To say that the English system of school allocations seems bonkers?

[Edinburghgirlie]

I have been reading with interest the threads about school placements and potential appeals and find it bonkers. Here in Scotland you live in a catchment area and you automatically get a space at that school...no question. If you want to go to another school then you put in a placing request and if they have spaces unfillled by catchment children then they consider siblings already there and proximity to the school.
It’s very clear cut here, although it does lead to house prices being pushed up if they are in the catchment of a ‘desirable’ school. I really don’t envy people down south not knowing which school they will get in to.
AIBU in thinking the English system seems bonkers?

Also in our LA funding for the number of teachers is dependent on the number of pupils on the school roll... this caused a great deal of upheaval in DD's primary school one year when a number of pupils left within the first few weeks of term & took them under the limit for 7 teachers & classes had to be re-shuffled

They don't change the catchment boundaries here unless they change them for all the schools in that area. There aren't "between catchment" areas (e.g. Fife's map ). It's very rare that you won't get a space in your catchment school, because of the planning. Some years they'll do a swell class, or find ways to configure it so there are more composite classes. Or they'll repurpose other space to put classes.

its not uncommon for primary schools in deprived areas to operate a "nurture room"; a level of attention to behaviour and pastoral care that is unheard of in England.

I can name you 10 primaries with nurture rooms, [by various names] just from my personal knowledge of primaries in the fairly local area. Last time i checked, i was definitely in England...

Not London here but I filled in all my choices (3) with my 3 closest schools and am genuinely worried about not getting any of them. This is due to the catchements shrinking year on year with new houses being built. I would love the Scottish system as I am constantly on edge about it all and will be until 16th April. It would take a lot of the worry away.

Catchment area movement is quite unusual in many areas. My girls go to the secondary that I went too and the catchment has changed once in all that time, and that was because new housing on the other side of town lead to the building of a new high school.

Same with the primary school. So it would be very unlikely that someone would move into a street with a baby and not know the school they were going too as the new schools were a long time in the planning.

fosnow..

Do you have spectacularly nimble builders in your area? There are no more 'areas to repurpose' in the school I teach in. As I say, we could grow each year group at least 2-fold during its time in school, due to families moving into the catchment area. Could we do so quickly enough to have a classroom ready for each new class formed as soon as it went higher than 30? Every year? I genuinely don't think so, especially because the vast majority of our applicants over and above our starting point move in mid-year.

I read threads here about 5year olds being tutored for exams at 7 and trying to get into the best pre prep blah blah blah.

I also think it's a bit nuts--however, this is not representative of English parents. Only 7% of English kids go to private schools at all (and that figure includes really high numbers who do private schools only for 11-16 or only for 6th form), and the majority of private schools are not extremely selective. The really nutty stuff is mostly found around North London and one or two other areas, and is confined to a very small number of parents.

"I can name you 10 primaries with nurture rooms, [by various names] just from my personal knowledge of primaries in the fairly local area. Last time i checked, i was definitely in England..."

That's very encouraging cantkeepaway. I honestly thought the English system wouldn't have the funding.

This isn’t really an issue with the allocations system but population density and not running all schools with excess capacity.

There are issues in some pockets of the country with a significant number of children not having a school they could go to nearby but these tend to be the exception rather than the rule. But I’d say most of this is down to rapid increases in local population, schools not having the space to expand, admission priority based on faith criteria and LA’s not having the power to be able to build new schools.

In most of the country this isn’t an issue. Like cant says a lot of the threads you will see here are from people who have expressed a preference for a school some distance away that they were always unlikely to get. They almost always have a ‘catchment’ school allocation they don’t want. But that’s what the applications system is designed for. As long as you apply for your ‘safe bet’ you can always say ‘I’d rather have this school if there’s a place available’

The systems aren't too different - in that if select catchment school as 3rd choice in England, and choice 1 and 2 are full with those with higher priority - you are likely to end up with catchment school.

