The We Did Not Get Our First Choice School Thread..

[Tak3n]

Really Gutted and proper upset, wont get on my Soapbox about allowing the whole of Europe in to live here without building new schools..

Got our 3rd choice which is the one we really did not want, we shall appeal but hardly likely to suceed....

to clarify I am not blaming the eastern europeans for moving here, I am blaming the various Goverments for not making provisions for the extra influx..

Where I live there have been no new schools for over 30 years, and we have a very large population of europeans

I also feel sorry for the parents who have no place for their children at any school. I also agree with PP about schools judged on the atmosphere etc not where they are. A friend of mine is appealing a school place for no other reason than the area it's in & trying to make it look valid.

eliza did no one think to ring the police?

ok I just re-read too and can see how it might come across !

You can appeal if you got a school which was your third choice but only if you believe the admissions criteria have not been followed correctly.

I agree that immigration brings benefits to a country,

this is about volume and not race.

The volume of immigration we have been flooded with is of no benefit to anybody.

When you cant get into your local labour ward anymore, due to a massive influx of immigrants, that doesnt benefit anyone at all.

When you cant get your child into school because of a massive influx of immigrants, that doesnt benefit anyone.

When lots of people in vairous jobs are outpriced by people with no mortgage and made jobless, thats a problem.

Interestingly, my " immigrant polish siL" who has lived here for 25 years, my "immigrant polish BF" who came here aged 6, and my immigrant neighbour from Poland and my " immigrant" BIL from Spain, all say exactly the same thing.....

We have been utterly stupid and should have capped immigration,

Australia is a richly multi cultural society, as are we, but they have very strict criteria on how to get in, are they racist?

I have two south afircan neighbours paying hideous sums to get work visa s here,... they look at some of the rough violent people on our street and say why? How are those people benefiting you - and why are we being made to jump thru hoops.

One is an accountant and one is IT expert, they had to sell tons of stuff to live and work here and they say its an absolute battle, they are good citizens who do benefit us. They look at the perpetrators of crime on our street and shake thier heads.

Liebour has tried to make citizen turn agaisnt citizen by making everyone who compalins of mass immigration with no controls, racist.

VOLUME not Race.

BellaOfTheBalls

YES i did, they said they would send out car, but actually noise problems are now a low police priority prefering to go through councils EH team.

By the time the car arrived - 2.5 hours after I called, the music had stopped.

My other neighbour said she saw 101 said dont call for noise so she filled out a council form instead...but will ring 101 next time, the lady with the babe in arms and toddler - said she is terrified of them, her husband asked them to stop at 11pm, at which point it went up even louder....the people on the side are also scared of them...they are very very rough and about 10 of them if not more.

Actually Eliza, yes, I would say that some Austrailian policies do seem racist from where I'm sitting, yes, although I'm not particularly knowledgeable about them. And obviously I empathise with anyone who is struggling to access services. But Im old enough to remember when it was 'the Irish taking our jobs' old enough to remember 'the Catholics' being responsible for everything that ever went wrong in Glasgow. I don't feel blaming immigrants for lack of services is particularly fair or relevant. We're part of the EU and immigration and EMigration is part of that deal.

And we do cap immigration - that's why your non-EU friends from South Africa have found it so difficult to enter the country.

Oh and when you link 'perpetrators of crime on our streets' directly with immigrants then that is being racist. And I don't need the Labour party to tell me that.

Eliza The fact you chose Australia as your example, without a hint of irony...(hint - you may want to look at what has happened and is happening to the indigenous peoples of Australia. I don't think the immigration policy is really thinking about them).

Also, Environmental Health has been in charge of noise pollution problems for a while (at least 9 years) and should be easily able to help you with your problems. Here they are quite eager to help.

I'm an immigrant, but my kids aren't taking up places so I guess I'm not a problem .

op are your 1st choice schools catchment area?

or...are you in your 1st choice schools catchment area....is what I meant!

But you got your 3rd choice! You chose to put down a 3rd choice and therefore have been allocated that choice.

What is Liebour?

Fair enough eliza. Personally if it was that much of issue I would be doing as much as possible. I'm assuming they don't own the house, in which case if you complain to letting agent/housing association they are obliged to investigate.

I would also hazard a guess that it's less to do with the immigrants and a lot more to do with the baby boom. Or is that all the governments fault as well?

