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?

I work in admissions in Manchester. Our year 7 population this year is close to double the year 11 population. A combination of increasing birth rates and people moving into the city. In the last 3 years a new high school has opened every year, the existing schools have added places and we are still at capacity with the exception of 2 schools at the very edge of the borough that are 6 to 7 miles from the places with the densest populations. These places will still be offered to kids with no other school offer.

Primary schools have all expanded as much as they can, either through rebuilds, temp class rooms or use of specialist rooms as classrooms. Many preciously 1 form entry schools are now 2 form entry as a result of rebuilding and still demand outpaces supply. Many are 3 form entry now. One primary is about to go to a split site to increase capacity. It will admit 150 reception children split over 5 classes, a 1050 pupil primary school in a very affluent suburb. That has only happened because a university campus was demolished freeing up land. A large number of new primary academies and free schools have opened as well. Again all now at capacity and oversubscribed. We created a temporary places in 2013 and added bulge clases where we could but we are literally running out of space as well as places as the LA is dependant on free schools opening or academies expanding.

”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.”

Sounds like it. Mind you, if as pps have said, the Scottish education system can afford enough staff to have average infant class sizes of 25, that’s obviously why it is workable.

Cant - I don't know how it works in Scotland, but the schools in our district in the US cope with fluctuating numbers by a) being much bigger than most UK state schools (eg Kindergarten to 5th grade with c150 children in each grade) and b) trying to keep class numbers between 20 and 25.

So the grade my son was in had six classes with 18-21 children in, so when a new family turned up there was a choice of which class to put the child in, based on the child's needs and the existing composition of the classes. And there would have had to be a very large mid-year increase (say, 40 new children in the same grade) to take the classes over the preferred class size limit.

I guess an accountant would look at the school and think that it was operating with too much redundancy in it, but having that flex gave the school enormous flexibility to cope with changing student numbers. I don't think it would work in the school system in the UK as currently set up, because we tend to have smaller schools but more of them and try to fill each class to the maximum every year

Catchments are teeny where I am (S London). Priority goes to looked after children, siblings & then distance. Last year the furthest offer was 270 metres. They just seem to build more & more flats which are frequently homing families due to prices & the demand for school places increases.

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.

In that case you'd have a 25 P1 class, then a composite P1/P2 class. After that it would depend on numbers in other year groups. The last school I worked in had P1, P1/2, P2/3, P3, P4, P5/6, P6/7 and P7.

Obviously you get years where space is s problem and you end up with portacabins, but often you get years where it flows. So two P7 classes go up to high school, but there's only one P7 the next year.

You are guaranteed your space even if it means building work or portacabin classrooms or whatever.

I don't think it would work in England because I think it would be too big a change, same as the English system wouldn't work here for the same reason. Most of the time it just works.

Looking at where we are and where MIL lives I think there are more new schools as houses are built. That's just two towns though so I don't know if that's commonplace. We've had a lot of building in the last 10-15 years and there's four new primaries (one a replacement that doubled size) on three campuses (one is a non-dom and catholic school on one site) and one massive new high school.

Funnily enough the top thread currently on Scotsnet is about the timing for moving to the right catchment area for a good secondary school!

Isn't it a big problem in cities like Edinburgh now though that primary schools are huge and don't have enough hall/dining room space, extra classrooms are being built on playgrounds so no space to play for all the hundreds of children?

Is this just one of these "lets big up everything in scotland" threads?

Plenty of things are shit in scotland - as there are across the UK.

It is certainly not a ‘bigging up Scotland’ thread. There’s a lot wrong with Scottish education, but the catchment system seems to work. Granted, some are unhappy with their local catchment and apply elsewhere or move to a better area, but at least if you’re in a catchment you know you’ll get to go to that school regardless.

i dont know ds has got allocated a place at our local RC high school the rest of the schools are frankly shit we dont have a grammar school system ds isnt bright i made sure he attended a catholic primary and was baptised etcto get in , if all the schools in england were equal you would have an equal system but it isnt.

Isn't it a big problem in cities like Edinburgh now though that primary schools are huge and don't have enough hall/dining room space, extra classrooms are being built on playgrounds so no space to play for all the hundreds of children?*

Edinburgh does seem to be having problems.

I think the bigger cities are having problems because they don't have the same space for new schools.

Admittedly i don't know Edinburgh super well, but my cousin lived in a flat in an old converted house, which seems quite common in some parts of Edinburgh. If one house suddenly because 4 flats, and that's repeated, then it must be like housebuilding without any actual building so will push school spaces.

The England & Wales system is bonkers.
Admissions should absolutely be lac, sen, catchment then siblings. Our tiny village at one point had barely room in the school for village kids due to sibling priority.
Of course families would rent, get 1 child in then move out and buy elsewhere.
Now thats overturned and catchment is first our lovely village kids all go the village school, all mostly walk to their school, play together on the village field etc etc. The only kids driven in are those outliers left over from the old rules.
The village kids previously were all bussed out to other schools as they couldnt get a place in their own village school.
So glad it was turned around for my kids in the last 5 years ☺

nobody wants there child to go to crap school so you do what you can to make sure that isnt the case wether thats moving ,making sure they get enough points,[i know so many parents that have suddenly found they are religious in year five!
or whatever,.]

