Primary school admissions - MNHQ needs your thoughts!

We are nervously waiting for next week.
Although my oldest DD is in the school we no longer live in the catchment and our school do not prioritise siblings over catchment
We are RC (practising) and wanted to point out that the reason faith schools have such a strict criteria is because for every letter the priest signs (to confirm you are attending Mass) the church donates money towards the school, therefore if you do not attend Mass (and donate each week) the church is effectively funding your child using donations from other parishioners.
I am in full agreement that faith schools need to stick to this criteria, obviously if you don't agree then you would need to send your child to a state school with no religious affiliation.
Although I did see a post from a mum stating that she has three faith schools around her, I am quite shocked as our faith schools are all miles away and tend to be few and far between!

Do Scottish schools not limit class sizes then?

Yes. 25 for P1-3 and composite classes, and 33 for P4-7.

This has caused a massive problem because about 10 years ago they started knocking down a lot of schools and building new ones. The new ones now don't have enough room so need to get huts, close their ICT rooms and music rooms etc.

Huh - thanks, Sirzy and Mrsflannel.

Oh, and I do understand why siblings are given priority, but as the parent of an only child it pisses me off a bit when my only child is shoved to the back of the queue for the crime of not having older brothers or sisters. It doesn't really seem fair.

Understanding even

If the school has been allocated against the wishes of the parents yes Annie.

Not Scottish no

In the sunny Royal Borough and many other places around England we still have First, Middle and High schools.

Do Scottish schools not limit class sizes then?

Archery my undemanding is if the only school eith a place is over 3 miles away then transport has to be provided.

Is there anywhere in England where you can get council transport for a (non-SEN) child who lives far from their school? Or is it just a Scottish thing?

I have always thought new parents should be given or sent a guide to admissions a couple of years before their child turns 3. Some just don't have a clue how it works. It's confusing...

The Scottish system seems brilliant compared to England.

There is a catchment area and you send your child to the catchment school. If you want them to go to a different school, you put in a placing request.

A placing request, if accepted, does not entitle you to council transport to that school.

And that's it. Done.

I'm in Scotland and don't really understand the English system, never having had to deal with it. But from what I read on here it seems to be very stressful. I'm quite happy with the Scottish system which seems to work ok as long as you apply to get into the school in P1. I have heard problems of people moving into an area with older kids and not getting a primary place at their catchment school, but this is quite rare. And if it does happen then the council have to transport (normally by taxi) to the nearest alternative school. It all seems to work ok.

I find it totally unacceptable that access to a state school may be permitted or denied on the basis of the religious affiliation of the child's parents.

Primary school was fine for us. We wanted a faith school and we live close to it. I live in a fairly big city and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of spaces. The problems arise when people want schools far away.

Secondary school places though is a totally different ball game. We live near to some very poor schools that nobody wants. This has changed significantly since we bought our house when the schools were good.

We eventually got our first choice 4 months into year 7 from waiting list.

Twoplus3 not around here, though. All the faith schools around me (which are almost all Catholic) have very, very strict faith criteria - even being baptised and going to church occasionally isn't necessarily enough, never mind being of a different faith or no faith.

Because so many of the local schools are faith schools, it leads to the ridiculous situation where children (including mine) have to go out of borough to find a school (any school - I don't mean a high-performing school) that will take them, while children who live far across town are driven to the schools near us because they are of the "right" faith.

My DS did not get into the state primary school which is right next door to our block of flats. Next door. Not a few blocks or yards away, but next door. They would not even give me an application form as they said there was "no point". As a result all DS's mates live a long way away, and for an only child, that's very hard on him.

That's what is wrong with faith schools. No primary school should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of faith in any way. It's ridiculous, immoral, and totally insupportable.

Worried about school admissions from birth until the deadline for applications as we lived in an area of extremely over-subscribed schools and one extremely bad one. Because of the ever changing 'catchment area' there was always a faint hope that we'd get in to a decent school, but hated the whole unpredictability of it.

We wasted hours meeting the council lobbying for bulge places classes attending free school start-up meetings (in the hope that one would open nearby and we'd get in). At one point we had our hopes resting on a bilingual free school opening and were resigned to DS growing up speaking a different language to us, but at their open day, we were horrified at the state of their premises and didn't want to send our energetic DS to school in a building with no outside play-space).

We eventually gave up and moved out of the area that we loved, in order to be secure in what offer we'd get for primary.

I'm v much in favour of moving to the Scottish system, even though it removes 'choice' for parents. I don't think primary school kids/parents need a choice of school, they just want their closest local school to offer them a place, and for it to be good.

The problem with faith schools is that someone who can "prove" their faith will automatically get a better, bigger choice of schools. How is that a fair system?

(I am Christian and ds is baptised so I have no problem with faith, I do have issue with faith schools and the admission process to faith schools)

I completely agree re siblings of families who have moved away (in some cases a significant distance)

I'm in Scotland and I feel stressed every year on behalf of the parents on here waiting for schools. I am always shocked that people upset about getting a school 2-3 miles away and being told that is nothing, not that far etc. even if the person has no transport and has to rely on infrequent buses.
I have done a 2 mile round trip school run including pre-school with no available buses and it is exhausting and time consuming.

I am very grateful that here in Scotland we rock up to our local school fill in a form in January and that's it your child starts at your local school in August. None of the angst about places and not getting into any of our choices.

This year it is a bit different for me as I have had to do a placing request at an out of catchment school for DS2 as DS1 and DD are already at the schol that we did live in catchment for before we moved. That is stressful enough waiting but at least I know what school DS2 will be attending if he doesn't get into our chosen one.

What exactly is wrong with faith schools? You don't necessarily have to be of any particular faith to be allocated a place at their school and in general they perform so much better than none faith schools.

Luckily where we live we don't have problems with oversubscriptions, and most of the local schools are rated good/outstanding. DS1 got into our first choice 4 years ago even though we were first child out of catchment. DS2 should be fine, as he has sibling priority.

So incredibly stressful for us last year. I still feel quite emotional about it all. We live in short walking distance from 4 large schools and couldn't get into any of them. We were sent a breakdown of allocated places for our 3 choices and the majority (think 80%+) of places given were to siblings.

I would like a differentiation to be made between siblings in catchment/out of catchment (or a suitable distance if no actual catchment area). I could accept it if we lost out to siblings who still lived near the school, but to know that children who live further away than us got places really rankles.

So priority would go to 1) LAC/children with SEN, 2) Siblings living within a certain distance 3) all other children based on distance (regardless of whether a sibling or not).

We have a system that gives priority to siblings, which is lovely, until kids living next door to the school can't get in. The systems which give priority to siblings who haven't moved address since the last sibling got in seem fairest.

Now that there is effectively no choice for large numbers of pupils it is time to remove faith as an admissions criteria. Faith is something for the home setting to teach if they feel it is appropriate.