to be utterly pissed off that having a child already at the school has no bearing on getting a place if you do not live in the catchment area?

[samram]

Ok, This news to me.

Having just rang the school admission line to make sure they had my dd4 application form i was told that already having my elder daughter attending the school has no bearing on my application if i do not live in the catchment area!
Im so worried now - i mean how can i possibly be in two places at once?
Its not even like my elder daughter is old enough to walk home on her own (she's 6 in a few weeks)

Does any know if this is correct or have any advice? Thanks

Nancy I think in the situation where LEA made the call for you then it would be reasonable to be treated as in catchment tbh; as long as you did initially ask for local school.

I can quite see why that would be annoying.

My LEA offers places to siblings first, over and above living in the catchment. I didn't realise that not all of them do. I bloody hope the fact that my DS is an only doesn't count against him though when we've moved 80 miles to live in the catchment area of a 'good' school :(

I live a five min walk from my local primary school (according to search 0.15 miles). It is massively oversubscribed and only has one class per year - which means virtually every new year the vast majority of the intake is sibbling.

I am genuinely absolutely happy for sibblings to get priority over my children whom have no attachment to the school provided I receive the same treatment when I end up in a school for which I am outside the catchment area.

Swallowed see my issue - what do you propose?

I live less that 250 metres from my local school. But if 30 other children live nearer what can anyone do?

I live 0.2 miles from the school I wanted my child to go to, and every day I walk past several parents going there from much further away, or even driving, because they got in on the sibling rule. No, you are not being reasonable.

OP, YABU. You took a chance and applied for a school out of catchment (because you deem the local school to not be good enough) its hardly unfair that chidlren within the catchment area get priority. It it meant so much to you then you should have moved within the catchment area.

Nope no tower blocks.

It is what was originaly I assume a village school (over 100 years old) and is now just off the highstreet. Many of the victorian terraces in the immediate vicinity that 20 years ago were not "family" homes have now been converted to within an inch of their lives and are generous 4 bed homes - filled with families who have relocated to the commuter belt.

There is one class of 30 for each year - with no physical room for expansion due to location so not hard to see why it is massively over subscribed.

There are 6 other schools all within 1.1 miles. We didn't get in any of them.

I don't feel that my children have been "screwed over" by virtue of not getting into those schools, although admittedly I would prefer not to have the longer drive. I would most certainly have felt "screwed over" if having been allocated our current school my DC2 had not been able to follow DC1 there.

Haven't got time to read the whole thread, but I just wanted to respond to all teh posts saying things along the lines of "Children in the catchment should always be first to be allocated a place "

That's all very well if you live in a low density area but in my area (inner London) the catchment areas are ridiculous - one year the catchment for DS1's school was 30 metres. The next year it was 100 metres. Other years it has been several hundred metres. How are you meant to predict from year to year whether you'll be in the catchment or not? It's hardly your fault if the catchment shifts, leaving you high and dry and out of catchment for ALL local schools - which is quite frequent in our area.

At present they prioritise siblings over catchment in our area and I heartily hope it stays that way, otherwise there would be families with 4 children at 4 different schools, through no fault of their own.

youngvisitor Agree with you.

Very similar round here and we are leafy surrey. I am sure in the next few years there will be many an outraged parent who has moved from central London to get in a "good school" and will be outraged at how catchment areas actually work

Of course none of this would be nearly so much of an issue if all schools were good schools

'exoticfruit - do your children go to their catchment area school?

Not the first time-I didn't like it BUT I found out the catchment areas, the criteria, the number of DCs outside the catchment area who got in and whether any went to appeal and how many got in from appeal. From that I didn't even bother applying to the school I first thought about-I went for one that I stood a realistic chance of getting into.

We then moved to another area of the country with jobs and I made absolutely sure that I saw the schools before we even looked at houses. We moved into one 5 minutes walk from the desired school and I would have been absolutely furious if he hadn't have got a place because someone had got a place outside the area because they had an older sibling!

It is open to terrible abuse. Someone with 4 DCs rents a cheap house in a desirable area-gets their DC in and then moves and has a place for another 3 DCs!

Luckily in my area catchment comes before siblings and people have had to have siblings at different schools.

The information is there-people should assess the risk first.

TBH when they are little, "london parenting" isn't very different from any other kind. We are north London, inner in the sense of our phone number and postcode, but quite leafy and green, lots of parks and green space, and very child-friendly. And (by and large) the schools are very good, just a bit more diverse.

In fact that's really part of the problem - our bit of London is a lovely place for families and so there are bloody thousands of them here - cluttering up the schools!

We always intended to move out of London for primary but I'm glad we didn't, as I think the quality of teaching is better than the village school we would have used, and the all round experience is certainly richer.

Still thinking of moving out for secondary though, as the secondary schools round here are [cough] challenged, and there's no way we could afford private. But who knows - we might end up staying.

I was the same with secondary. I went to the education office and found out all the information about catchment areas, appeals etc-I didn't trust to luck and hope for the best! The LEA are really not interested in how you cope with 2 schools-it isn't their problem (and shouldn't be either).

"It is open to terrible abuse."

Yes but exotic you could argue the other way - that it's an abuse of the system to use your money to buy your way into a good school by buying on the doorstep, edging out families who have been in the area for years and helped build the school into what it is but who now find themselves inches outside the catchment due to people coming in at the 11th hour in order to get a place for their child.

I'm not saying that you ARE abusing the system by the way. But I don't think the catchment first way is intrinsically any fairer than siblings first. THere are always going to losers in either system.

Parental choice of schools is a complete myth-unfortunately first time parents don't understand. You can have your choice if there is room -and that is a completely different thing. Most parents find out the hard way. I wish it wasn't-but it is a fact of life.

It works both ways though - a child gets a place at a school then the parents move and the child stays at that school. Meanwhile siblings of an older child can't get in - to the detriment of their family life. That isn't 'fair' either. Sibling priority is logical and predictable.

Sorry exotic - who was your post directed to?! I think most people (first timers or not) understand that in a situation where places are tight, they may or may not get into the school they want.

What we are arguing over is the best way to allocate those places and who should be prioritised. I don't think catchment first is any fairer than sibling first when you get down to it. In London it just means that money becomes the deciding factor rather more decisively.

well quite northern - if we took it to the logical extreme then people who move out of a catchment should have their dc kicked out of the school.

I think there's an argument for both systems but I do think that in areas like mine, catchment first would be hugely disruptive to communities and families because catchment areas are so ridiculously tight, and fluctuate so much from year to year that it would make planning a life impossible.