To ask what your thoughts are on siblings getting priority at over-subscribed schools?

[goingeversoslowlymad]

So the letters have gone out advising parents which school they have gained a place for their 4/5 yr old for September. As happens every year as dc1's school is badly over subscribed, there have been people who have lost out.

The school admission criteria gives priority to children who already have siblings in the school, after they have been admitted it then goes down to catchment area and distance from the school. Is this the norm most places? There was quite a lot of bad feeling today when I was at the park. A few of the mums were really angry and saying that the school is discriminating against first-born and only children as it is making it impossible to get a place. I felt a bit guilty as DC2 was one of those who got a place.

I can really see their argument and really do feel for them but what is the solution? I would not physically be able to get my children to 2 different schools in the mornings. Sorry if this has been done before but would just love to know if there is a fairer solution.

Librarian - It's not true of my area of London. We don't have catchment. It goes: priority children (looked after children, plus a couple of other categories), siblings, then any remaining places offered in order of proximity. So a sibling living miles away would get a place above a first or only living across the road.

Siblings outside catchment do get priority in some areas! I highly disagree with that de to the scenario I mentioned above. I don't know whether it is rare or not but it is true,I just looked it up.

Siblings come ahead of children in catchment where I live. Very unfair. People just rent somewhere within a hundred yards of school for long enough to bung in their application, then move back to wherever they wanted to live, and spend the next decade driving past all the local children to drop off their kids, while the local children have to go elsewhere. Madness. Presumably kept in place by councillors who benefit personally from it.

Property developers are in on the game - they buy up houses, knock 'em down and build two in their place, so people can rent two houses temporarily, meaning the catchment shrinks every smaller.

Siblings in catchment fine, siblings outside catchment should be behind local children.

The moral of the story is get your facts and don' t assume anything.

'Siblings in catchment fine, siblings outside catchment should be behind local children.'

Agreed edam

We are all pretty much saying the same on this thread.

(Do people actually read the threads these days?)

We are the same here, I think, YoullLaugh. At dd's school, I would say most children live pretty close to the school, there are a few that live a bit further away, but not that many afaik. So it isn't really a case of lots of siblings living miles away.

Tbh I don't really understand how catchment areas work. How do they decide what catchment area you fall into?

My LA does the following:

LAC
children with medical/pyshological needs that require them to attend that school. (usually named on statement)
children in catchment who have sibling on role at time of admission
children in catchment
children out of catchment with siblings on role at time of admission
children out of catchment (as the crow flies)

So here if any children in catchment do not get a place it's not specifically a sibling thing but the catchment area has too many children compared to it's PAN.

Forgive me for having skipped a couple of pages of the thread.

This discussion pops up quite often and (it seems to me) a false dichotomy is quickly set up between priority for siblings = siblings always together and no priority for siblings = siblings always in different schools. I suspect that if there was no priority for siblings, most siblings would still get places in the same school. They must have lived pretty close for the first child to get a place and (assuming that the family hadn't moved away since the first child was admitted) the second and subsequent children would presumably also gain a place on the grounds of distance.

I appreciate that there might be some instances where it would not work like this - maybe where the first child is at a school a long way from home or where new housing has increased the number of children living very near the school. It seems to me, though, that it would be better to deal with that through the appeals process, where parents could highlight any compelling reasons why siblings could not go to different schools, than have the current situation where (as has been mentioned several times) schools are obliged to admit children who live miles away because they have an older sibling there.

I appreciate too that ending the siblings priority would create some uncertainty for some parents. It would also, though, create more certainty for others. At the moment, the distance at which places are awarded on the basis of distance can increase or decrease hugely from year to year, depending on how many places are taken by siblings. Ending sibling priority would make that distance less volatile.

Anyway, I would be amazed if sibling priority were ever to be taken out of the list of oversubscription criteria that LEAs can lawfully adopt.

In Devon, to find out your "area school" ( catchment) you look at the map on the county council website. Nice and simple.

For schools that are so ridiculously oversubscribed I think a strict 'distance from school' policy with clear evidence that the house is the primary and permanent address is the only fair way to go.

I don't agree with sibling priority, SEN priority, faith priority or looked after child priority.

Having said that, I do think walking buses and mini buses/coaches should be the norm where needed.

PanelChair, many siblings could well miss out if they did away with the sibling rule. I'm very glad that siblings have priority here because although we sent dd1 to the nearest school it's a 15 minute walk from our house, and there are an awful lot of pupils who live closer. When she started at the school a year and a half ago it was fairly easy to get a place but since then the numbers have risen a lot because of the higher birth rate and the school has grown in popularity. Dd2 has now got a place but I don't know whether she would have got a place if they went on distance alone.

