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?

The lottery system would need work, but it seems to me that it's the easiest way to provide more equality of opportunity. There are certainly practical issues to be overcome, but surely not beyond the wit of man.

lost and if they admit they are buying state education in an unfair system that's fine. The problem is when they then object to buying private education, or buying a grammar place with tutoring, or in my case 'buying' private with ability instead of cash, and harp on about how the education they've bought is equality for all.

Given some families I know couldn't fill a cupboard with smart price bread I'm sure a trolley dash round waterstones will be no problem.

bert

"I didn't say that disadvantage doesn't cause problems. I just don't believe that in any school a tiny handful of deprived dc cause all the problems while the mc kids are all well behaved"

Great point! Also my point (which I think was missed) is that schools can tackle the problems of disadvantage. A couple of Glasgow schools have "nurture rooms" for example, where children who struggle to behave in a classroom setting can get more input. Also if you watch the "educating" series, you can see how much efforts the teachers put into pasterol care. So much better than when I was at school and so encouraging.
These are the kinds of things I would be looking for in a school.

Bertrand When they are all in their lottery-chosen schools:

How will you correct for some parents being supportive of education and some not?

Will you allow tutoring as exams approach? If not how will you stop it?

You are trying to impose equality where it is not to be had.

c8 in the nearest towns, yes, it would work. Problem would be more the villages, big and small, and the outlying clusters of a few houses etc. Public transport is rubbish too.

Eg near me kids have a mile walk to catch a reliable bus that would get them to school. Or you can take short cuts on footpaths to the nearest school but thats not safe (or dry) year round. And any public transport journey, not just school, involves a bus to nearest town and then another bus out. For my particular area it would work if the religious schools in the nearest towns were included in the lottery, but other further comprehensives weren't. But in some local places it would need dedicated school buses or kids would be traveling hours each way if they got the third furthest school.

How will you correct for some parents being supportive of education and some not?

Surely the point is that if every school has its 'share' of different types of parents the children all benefit.
One of the defining characteristics of the nearby grammar area to me was the extent to which the grammars don't just cream off the supported MC children, they also do very nicely out of parental contributions which the local secondary moderns don't get.

If fact the parent governer at one of them boasted to me that they wanted a private school without the fees so a couple of grand a year in the school fund was 'peanuts'

c8 in the nearest towns, yes, it would work. Problem would be more the villages, big and small, and the outlying clusters of a few houses etc. Public transport is rubbish too

Yes I'm assuming school buses rather than general public transport, much as rural schools already use and much as grammars use in many parts of the country. The question is would a school bus service be worse than the current public transport system on which they depend?

Like PPs I am always amazed that traveling for school is somehow a benefit if its to go to grammar but the end of the world if its for any other reason.

Having had my child travel on a school bus for her catchment area school - it had so many problems we moved. Utterly dire.

We now use the local school, but if we had a lottery system and had a bus journey I would go private.
Not sure how removing my mc child would therefore help...

Surely the point is that if every school has its 'share' of different types of parents the children all benefit.

Totally disagree. If you socially engineer things so that all of sudden the school which has great teachers but unengaged kids has 33% from the "posh" school up the road and vice versa, what's going to happen? You're not going to change the fact that some parents and some kids couldn't give a shit about going to school, being polite to teachers, learning and not disrupting others. The children who are parachuted into a high-achieving school with the nice middle class kids aren't going to undergo a personality change overnight.

So basically, the lottery system would do nothing to pull the "worst" schools up to the level of the best, but would just pull every school down to a lower standard.

Round here it's cheaper to send your DC private. The mark up on catchment area houses is a good 150k+ over non catchment and the school is really not that special imo. Just not as rubbish as the worst ones locally.

So basically, the lottery system would do nothing to pull the "worst" schools up to the level of the best, but would just pull every school down to a lower standard.

So poor kids by default are unengaged with parents who don't give a shit about their education? And MC kids mixing in them will somehow be dragged down?

Thats a nice assumption to make.

c8 school bus would work, as they work very well for the religious schools which currently have them. The buses through the villages/ outskirts are like any rural transport, long winding routes, and for most either too early or late for school start.

Do you know what I find exhausting about these threads?
The page after page of people explaining the extreme lengths they are prepared to go to, in order to avoid their kids having to mix with mine.

Like that school on the Educating Manchester programme. SO many disruptions, rude kids, behaviour problems, truancy - those sorts of kids.

Putting them in a different school isn’t going to make them care more about school, stop swearing or be more motivated.