Where our system fails is where there are catchment areas where demand outweighs capacity - but for all schools that are within 2/3 miles of each other - and so children who are lowest priority for catchment get shipped out 6-10 miles. Yes, there's a bus or transport pass provided. But this a) extends their schooldays beyond that of their peers and can disadvantage them with regards afterschool activities because of transport and b) can mean pupils aren't living near their affecting them socially or putting pressure on parents to provide a 'taxi' service.

Imo catchment areas should change more often based on population and distance and schools shouldn't be allowed to have 'feeder school' criteria disadvantage given those closer to catchment who didn't attend feeder school .

In Scotland population changes are much less than in major English cities. The population can change dramatically year on year, generally large increases, thus meaning it is much more difficult to plan and hence dynamic catchments.

In less dense areas catchments generally stay much more stable.

It is worth remembering how much smaller the population is in Scotland, 5.3million. Compared to 8.3 million in London alone

I've just been looking at population growth figures for my region.

Overall, county population has gone up by 60,000 in the last 15 years.

However, looking settlement by settlement, some places have remained absolutely static over that time - and that means that school allocations and catchments will also have remained pretty static, though of course Ofsted results etc may have influenced school preference quite significantly.

Other areas have grown hugely. Yes, some of that growth will be big developments that will acquire their own schools, but others will be smaller, piecemeal developments that skew school allocations and stretch local school capacity without actually allowing a new school to be built. And the post-2000 baby boom isn't exactly helping, as it means that the extra people are perhaps skewed towards children, rather than being extra adults moving into the areas to find work.

The houses do go up at an alarming fast rate. The new school (A) I mentioned was opened in 2011. It had a £2m extension completed in 2016 to cope with the demand. There are 200 new houses that are due to be built next to this school that have to be in catchment for school D away that will need a £1.5million extension of it's own to cope, because School A is expanded as much as it can be. Two other schools, which opened in 2007, are also very close to capacity. No placing requests were granted for the 2017 p1s (my friend's children) at School B, and they've expanded as much as they can within their campus by taking over half of the public library to make 2 class rooms. School C will need a 3 classroom extension costing £2m to meet demand with continued housebuilding at their end.

DS's school has two p1 classes this year (around 40 p1s). Last year they had two smaller p1 classes and a p1/2 composite class. They have one larger space which used to be the library which houses three open plan classes of two year groups.

Religious schools in England complicate matters: in many cases the first, second and third nearest schools have faith-related admissions criteria which means that non-religious children living close by are not likely to get a place there (unless the school is failing so badly that no-one wants to send their child there so there is spare capacity)

And of course faith schools hugely distort catchment areas. Your closest schools could all be faith schools so you don't get allocated those because preference is given to children whose parents are that faith living miles away

I'm in angst because I didn't get into the catchment school - the one that everyone else living on my road has sent their DC to for the past 25 years.

The council allowed buying of a large estate, which is mostly 5-bed detached with a few flats and small houses thrown in. People who can afford the £1m+ to buy in the new estate are guaranteed a space at the school due to proximity - they are full of families moving from the richer London boroughs with school age DC. Meanwhile others living in the catchment area in the cheaper housing can't get in to the catchment school. And the roads are in catchment for the next nearest schools, so pupils get bussed to another (poorly performing) school on the edges of the borough.

For context, I'm not taking about people living on the edge of a catchment where it could be dicey. These are people living 1km from the school for a catchment that extends 3km who are not getting spaces.

The council says its discharge its obligations to make more spaces available by increasing the intake for the community school miles away, which now takes double the numbers than the desired local catchment schools.

There is no choice for schools where I live, unless I have £1m+ to spend on a house.

The roads are NOT in catchment for other schools

InaConfused,

That sound very like the situation described in a previous poster's description of what had happened in her part of Scotland - a further away school had been expanded and was taking the 'bulge' of children because the local school did not have space for them.