Funding in England for primary works at a 30 children = 1 teacher level.

A school with only 20 children per class will only have 2/3 of the funding, and that will either mean relying on cheaper inexperienced teachers, cutting back on resources (so fewer exercise books, running out of glue sticks mid term, no investment in reading books etc) or e.g. sharing heads between schools - especially in the poorer funded counties.

It would be interesting to know the average per primary pupil funding in Scotland vs similarly populous parts of England.

Actually, what really WOULD make a difference in England is for LAs to be able to build new schools where they are needed, when they are needed, rather than having to rely on the free school / academy process.

2 new schools are needed locally. The LA has known this for years. 1 will probably happen (naice catchment, competition between sponsors). The other probably won't (deprived area).

That question was asked in the Scottish Parliament a couple of years back and the breakdown was on average £4,800/£6800 per primary/secondary pupil in Scotland compared to £4,500/£6,000 in England. Because of the way funding works though the amount per head varies quite a bit with Highlands and Islands communities spending more due to transport and accommodation costs.

Given the very high weighting of money towards London (almost double the lowest funded counties under the last funding formula), it would be interesting to see the money per pupil in the rest of the country.

In Scotland & England if you want to be guaranteed good state education you are either lucky or can afford to move house into a good school area.

England goes further and tries to allow parents who cant afford to move house to state preferences. And where I live (outside London) 96% of families were offered one of their top three preferences this year. So its working pretty well here.

As a parent I would not want to be in a system where you have to accept what the local council gives you in matters so important as my children's education.

From a schools point of view how can it be sensible to not know how many children you will have to accept every year and every year it will be different. The educational outcomes must suffer.

bostonkremekrazy So you are perfectly happy for other parents and children to go through the logistical nightmare of two school runs as long as you and yours don't?

Not that I blame you; we all want(ed) the best for our own DC.

But they do know pretty reliably how many children they’ll take, the information comes from health and nursery colleagues and by the end of January they know how many children are actually enrolling and how many are looking for a placing request. I think there are many challenges facing the Scottish education system but allocation of places isn’t for the most part one of them.

In England, pre-school / nursery isn't compulsory, with some children attending committee-run sessional pre-schools, others full day day nurseries, quite a lot attending nothing at all (about 35% in one school i taught in had never attended any pre-school provision at all). So information about children likely to need school places from that source would be at best very approximate.

Again, with the mobility of populations, and perhaps less universal health visitor coverage, information from health professionals would also be partial.

I do think it is a reflection of very different population dynamics in the two countries, especially but not only in the large urban centres, that make the two systems work differently.

@ Andrewofgg....
I do 3 different school runs....I have children with SEN who have different needs and are statemented to the schools that best meet their needs. I understand the logistical nightmare.

My children without any needs however walk to our lovely village school. I simply could not contemplate driving DC to the next village along for no good reason - why should I? DC should be able to walk to school with friends, with our next door neighbour, with the pals who knock the door on route. We live less than 5 mins away from school.

Does it honestly make sense that village children should be bussed out to the next biggest school, while the city kids are bussed into the tiny village school? The traffic chaos (there is no car park and only village lanes), the sheer unfairness of it, kids who want to walk to school but can't, parents who want to be part of the community but don't feel like they are.
Is it really fair/morally ok that people can rent for 6 months, get their first child into a school and move away? - and forevermore have a sibling link to tie them to a school, meanwhile village families often struggled to get a school place as so many places (30 per yr) were taken up by siblings who lived a bus ride away.
The decision was taken to make sibling link the lowest category and slowly the village kids regained their school.

In the villages surrounding us the rule has changed so sibling link is at the bottom of the list, catchment is now priority in our LA after so many families were unfairly affected. I'm glad for the change and so are most families who are settled and live in their school community.

Andrewofgg - why do you think siblings should come above catchment?

dragon a significant proportion don't get any of their 6 choices. This includes posters who put all of their 6 nearest schools but didn't get a single one as they are not in a single catchment area. This is not uncommon in London sadly.

Why do people make comments like this without figures to back it up.....

2017 data for you and links for proof so people stop making their own figures up:

Surrey - 86.4% first choice, 96.1% one of three choices. www.google.co.uk/amp/s/news.surrey.gov.uk/2017/04/19/six-in-seven-surrey-pupils-offered-their-first-choice-primary-school/amp/

Kent - almost 90% first choice, 97% one of three choices. www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/parents-to-find-out-childs-124029/

Across London Boroughs - 86% first choice, 96% got one of their three choices www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-london-39629800

Birmingham and Newcastle - Only 13% didn't get first choice so again 87% DID

Liverpool - 12% didn't so 88% did get first choice

Manchester - 11% didn't so 89% did get first choice

Nationally - 88% got first choice and 96% got one of their three preferred choices. This means nationally only 4% didn't get one of their preferred choices.... I hardly call that a significant proportion....

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/04/18/one-four-children-miss-first-choice-primary-school-areas/amp/

Those are statistics, you cannot argue with them.

Boston, locally we have catchment siblings above catchment others, out of catchment siblings over out of catchment others.

It works well. It stops the whole 'get one child in, move away but use sibling priority' but it gives some certainty to families with more than 1 child.