Yeah. I look at that programme and I think how good the pastoral care is and how much effort is made with the disruptive kids to get to the bottom of their problems. I genuinely find it very uplifting.

Did you see the episode about the little Syrian kid? Floods of tears, I tell you. Floods. I never thought watching a 12 year old draw a willy on a van would give me the feels!

I don't like lottery systems, even though they can go a long way towards redressing the "naice, MC school" issue.

I would prefer that every school was an excellent school TBH - that seems more realistic than changing the housing system (or human nature)

So many people here are getting confused between “a school with lots of wealthy middle class people” and a “good” school.

FWIW I went to school in a “naice” catchment and there were plenty of disruptive or disengaged children of the middle classes. And plenty of shit teachers. But parents just paid for tutors so this never showed in the grades.

unlimited I agree, that programme has showed how many amazing students and teachers there are in that school. And none of the “disruption” is stuff that didn’t also happen countless times in my “naice” school.
Heck I arsed about all through GCSEs, but my parents paid for tutors at the end when they realised so I got a string of As. No credit to the school but they will take all of it, and people are paying £200K plus in house price “premium” alone to get a child into that school.

"Do you know what I find exhausting about these threads?
The page after page of people explaining the extreme lengths they are prepared to go to, in order to avoid their kids having to mix with mine."

This.

The page after page of people explaining the extreme lengths they are prepared to go to, in order to avoid their kids having to mix with mine.

Yes this. The implied assumption that anyone who can't afford private (school or extensive tutoring) is somehow scum and less of value and will have badly behaved disengaged children is an attitude which should have disappeared in the last century.

unlimited - in what way? I have never not wanted my children to mix with anyone but I want them in single sex schools and in academic schools and schools with particular aspects I want and I am happy to pay for it. I would be surprised there was anythnig about your particular child I would not want to "mix" with.

My parents waited 10 years to have children to afford school fees and both worked full time until then and we went to fee paying schools from age 4 in the NE of England and we have done so for the 9 cousins of the next generation. In my bit of London there are plenty of choices of all kinds of schools and the fee paying schools you tend to get a better racial and religious mix actually but that's probably just because of where we live. I thnik my children have benefited from that mixture. I also think they benefited from single sex education until university. We all have different views.

It can certainly be a lot cheaper to pay school fees than buy houses in posh areas

The school in educating Manchester very much reminds me of one near me. My only complaint is that a) we're catchment for the shit one, and b) the similar one near me has very little on offer for higher achievers.

Ditto unlimited. The education side led us down the private bursary route, not the social side of a mainly deprived intake. (We still live and socialise here). But it appears that unlike if a genuine mixed comprehensive had been an option, we've also escaped having to mix with bourgeois petty social climbers desperate to prove their own perceived social status by vilifying the poor.

The school in Educating Manchester clearly put in a lot of effort with troubled children, but really some of the standards of behaviour were still shocking. And often seemed to be accepted as reasonable, or a mild irritant. I would not want my child educated in that kind of environment, although do recognise the school is making progress and doing a good job on the pastoral front for some challenging children. However, the children who just got on with things didn't seem to get half the time, attention or recognition as those who were troublesome.

I went to a pretty bog standard comp with a mixed intake, but in quite a down at heel town- behaviour was poor amongst some pupils but were streamed pretty early on and those who didn't want to work were taught separately from those who did (until their behaviour improved, if ever). This allowed those who wanted to work to get on with it with as little disruption as possible.

I think generally, standards of discipline in schools need to be higher- and consequences that means something for sustained poor behaviour. Being from a disadvantaged background should not be used by schools to tolerate misbehaviour. It's actually pretty insulting to the children to allow lower standards simply because their parents aren't as wealthy.

C8 and Unlimited

I don't think that's what many people are saying- it's not about not wanting their children to mix with yours, it's about wanting their child to go to the best school possible and/or not feeling the local school(s) are good enough. That's certainly how I felt about our local primary school- it really wasn't what I was looking for in a school in terms of ethos and educational standards. So I pay for them to go to a school which does. Other parents chose to pay more for a house in the catchment area of a good school. There are some parents who actively do not want their children mixing with children from other backgrounds, but in my experience it's more of an indirect outcome of having the ability to chose to go private or move into an area with good schools and higher house prices.

I don't want my child educated with children from far flung places across the next city.
Our bus services are poor and I want them to be able to meet up with friends.

I want them to go to the same school as friends children, locally. We help each other out and that would be more difficult if they were at different schools.