We didn't get any of our 5 choices (we did not put down only 'oversubscribed' or outstanding schools, it was all nearest to us). Got allocated a school we have never heard of about 2 miles away, in the wrong direction for DH and I to go to work. Completely shocked as 'catchments' have shrunk by about half this year... But I also know someone who has no place for her son so there's always someone worse off than you. I would kill for our third choice!

You could apply to the over-subscribed "good" or "outstanding" school and your child could end up with the one of the few apathetic teachers.

You could apply to your nearest school, which may have been judged by someone with an OfStEd badge as "satisfactory" or even "inadequate" and your child may end up in a classroom with one of the amazing, enthusiastic, hardworking teachers who's trying really hard to improve standards.

Liebour is an amusing play on words

We didn't get our choice either. About immigration, I feel like we (like so many other rich countries) have an economy that in some sense does want and need what people bring in -- be it good plumbing at reasonable prices, computer expertise, cheap labour, whatever. We just don't want to pay the costs of improving infrastructure and services. We want (at least, the powers that control these things do) the advantages of being in the EU - better trade with Europe (cheaper stuff, anyone?), probably loads of finance system stuff with associated tax influx, and influx of rich people, but also influx of financial service sector jobs for the non-super-rich, including jobs at normal wages, and there are probably other things I don't know about that the EU brings ... If we want those things, we have to accept that they come packaged with other things: we can't 'limit immigration' from the EU under current law, and the bulk of immigration is from the EU.

We could afford to improve education - add bulge classes in schools and areas that need them so everyone would have a place, improve the pay of teachers so it's in line with places like Denmark and Canada, improve their training, improve facilities to make room for bulge classes. We could get those funds by increasing corporate taxation, decreasing spending on the military, even shifting to toll roads (motorways are extremely expensive to maintain) maybe? But we have to vote for governments that prioritise education if education is what we want. And we didn't, we really, sadly, didn't.

This is getting long, but one final comment: to those who think this is 'our pie' and we've been paying in to it for generations.. I can see that. But think of the global pillaging 'we' have benefitted from historically over those generations, and before. It's wealth that's still here, power we continue to use to our advantage. Our wealth is at the direct cost of many others. It's not 'our pie' alone, or it shouldn't be.

Our area has apparently been in the news recently as there are over 400 children without a school place, including both of my DS's.

The problem is they keep building blocks of flats and housing estates, including one a stone's throw away from a very popular and over-subscribed school, so there is a huge increase in the number of people who can be housed in a reasonably small area. They are not making any more school places in line with the number of people living in the area!

They added 17 bulge classes to schools in the area but have since realised that this is not enough so are now adding another 13. In the letter they send me they say they are 'confident' that with the addition of all these new school places every child will get one but they would say that

My worry is, what if not every child does get a place? Will they create even more bulge classes? Or will all the children left without a place just have to go to schools outside the county? By my calculations, 13x30 (maximum class size) is 390, so what about all the other kids?

There's no easy answer unfortunately :(

What's a bulge class please?

Yes what is it ? I presume its self explanatory but what a revolting name

A bulge class is an extra class added to a school often just for one intake year, so for example a school with a 60 intake, can agree to take 90 for one year, then revert back to 60 the following year. They may have temporary classrooms to accomodate the extra children.

The children remain there for their primary schooling, not just for one year though. Sorry if that wasn't very clear.

Allowing mass immigration over the past decade - on a far greater scale than ever before (since the Norman conquest) - may have been good for those who want their plumbing done on the cheap, or employers who get rich by paying poverty wages. But it has not been good for the people who live here in the first place and want jobs as plumbers or labourers or waitresses or whatever - any of the roles where many jobs have gone to recent immigrants. Immigration has depressed wages in some occupations and localities - the benefits have been to the well-off and rich, the cost has been borne by anyone in need of public services, including social housing but especially by the poor and working classes.

That is not the fault of immigrants from Eastern Europe, who are just doing the best for themselves and their families, as anyone would. They are seizing the opportunities available to them. It is the fault of politicians, both national and local, who have allowed mass immigration without looking at the costs to ordinary people and public services.

can you imagine any other country in europe providing lessons/resources in 40+ languages? lol

if you cant speaka da language, you either pay to go to an international school or you learn pdq