the children in the next town aren't disadvantaged if they want to specialise in their area.

As parent of an only child this is my one and only experience of admissions. I tried to understand it but soon realised on all visits that most parents don't. Many thought they we're guaranteed a place because of siblings and many also thought that because you get a choice of three schools then these are equal.

From what I understand, catchment school is usually most likely but then not guaranteed either. You'd only get a place elsewhere if there were 'spare' non catchment or non sibling spaces (after considering children in care etc).

Still don't know realistically if I stand much chance of first choice and put catchment as second choice. A friend has only put one non catchment school down because that's where her other child goes. She believes that if she listed catchment school then they'd automatically be given it, so hasn't put an alternative down.

Basically, I don't think parents stand a chance of realistically assessing likelihood of a place without studying various stats on each school year. Hopefully we'll get first or second and I can cope with that for now.

I also totally agree that it is an abomination that schools are selecting on the basis of parental faith. It is disgusting and I cannot imagine how it can be defended in a country that doesn't allow discrimination by religion in the work place.

I found it distressing that schools we spoke to had such a negative attitude towards home ed. We wanted information on how to transfer back in after home ed, and about mixing home ed and school...but all we got was hysteria.

I think perhaps for siblings they should accept them up to double the normal catchment. That allows some flexibilty but not piss taking.

What would you call the 'normal' catchement Sirzy? In some schools it can vary massively year on year. And in some areas of London the catchment may only be a couple of hundred metres, making every last cm count (and probably effectively preventing families ever moving, as even a very short distance would be too far).

Don't get me wrong, I do agree with your issue. It's so unfair. But I am not sure much is going to help unless the pressure on places eases.

Fundamentally, the class size limits and the funding model are unsustainable with the pressure on places. Funding for one extra head is bugger all use if taking one extra child means adding a whole extra class.

Very much what I was saying upthread, sleeplessbunny. Couldn't agree more about the need to separate education and religion (at least for tax-funded schools).

Wondered what people think about 'values' schools? There are a few about which look interesting. In theory they offer the good side of faith schools (in that they talk about values like kindness, honesty, perseverance,tolerance etc.), but it has nothing to do with religion. I think there is a new free school chain in London opening with that mandate.

I think the faith issue is a big barrier. Round here, of my 5 nearest primaries, 4 are C of E and prioritising churchgoers, leaving everyone else effectively at the back of the queue. Pure discrimination in my view. It is effectively being used as a barrier to keep the best schools naice white and MC (as far as I can tell). Nevermind the fact that I don;t want Christianity foisted on my DC at school. Time to separate education and religion please!

Forgot to say that our LA puts last year's data on the application form, so you can look at each school and see its admissions criteria (LA or VA) and applications by preference (first to third) and PAN and where the cutoff fell.

I mean, you have to be pretty literate to make sense of it, but you can easily get it.

I think a big change is needed simplyin vocabulary toto make sure we talk about allocations and preferences, and not choice. Lots of MNers patiently explain the ins and outs each year (use all the spaces on the form, if possible list at least one school you will get into, here's the deadline, the LA doesn't care about your working patterns) but the children most in need of a good school place are the least likely to have parents able to secure one.

I think that is a good idea Sirzy, regarding catchments for siblings.