To think this is an elite school system via the back door.

[1DAD2KIDS]

There is a very good state school in my city. It has great facilities, staff and excellent (plus ever improving) results. It is a school that would give any private sector school a run for its money.

As a result a strange thing has happened over the last 10 years. It was once in a pretty average area with house prices reflecting the rest of the city. But now it is within in a bubble of masivly inflated house prices and rents within its catchment area. The difference in prices between a house that is in the catchment area and one just outside it is staggering. When a house in the catchment area is on the market it's always advertised in BOLD print in the catchment area of said school. These houses fly off the market.

It's clear what is going on here. As the middle classes have been priced out of the private sector they have found a new more affordable way to set up an elite school system. Afterall when you think about it in the long run its a far more ecconomical way to get your kids in a great school without paying private sector prices and once the kids have grown up you could sell the house on again and get the money back (or more). The demographic in the school has masivly changed over the last 10 years. Now the kids are pretty much all from well off, well educated backgrounds. It is no secret that part of the schools improving high achievement is due to change in student demographic. Also the school is not short of generous parents who donate or raise extra funds for the school. The only way to get into the school as it's soon popular is to live in the catchment area. The only way you can afford to live in that area and thus attend the school is by being well off. Even pretty much all the council housing in the area has gone through right to buy and now sells/rents at ridiculous prices.

What has happened in this case is clear. It is an elite school were you can only go to if you can afford the very expensive catchment area. A school for the well off funded by the state. There is nothing technically wrong but is there something morally wrong? Is it in the spirit of the state school system to have an excellent state school were only those wealthy enough can attend due to catchment area? Or is it just another obstical to social mobility?

Mumindoghouse, sounds like you're from my area :) Luckily, no-one pays for catchment around here.

I'd also point out that the local grammars do actually have quite a few pupil premium kids, eg WCG has over 10% and that's considerably more than some of the other local schools (I'm near Barrow Hedges and PP accounts for 4% of kids) although it's still below the national average.

If you are guaranteed a place on catchment what happens if in Year X there are more children in area than there are places? LAC and sibling preference and then what?

Well, the system in most US states is exactly this: you live in Street X, you go to School Y. Very few reasons why you would be allowed to go to School Z instead.

They make it work by rigorous planning and population projection (some areas are better at this than others). They having much bigger schools than we do in England (and I think across the rest of the UK): 25 extra kids has far less impact a grade level with 125 kids in it than they would do on a year group with 50 kids.

And class sizes are smaller to begin with: my DC have been in classes as small as 19, with 23 being the biggest (and even then parents were starting to mutter about them getting too big). So schools can absorb a few more children throughout the year without having great big bulge classes of 45 with two teachers and a TA (which I have read about on here and heard about in RL)

The US isn't perfect, but the admissions system is much more straightforward in most cases (there are some selective schools, and schools with a lottery system)

Same everywhere. The one secondary in Oxford thought to be a good all round school sits in an area with house prrices 1 million plus for 3/4 bed house.
Ditto anywhere with grammar schools

That's very interesting Olennaswimple
There was a fly on the wall TV programme on UK TV a little while ago following students at a school in Orangeburg. I thought the disciple was a little harsher and more impersonal than at an equivalent UK school and I did wonder at the time if it was a produce of the school being so large

"How? Ban parents from reading to their children, stop them from helping them to understand their homework? Make sure that they have no access to books in their homes? Close down all libraries?"

How about: Set homework that kids can do with minimal parental input if necessary?
Set homework that doesn't require access to computers or other expensive resources?
Provide after school homework clubs where kids can get assistance from teachers?
Provide homework drop ins for parents to help them understand and assist with homework?
Introduce children to the library as a school trip and get them signed up for library cards?

I love the way people pretend that educational disadvantage is inevitable and there's simply nothing that can be done about it. Those were just off the top of my head. I'm sure teachers can think of lots more.

I went to one of the best state schools in my city.... everyone raves about it. Gets fab results.

IMO it was shit. Poor, weak leadership and crappy culture an teaching.

