Genuine, naive question - schools' postcode lottery

[namechange0123]

I hope not to offend anyone with this, it's just something I have been wondering for a long time.

I come from mainland Europe, lived in England for 7 years now and loved it enough to get my citizenship, but this is something I can't really get my head around.

Our school system is completely independent on where families live - for primary, people register to their DCs absolutely everywhere, sometimes tenths of miles away if that means being closer to their workplace (which IMO makes enough sense). For secondary, choice is strongly dependent on the subject (more focused on humanities, sciences or technical/vocational), but again, where two similar schools exist, choice is completely free.

The results is that all schools are equally mixed, there are no schools with stellar results due to rich, heavy tutoring, over involved parents and no working class ghettos.

I'm genuinely (please, please trust my naivety) wondering why England insists on perpetuating this extremely classist system of good and bad areas with associated house prices, grammar system with expensive tutoring for the 11+ which not always then reflects true ability (but why also select on ability at such a young age? I know several people who were awful in school and thrived at uni!) , a system that ultimately kills social mobility.

There's surely something I'm missing as I really can't understand. Can someone explain?

I live in a grammar area, my youngest child attends grammar school. My eldest child went to our local secondary modern (in the middle of a rough estate).

Having had children at both schools, the secondary modern is by far the better school. It has amazing teachers, great pastoral care and I can't thank them enough for what they did for my child.

The grammar is at best medicore, much of the teaching is poor, bullying is rife and there is zero pastoral support for students. Of course the results will be good as they have the brightest pupils in the area.

I have learnt over the last few years that good education goes far deeper than a set of exam results. My child at Grammar has possible sen and we have had the most awful time trying to get the support they need. People should never discount what they think is a failing or unpopular school as quite often they are staffed by the most dedicated and caring teachers. Our experience certainly reflects that.

I am also from mainland Europe, and think in general schools here (and the school system) is much better than in my home country.

A difference is that the poor in the UK are much poorer than in my home country, class (income) difference here is much bigger. But people self select just as much here as there. It must be human nature to look for a school where you can see like minded parents in the playground even in my so called egalitarian home country.

But overall I find the comprehensive system and education in general here quite good.

Saying that, I am aware I may have rose tinted specs as all comps near me are good, which must be lucky.

All my friends in my home country or here try and get the best school possible for their kids for their postcode. Nobody I know just selects on location/proximity to work.

I wonder where you are from OP

@namechange0123 well, believe it or not that's that it was for me. My family lived in a peripheral quarter and went to a primary in the city centre 10 km away because that's where my mum's office was.

And I attended the only secondary focuse on the humanities in a 20 miles radius, again located in the city centre's main square.

But can’t you see that’s because your parents had the means to get you to those schools.
Parents without those means would have less choice available to them.
Those children then gave a tendency to do less well at school (not all obviously but on a population scale) so go on to have less options as an adult and so the cycle continues

OP, I have seen an example of this in action.

I taught in a school that had plenty of spaces and also backed on to a large employer. It was also in a pocket of deprivation and had families facing multiple challenges. It was at the bottom of the league table - because one school has to be, inevitably! No one thinks of the impact on that school, by the way.

A handful of families did come to the school for employment reasons. Some were parents with professional jobs in the large employer over the road. Others came because this was the school that had spaces. However, the result was not the utopia that you envisage, because the parents coming in just did not stay. They would stay for a year or so, then get fed up of the poor behaviour from some of the children and the generally lower standards of attainment. Other families who had been allocated the school would get fed up of the longer journey and wait until a place came up in a school nearer home. The result was a constant turnover of children, meaning that it was very difficult to have an impact on overall levels of attainment.

Teaching there was like trying to walk the wrong way on an escalator. Hard, hard work.

Come to Scotland - our kids just go to the school nearest them. There's no applying for schools.

Only a small ?tiny minority of kids are in a grammar system.

How does transport to secondary work in your system, OP? In my small market town, lots of parents send child to (the only) local secondary because they "want to keep him close." But also, can't afford £520/yr (per child) for bus to a secondary out of town (10+km away). So sounds like affordability comes into your secondary options after all, unless you tell me free transport would be provided to pupils living up to 50km away.

there would be almost no oversubscription.

Wrong. This school is over-sub'd, has rep as best primary school in Norwich. People apply to get their kids in there from all over city & would apply from all over county if they thought they had a chance. How do you propose school gives places? Random lottery to all applicants... seriously? The traffic linked to this school is already hellish & that's with catchment priority for getting a place. B/C of location, they can't expand. The school has tried to ban pupils cycling to their school just because of the horrible traffic congestion. In your system, must schools relocate when demanded to expand but can't on present site?

teachers are formally hired by the dep. of Education and then assigned to schools who need them

Do teachers get any choice? So you buy a property not knowing how far you might have to travel to work next year? What if your child attends the school where you teach but then you get moved next year... do you take your child to the new school where you've been assigned? Else how to get them to original school which may be miles from any transport option. Havoc for poor kid, or what.

Come to Scotland - our kids just go to the school nearest them. There's no applying for schools

How does that work if the number of children who live near the school exceeds the schools capacity?