The additional factor in England is that there seems to be a very much stronger awareness of 'pecking order' between schools, probably based on Ofsted / league tables, and that leads to decision making based on the 'desirability' of the school place that would be allocated rather than the 'existence' of the school place.

"This is my impression as well Graphista In Glasgow, for example, its not uncommon for primary schools in deprived areas to operate a "nurture room"; a level of attention to behaviour and pastoral care that is unheard of in England."

Yes, the pastoral care in particular, at primary level is excellent. And poor behaviour is simply not tolerated, very much a firm but fair approach, whereas in the English schools we were in the badly behaved children got away with murder - actually make that the children AND the parents! Lots of minimising and excuses!

But there's also clearly communicated boundaries on expected behaviour anyway so it's rare that extreme bad behaviour even happens, low level bad behaviour is dealt with early on in a variety of ways.

And for reassuring me I'm not invisible - was beginning to wonder 😂

Purely on my friends and family and what they tell me and post on social media there seems to be increasing problems in England with children getting places in schools far from home, not being supported and in very large classes. Generally speaking I haven't seen that happen nearly as much in Scotland. And I'm not just talking the areas I live in I've got family and friends in various other parts of Scotland too. There's some crossover In relationships with those in England and those of us in Scotland are not infrequently shocked at what those in England are having to deal with.

"I am constantly on edge about it all" that's very much the feeling I get from friends and family in England when they're awaiting news on placements. They're worried sick, have sleepless nights etc that their child is going to be placed in a school a significant distance from both home and work, and/or one they know to have poor pastoral care, resources, and exam results (especially in regard to high school level). One family I know their 2 DC are at different schools almost 40 miles apart - that's CRAZY!

Good to read English schools are starting to view pastoral care with higher priority, it was very low priority when I and then dd attended school there.

"Religious schools in England complicate matters" unfortunately we DO have religious schools here too (far too bloody many!) something I disagree with on a very basic level. They also have (albeit unofficially) admission criteria regarding observance, family background etc in addition they can even be selective about teaching staff on religious grounds. It's ridiculous!

”flowery if the number of p1's would exceed the maximum pupils per class limit then there would either be 2 p1 classes or a p1 & a p1/2 composite class that year.”

So say there’s a P2 class of 30, and then 35 P1s. An additional 5 kids isn’t enough to fund a whole extra teacher and there isn’t space spare to put them with the P2s as that’s already full.

Sorry I’m just not getting how in the Scottish system anyone can be guaranteed a place in their catchment school.

P 1-3 class sizes don’t tend to be higher than 25, so you’d likely end up with a P1 of 25 and a composite P1/2 and a smaller P2 class. I have a number of friends in primary teaching - given then schools are all LA controlled, they might increase by one teacher in school A and reduce by one in school B using natural wastage, offering transfer etc - it all comes out of the LA education budget. Enrolment and placing requests are all made in January so plenty of time to know how many kids to expect in August, to set budgets and plan staffing levels.

Flowery, tbh, I've always wondered that, too. Suppose a school has 6 classes (the next year's p2-p7), all full, and no additional spaces within the school that can be converted.

There are 37 P1s in catchment. What happens?

The Scottish system ONLY works, as far as I can see, if over-capacity is planned in both at a school and at a system level, so every school is planned to run at slightly under capacity, all the time.

Jelly, having an extra TEACHER is all very well, but what about the classrooms? Does every school have extra classrooms that spend some years mothballed and other years being used??

(And don't say 'oh, just convert the library'. That's already been converted. And the storeroom. And the medical room. And the original reception / office area.)

I know my school has at the moment a classroom being used for the toddlers group (pre-nursery, the nursery class has its own secure space) who then move if that classroom is needed - some years it is, some years it isn’t. The toddlers group is affiliated to the school but is pretty mobile in that they use space in the local community centre or one of the churches if there isn’t space at the school.

Newer schools are being built with very flexible spaces including multi-use rooms, rooms with moveable dividers and communal teaching areas presumably because they need flexibility in how they use their space.