In our town, I would say that with quite a lot of schools, many of the pupils would live very close to the school, so siblings could easily miss out if they gave priority to other children who lived closer,even though they are going to their local school and have not moved house since they first applied. With some of the most popular schools, people may travel a little further, but generally not more than a couple of miles.

I think the siblings priority rule is unfair if the family has moved away from the area since their elder children started at the school. Our local secondary school is hugely oversubscribed, and there is a local renting racket going on, where people will rent a nearby house for a short while to get their eldest child in, usually not even living there (the housing close to this school is not really family sized, it is mostly flats and small one/two bed properties), then get all their younger children in on the back of that. We live right on the boundary, so that some years we're within the catchment area, others we're not, and I know for sure there are at least a handful of children each year who are admitted as a result of their parents duplicity.

I know of families who use 2 different addresses for schools admissions, one for their younger child's primary school application, another for their elder's secondary application; and of cases where people use friends addresses as a mail forwarding service, but that is a whole other issue.

I don't understand why people are so hot under the collar about siblings attending different schools, and how "unmanageable" and "impossible" it would be.

I have three DCs; they went to an Infant school, then Junior, now one is at Secondary, each school is 4+ miles from the other.Attending multiple schools was the norm for us, and many other families in the area. In fact, I have had only one year with them all at the same school; I can't be alone, surely? Obviously it's nicer and a whole lot more convenient, but that's all.

Halcyondays - As I said, all this is conjectural because I'm sure that the siblings criterion is here to stay (in the sense of being available to LEAs if they want to use it).

I'm not sure I agree with you that many siblings would miss out, but I can see that some might (hence the need to evaluate all the pros and cons of such a change). I suspect that much would depend on the geography of the LEA. There is some concern within my LEA about the extent to which school admissions are skewed by the effects of families moving away , far outside 'catchment', after the first child has been admitted and younger siblings still benefiting from sibling priority. It would be interesting to do some computer modelling of how different - or not - the outcome of school admissions would be if sibling priority were removed. Without that, we're all just guessing about how much difference it would make.

when ds1 and ds2 started school they were 9 and 6yrs old, had we applied for them to start in reception we probably wouldnt have got in at the school as we live too far away, in catchment but its always oversubscribed, as it was there were spaces in yr 5 and yr 2 so they both got in, ds3 then got in on the siblings rule and ds4 should get a place on the siblings rule again (find out tomorrow)

we knew we were taking a risk but distance wise its very close some do get in that are the same distance away, some dont, i know one person who didnt get in in sept but a place came up in december.

if ds4 didnt get a place he will stay home until one becomes available as i cant physically get him to the other school, they are each a good half hour walk in OPPOSITE directions from our home!

so we get in on the 'siblings in catchment' rule which i think is fair enough, i can see that its frustrating for those with one child but i cant see another way of doing it.

if you move out of the catchment and then still use the sibling rule i agree that is unfair, some areas seem to have changed their policy so this cant be done anymore, there should be clear and universal guildlines.

oh and of course kids in care, sen should get priority, they are disadvantaged to begin with so if a school is seen as the best choice for them then they should get it as they need it.

Nope, not here...siblings outside catchment don't get priority. Feel so sorry for the parents of siblings in different schools.

But your DC1 wasn't a sibling so there must be some cases where a first/only child gets in.

Cointreau, it's different if you have older children who can make their own way to school. But if you have two young children who both need to be taken to school, then obviously it's a problem if they end up at 2 different schools. Our closest school is a 15 min (at adult speed, takes twice as long with young dc) walk from our house, the next closest is a good 25 min walk at adult speed.

There are 4 schools in my area and some people choose to travel to the outstanding school, bypassing their 2 nearest, just because they feel it is better, has less kids from council estates etc. (they admit this freely). Then they get priority for future sibs above people living right next to school (massively oversubscribed) even though they live 2 miles away and near 2/3 other schools which are in walking distance.

Cointreau Our nearest school that DS1(5) goes to is 1.5 miles away. Our catchment school is 1.6 miles away in the opposite direction. I don't drive and there is a bus to the nearest school but not the catchment school. Thankfully DS2 has got a place at DS1's school. I couldn't have got them to different schools.

I see why they do it. It would be unreasonable to expect parent to ferry children to 2 different schools if it can be avoided.