But the catchment area was full of well off educated middle class parents (teaches, doctors, uni lecturers, lawyers, dentists etc) with zero low income housing.

So of course the results were good!

undiluted - I'd guess that the discipline policy was a product of that school's circumstances, rather than size. My DC's school has been very nurturing and they have felt very secure being a small class whilst being able to enjoy the benefits of a big school (a huge theatre, for example, lots of after-school activities). In other words, what the independent school sector offers in the UK...

@manicmij that is a really interesting point actually!

Yes, size can make a difference. My sons' school has just under 600 pupils and that was quite a nice friendly size.

Not sure about size, it's more about attitude- my son's secondary is 8-form entry but it doesn't feel like that, partly due to the design of the building and partly due to teachers and management team.

I actually like big schools. My own comprehensive had a 8-10 class intake per year and a 6th form with two classes per year. The size offers lots of flexibility, with setting and being able to offer lots of courses and extra curricular activities etc. Discipline was not overly harsh but there was very little disruption in classes. Of course the devil is in the detail in how things are run.

slow hand clap

How about: Set homework that kids can do with minimal parental input if necessary?

In chaotic homes the homework won't get done even with no parental input.

Set homework that doesn't require access to computers or other expensive resources?
Ditto. And a child with books on the shelf, access to the internet and engaged parents will have better role models to start with.

Provide after school homework clubs where kids can get assistance from teachers?
Many already do thank God. I hope they are attended by the kids that really need them and not just those who go along because they are already aware that they need extra support.

Provide homework drop ins for parents to help them understand and
assist with homework?
These are almost always only attended by already engaged parents however well advertised they are and however much tea and biscuits are provided. Crab bucket parents won't come, because they feel out of place or they just don't care.

Introduce children to the library as a school trip and get them signed up for library cards?

I was paid to do this by the library service. I actually went to targeted schools and children's centres and got kids to sign up for library cards with special family sessions and all sorts of incentives to get families who wouldn't normally come to the library into them. Guess what? They didn't want to come. More often than you'd believe, outraged fathers came into our small school-based public library and yelled at me for having provided their daughter (it was always daughters) with a library card so that she could read the sort of books that would put the wrong kind of ideas into her head. I worked with all sorts of schemes and children from the very young "babies and books" "teen mums and tots" to the last year in primary (various reading, craft, song and story things) fathers' and kids Saturday groups... real, enthusiastic library outreach... Sometimes we had the odd miraculous break-through, but more often than not, it was the already engaged parents who made the most of these things, and then the money ran out.

There must be other ways of getting the children of the sort of parents who quite frankly don't give a shit, more engaged with an education system that just doesn't work for them.

There must be other ways of getting the children of the sort of parents who quite frankly don't give a shit, more engaged with an education system that just doesn't work for them

How about offering them some hope instead of being completely negative about their potential success considering their supposedly 'shit' parents and 'shit' home lives?

Wow GerdalovesLili that is incredibly negative.
I think the problem with this discourse is that a lot of people conflate poverty and disadvantage with being a bit personally inadequate, chaotic or "not giving a shit"
And then when suggestions are made about practical measures you can take to tackle the effect of structural inequality on educational outcome you get a lot of comments like you just made about how the really chaotic people or the people who really don't give a shit won't take them up.
Really chaotic people are a minority. I can think of one or two really chaotic families on my entire estate. And no, they don't volunteer themselves for services.
But we have a cooking and homework club (cooking for the mums homework support for the kids) that's really well attended.
By people who are engaged, want to learn new stuff and are self aware enough to recognise when they need something. Why on earth they would be illegitimate service users because they are "already aware they need support" is beyond me.

Is it only valuable if you can save us from ourselves?

unlimiteddilutingjuice
You're right it's negative but it is unfortunately truthful. It's the community I worked with for ten years and believe me, we tried all of those suggestions. Over and over and over.

It's depressing and frustrating, and believe me you start believing that the challenges can and should be fixed, and that the children deserve much much better, and then when you've tried all those ideas and more, and you've begged and pleaded for the parents you're working with to tell you how they think things should be done, and they don't, won't and can't tell you, and you begin to realise that however hard you and the system try their are a small but resilient parent group that either don't care or actively believe that education is not for them or their children.