There are 2 schools in my village and in general the children go to their closest one. However so many new houses have been built on one side of the village that the school nearest to them can not accommodate them.
There will be a new school built... in 8-10 years. In the meantime both schools are over subscribed and children are having to go out of the village. Does Scotland have better systems in place to deal with issues like this?

Interesting thread. I agree the UK system is not ideal, with good schools creating mini house price bubbles etc, but I think any system would have its flaws.

Somehow Scotland is surviving with a different system, similarly to my country. The defence of the status quo without even acknowledging a fundamental problem is alarming on here, faux naïveté of my OP or not.

Maybe England has lived too long with such a social inequality to give it for granted and the problem has nothing to do with schools.

I foresee after Brexit to become even worse.

Re the Scottish system, what happens if a school has too many kids living nearest to it, eg in an urban area or if a new housing development is built? Does the school expand to take on the extra kids?

namchange - but in your original country aren't children also disadvantaged in a different way by going to subject specific secondary schools? How can you decide at age 11 whether a child is going to be better at science/maths/english and set the course for the rest of their life? What happens if a child goes to the 'sporty' school but then gets a serious injury and hasn't had a decent enough grounding in languages/science etc. to get into a different job? How about if the child really loves writing and reading and wants to go to the humanities focused school, but their parents think there's more money in the sciences, so they are forced to go there and hate it? Could then still then apply to read, say, history, at university or would the university expect all their humanities students to have gone to a humanitaries secondary? Or what if someone just changes their interests and abilities as they change from 11-18?

How does the 'divided subjects' school system work in rural areas where they might just be one secondary school for miles?

Out of curiosity, where do faith schools come into the mix in your country OP? Because that's another mix that makes our system even more confusing!

I don't think any country has a perfectly fair system; if they did more would have copied it. I think the English (and Welsh, which is similar, except no grammar schools at all) system's main issue is lack of schools, pure and simple.

You go for your attitude at the moment , but nothing impedes you to change your mind at uni. I have a high school diploma in humanities and a degree and PhD in biophysics!

People travel by bus up to 1h to reach schools of their choice.

Faith schools are private but not necessarily better than state schools, sometimes worse.

The only money business is for private schools who teach you 2 years in 1 if you have to repeat one year in case you don't meet your targets.

Scotland is far less densely populated.

I'm not in the UK and here is pretty similar to what the OP describes. People are free to choose the school they want in a way not available in the UK. I think it's as other posters have said, that we don't have areas of utter deprivation so there are no 'losers' in it.

Generally people pick the school that is most convenient for them, but if that school is full they're quite happy with the alternatives they're offered.

I'm posting my questions again:

to OP or those who know about Scotland: What if the school CANNOT physically expand on its current site. Must it move to a new site? Or is it expected to tear down buildings & go highrise &/or build over any remaining carpark/playing fields?

OP: how is transport to schools funded where you're from? Which pupils are eligible for any free transport up to what distance? Can people apply to schools outside their Local authority residence area?

OP: Teachers being assigned to schools: can assigned workplace change & teachers can't appeal, with how much notice would assigned workplace change (start of year or any term or do assignments get fixed for longer periods?)

to OP or those who know about Scotland: What if the school CANNOT physically expand on its current site. Must it move to a new site? Or is it expected to tear down buildings & go highrise &/or build over any remaining carpark/playing fields?

I'm not the OP or Scottish, but in Russia when this happens they teach in two shifts.

At the two schools in my village there is physically no room to expand (one could potentially be knocked down and a new multi level school rebuilt in its place). The new school has been promised in 8-10 years.

@lljkk there are detached sections of the same school somewhere else. People can indicate a preference.

Student Bus monthly tickets are really cheap. My closest friends from high school came from a village 20 km away, they travelled by bus every morning and back.

Teachers get assigned during summer terms, but this is usually true for new, non permanent staff. Experienced teachers tend to stay many years at the same place. Even if they get moved, they accept it as part of the job. They might teach where their DCs are, but it's usually discouraged and if it happens, they should usually be in other classrooms with no fellow teachers in common.

Student Bus monthly tickets are really cheap.

Is £15/week cheap? I know families who can't afford £15/wk for 39 weeks of the year. Priced out of choice after all.

Teachers teaching own kids for at least one year isn't that unusual in a rural area. I know a teachers couple who had 1 own child in each of their classes. It's a logistics thing. No childminder in many places & can't get kid(s) to school for 8:50am when you have to be somewhere else by 8:15am.

Detached sections of same school at various locations... who funds this capital building project? Could a 'failing' school building be closed but reopened having been taken over by the 'successful' school? How to allocate applicants if the original location is over-subscribed, since parents can express their preference about which location, & parents know the offspring of grotty locals will still attend the failing school location like they did before. I'm far from convinced multi-sites is simple solution.

... and even if the poor families I know could afford the bus fare, they may not have a car so any way to fetch an ill child or go to parents' evening. They need a good local school, not a good school somewhere.

The solution to school inequity in UK isn't to make the good schools more accessible, it's to make every local school a good school.