Headteachers use open days to dissuade 'undesirable' families.

[Diamondsgreen]

I've worked in schools for a long time. The challenging schools used open evening to try and persuade families they wanted their DC to attend - empty places cost money and add even more challenge to the school.

However, in every one of the "good", oversubscribed schools the HT used them to put off families they didn't like the look/feel of.

E.g. in a small infant school the HT insisted on doing all the tours herself. Then at any mention of SEND would be most unethusiastic about how the school might be able to meet the child's needs, even suggesting other schools locally who might be better placed to do it.

A Grammar school made a big deal of all the expensive trips and extra curricular activities, you may think to show depth in their offer, but the strategy was to put off less afuulent families.

The one doing the rounds currently is behaviour. The school's (often Trust's) behaviour policy is designed to create a positive learning environment, but the school won't suit pupils or families who will challenge that....

Sensible management or wholly unethical?

you are teaching children (and teens possibly) you are not teaching robots.
Of course each teacher already slightly adapt to every single child.

It's just unrealistic to expect and pretend that teachers are given the right resources to help kids with more needs when they already have too much to deal with. Of course parents will complain when it's their own child that is penalised because too much attention goes to a disruptive child. You can't keep a class behind because of 1 or 2.

if they don't advocate for their own child, who will.

This.

The point remains though - if a child isn’t interested, they still need to behave. They don’t have a right to derail a lesson; it isn’t fair on the other pupils.

Also this, I don’t know how many parents can know the secondary curriculum well enough and effectively teach it to their children. Hmm.

What ‘draconian’ rules do schools have nowadays then? The vast majority have very similar rules.

Head teachers run schools on the day to day level so it is obvious they would be given plenty of opportunity to manage their intake, it is unrealistic to think of this as an ethical issue, schools like other educational establishments are run as businesses, despite having legal obligations- if you don't like that then I'm afraid the time to complain about it is decades past.
The huge increase in the call for institutions to cater to an increasing range and quantity of SEND pupils is bound to cause difficulties.
There is not enough money allocated to mainstream pupils , let alone SEND ones, this is something which needs addressing nationwide.

The Eton vibe is mostly about confidence not debating skill- I'm not sure how convincing Boris ever was from any angle, to be fair, but always has buckets of bravado and confidence- this is really what you are paying for at Eton, not a good education.
Yes using a term like oracy could be used to put off parents who are not particularly well educated themselves.

I come from a very poor background and have much better debating skills than Boris johnson. I don't have his confidence though or lack of shame.

I’m sure a good education is provided and the teachers will be specialists in their subjects. Parents aren’t paying thousands for a poor education.

No the education is fine, nothing amazing, but fine- my point is that is not what is being paid for, the confidence and network of elite people is what is being paid for.
Most of the people you went to school with, if you went to Eton, will be within a few years well embedded and high up in the institutions and large companies in the UK and worldwide.

Completely unacceptable to try and put off families with children who have SEND (though a true inability, not reluctance, to provide support might come up during the EHCP process) and because of household income.

Schools should be working as hard as possible to accommodate disabilities and trips should be based on what students can afford, with help for those on low incomes if expensive options are chosen.

I do think it's fair to be upfront about behaviour and uniform policies to prevent years of complaining though (providing reasonable adjustments are made on the basis of disability). There's no point sending your child to a school that insists on certain standards if you don't agree with them and are going to spend 5 years complaining about it.

Sorry but that is nonsense. Its adding to the workload and taking time away from the rest of the class. No teacher is wanting more of that. Ideologically believing all kids deserve the best education is a rather different thing than having the capacity to deal with it all in their classroom.

For many (but not all) children with send it is very little extra work. Many send strategies actually benefit the whole class.

Lumping all send children together as a nuisance, often grouped with those who are poorly behaved, but without send, lacks nuance.

Many teachers do believe in inclusion (where appropriate) and are happy to work to facilitate that. "No teacher is wanting that" is entirely unfair on those teachers who see it as part of their role and willingly adapt to meet the needs of all their students.

Again, we are lucky not to have met teachers who have this wholly negative attitude to send. Presumably they work in the schools that try to persuade parents that they would be better off elsewhere.

How long ago were you a teacher? Do you have kids in state comps currently?

Yep.

Lumping all SEND children together which has happened several times on this thread is incredibly frustrating.

My child is well behaved, engaged and wants to learn but does require extra support. Does he take up some time and attention that he wouldn't otherwise if he wasn't disabled? Well, yes, obviously. I'm not going to apologise for that.

He has absolutely no chance of specialist provision and it wouldn't be in his best interests anyway.

To be fair in my area you literally don't get a choice, you are in catchment for X, you go to X. You can apply for Y and Z but every school is so oversubscribed that it makes no difference at all. In fact, I know of several child locally who have no secondary school place at all at the moment as none available within the town. Bid developments happening with 3 new primary schools but they haven't extended the secondary provision at all. So now a few years down the line and its a massive problem. Everyone more relieved to have a place within the town and bot have to catch 2 or 3 buses or trains everyday. The option around this of course is to pay and look at private schools.

Indeed. All local maintained schools should have very similar offerers for the children living in their borough. I know this isn’t the case but it absolutely should be.

best education

SEP isn’t about providing the best education. Parents of DC with SEN are well aware, in law, DC aren’t entitled to the best possible education. Only what is reasonably required to meet needs.

I am so glad that they’ve changed the Ofsted criteria for SEND which means that schools that are shit for it can no longer take their “outstanding” ratings for granted. No school is “outstanding” if it fails to cater to its local community.

Why should all schools be very similar? How would that help meet the varying needs of children?

I have worked in admissions - all these scenarios are all familiar to me. It’s effectively replaced the parental interview. As well as off rolling pupils who don’t fit the bill and are likely to score low on SATS.

I’m very dubious about the reality of this. Results trump everything. How many RI/Unsatisfactory grammar schools are there?

Many small schools are generally less equipped to support children with SEN, unfortunately. It’s to do with staffing and ratios. Larger schools have more options in terms of interventions etc they can offer.

Over subscribed school near us the Head said in his talk ‘we’re over subscribed, if you’re a parent that doesn’t want to engage as an active partner in your child’s learning, or if you’ve ever been rude to a teacher- don’t apply!’ He is retiring so I think dgaf….

I mean. I know the HT at my son's school did a talk on behaviour expectations at their recent open evening, because I heard about it from a friend. She said a few people around her were a bit shocked and kind of glancing around etc.

The school is known in the area for being strict/ long policy on no phones etc. They've always been up front about it and we had to sign paperwork to agree that we would support detections given for not following their rules. We were fine with this back then (DS is in 6th form now) and they've only gotten more strict.

So it's possible this is the sort of talk you're referring to, but honestly, as someone who also works in a school, I think they're just trying to manage expectations before the new pupils/ parents arrive. There's no end to parents making excuses for why their darlings are special and unable to meet expectations, so the school is probably trying to tell them to shop elsewhere if they feel that way.