Of course we supplied literacy, EFL, cookery, homework and other engagement courses for parents and they were well attended, but generally not by the demographic they were aimed at. And however much money that was thrown at these challenges the same things happened over and over.

It is depressing, it is grindingly depressing, and we are failing so many of our children. Biut making the right noises and ticking boxes isn't going to fix it.

Gerda, I think the focus really needs to be on engaging the children and not the parents. It is the children's education and their own future. The assumption that the parents need to be very actively supporting schools is problematic since a lot really do not have the time and resources for this. Many are dealing with dire poverty and long term health conditions themselves. Schools really need 'to hold their own' in education for education to truly address social and educational disadvantage. It is nonsensical to look for solutions amongst those already severely disadvantaged to tackle the problem of the inequalities that are disadvantaging them, themselves. These people need to be supported instead of being expected to provide support, themselves, to schools.

@magpiemischeif

The main determinant of educational success is the parents.

The main determinant of educational success is the parents.

So why are you determining this as educational success rather than parental success?

If ones of the main aims of free education is to reduce social inequality (as per the initial aim when it was introduced), then if parental success is still the main determiner of success, education is not really achieving this aim, is it? It is not really narrowing the gap between those who are classed as socially disadvantaged and those who are classed as socially advantaged.

Magpie

You will never get those children to fully engage with education until they see that the people they love and trust also value it.

If children are going to be mocked by their parents and role models for reading or wanting to do their homework then they will not do it and they will not value the very thing that will rescue them. The cycle will continue generation after generation.

Unless you can get parents and role models on board somehow, then children will continue to be failed by the system however much money and cunning ploys you throw at it. We have to somehow convince parents that education is a valuable thing.

"a small but resilient parent group that either don't care or actively believe that education is not for them or their children."

Maybe we're talking at cross purposes then. You are referring to a small group of parents. I was talking about general strategies to mitigate structural disadvantage effecting a lot of people.

If your benchmark is whether you can engage the most resistant people then you will be disappointed. Ultimately you can't make people do things they don't want to.

You will never get those children to fully engage with education until they see that the people they love and trust also value it.

Then you become those people those children 'love and trust'. Really, what is the purpose of education if it cannot tackle disadvantage?

People can and do succeed from 'disadvantaged' backgrounds. Not to recognise this, at all, is extremely defeatist. If this is the attitude of educators, those who come from 'disadvantaged' backgrounds are being failed from every angle. No one would expect or plan for them to succeed.

Thankfully there are plenty of more positive people involved in education about.

Honestly- a lot of the things I suggested, we have on our estate and people find them useful.
Reading Gerda's post I'm now thinking the guys that put them on are sitting around thinking how disappointing it is that the wrong people are coming who are already engaged and don't really need it. But whatever- people are facing structural disadvantage, they find this stuff useful. I think its good to have it.

Has anyone read the recent book: "The Life Project" about the large scale cohort studies. Its really interesting. Especially on the way that different uses have been found for the information at different points. And how prevailing politics has influenced those uses.

So in the 1970's you had the "wasted potential" study that looked at high achieving working class kids and tracked how they were overtaken by middle class kids over the course of their school career. And the focus was very much on what the school system might be doing that was letting down those kids.

Then much later on you get a study that's looking at kids from poor backgrounds and how they perform on entry to primary school. They find a general trend for poor kids to be behind their middle class peers and they study those poor kids that buck the trend and look in detail at what their parents were doing.

That study is the originator of the very popular idea that parents behaviour in the first 5 years is so crucial to later academic success.

What I find interesting is the total change in focus: From trying to improve schools to trying to improve (and intervene with) parents. And on the ground I think it often translates into blaming parents or pressurising parents. And when people are "not engaging" its often because they experience it as blaming and pressurising.

magpiemischief is completely correct. You can't put the responsibility for change on people suffering form poverty, health problems, social difficulties. That's the wrong was around.

But that's exactly what was done. We lacked the political will to change society so we tried to change working class mothers instead.