Why do people torment themselves over school places

[Schoolplacechoicemyth]

Im in a local toddler/child social media group.

Every single year there are people on the group who apply wildly optimistically for 2 or 3 oversubscribed schools several miles away from their home, are given the unpopular school they live near and desperately ask how to appeal because they "really love oversubcribed school and absolutely want DC to go there".

They seem completely unprepared for how unlikely it was they'd get a place, baffled that their preference doesn't actually get them the place at the oversubscribed chool, spend weeks/months appealing for schools they have next to no chance of a space at, & complain repeatedly on the group about it. Often the school they live near is fine, its just not the fashionable choice this week.

The local council publish all the info. You can see, easily, how close you need to live to stand a decent chance at a place. All the admission criteria are available.

Why do people do this to themselves!? Do they really think their preference is a factor when applying to a routinely oversubscribed school living miles away? Its like there's some sense of entitlement to a place at the trendy/popular school. I just couldn't torture myself like this. One lady has spent weeks telling her DC they are going to popular school X with their nursery friends. She lives over 5 miles from it & it hasn't taken a non sibling from more than a mile away in over a decade and yet she's bewildered her DC didn't get a space.

I think whats annoying having been on this group for 7 years is

• we are lucky to live in area where almost all the schools are nice. There are lots of good local schools undersubscribed this year but these parents must have alpha trendy school of the minute A, and are determined to appeal until they get it, rather than accept decent school B
• the group regularly has good advice about the wide availability of school place data/discussions about how oversubscribed certain schools are

Its almost like doublethink, the way people will wilfully ignore reality.

I couldnt care less about people wanting "the best" for their kids, but come on. One woman bought bloody uniform for a school she'd not a snowballs chance in hell at a space at. I kid you not.

Realistically most people just get allocated the closest school anyway, it's good to have some choice I think but authorities should be clearer and make the info more accessible (I know it is all online but there are absolutely many who don't bother and it should be their responsibility).

for some people their first choice isn't the one with the best ofsted inspection, the one with the best reputation or the one closest, its the one that suits a particular factor and having the ability to apply for it is good. My friends who have partners in the military for example chose schools which actually spent the service premium on schemes and activities for service children, others who are very outdoorsy chose schools with large outdoor spaces or forest schools etc etc.

That seems more batshit to me, one school could have a class of 45 whilst another has 8 😂

@OconsRazor really??? So you would say not much difference between jordanhill and Possil!!! I can only assume you don’t actually live in scotland.

On the one hand - everyone wants what is best for their kid. No one would pick a shit school over a good one. On the other hand - maybe the disparity between the two would reduce if people just went to their nearest school. But on the third hand you get all sort of religious things to be taken into account too.

@anqo

No. There's an upper limit.

But yeah I have heard of small village schools with very small classes.

That must be true in England as well though

I'm not in the UK and I find it all quite eye-opening also. Children here generally go to the nearest local school also, it's not the great drama it seems to be in England.

Obviously you assume wrong @2023forme or I wouldn't have an opinion on it would I? 🤨

That's my experience and opinion having had three kids educated in Scotland. Sorry it doesn't precisely match yours.

There's people round me for both primary and secondary appealing their allocation with seemingly no justification beyond really, really wanting a different school. They don't seem to have an understanding of the appeal system or that there's admission criteria.

I strongly feel that schools being graded by Ofsted and marketing themselves is a big mistake. The amount of traffic on roads at school times and the insane parking issues could be reduced loads by people just going to their nearest school in most cases. Whilst some posters are arguing it's about "better/best" schools, I really do think that being able to walk or scoot to school, be close to home, have friends near home etc is all important too. My DC have always walked to school wherever we've lived, and I've never shopped around for schools - just gone for the nearest. This has meant they've been able to be more independent and I've always had back up if ill/stuck at work etc as neighbours all go to the same school too. I regret nothing about not seeking out the "best" school and have not wished to be spending chunks of my day as a school taxi for 10 years or more!

School is so much more than how it looks on the website and a huge amount of the day to day is about who your DC spends time with - the other kids and the adults involved. Those who are sure that a different school was the only one for them will come to learn it probably wasn't that big a deal in the end.

Depends on area. We have 4 primary schools in our town plus 3 others within 2-3 miles. Mostly they aren't all full although some years some are full. Two are church schools but none of those are full so anyone else get in. So there definitely is a choice here.

In Paris some excellent schools now have to take students from deprived areas. The failing schools are closed and funding put in to expand good schools in other areas. Students are coached in and home on school buses and due to making friends with a variety of young people with different aspirations it is helping keep children out of crime and improving future prospects. I think this has been tried in the US, but not been as successful. Not sure how this would work here, when good schools are oversubscribed and inadequate schools struggle on, but really catchment areas create inequality as well as hot spots of trouble. Looking at widening catchment areas and providing transport could be something for the UK to consider.

@OconsRazor

It's the same where I am.

But as I've said our catchment covers a wide area socioeconomically

That's not going to be the case every where

It could be any of a number of reasons. Firstly, choice at primary level is largely mythical, unless you happen to want the crap undersubcribed school. Secondly, people don't make the effort to understand what the admissions criteria actually are, as opposed to what they would like them to be. As a PP said, wanting a school more than someone who qualifies for it ahead of you counts for nothing. And thirdly, people don't want to accept just how utterly uncompromising the criteria are - the council don't care about the individual, they care about the overall picture. "Have we allocated all pupils a place within the borough (or whatever zone)?" Great, job done.

I don’t get it at all. Surely the closest to home is best, I’d never want to drive kids to school. Your child’s outcome in life is determined by far more than school.

I think many parents just don't understand how it works. We were really oversubscribed this year and I have had so many phone calls and emails from parents telling me why their child has to come to us when they are about position 40 on the waiting list with no hope of a place and they just can't understand why they have been allocated somewhere really far away when then have put us as their only preference and they really want to come despite not being catchment. They also don't understand that I have no control over this and can't do anything about it.

Many schools would be less "crap" if they took in a more diverse intake from a catchment area.

I don’t get it. If you want a particular school you pay for the privilege of living near enough. You can’t blag your way in.

We want a particular school so moved to a house practically in the school grounds to achieve it. In doing so we have paid an absolute premium for a house, it’s in one of the most desirable villages in our county. And priced accordingly! We opted to downsize to achieve it. No regrets as we love it here and we used to drive over to this village at weekends to spend time here as it’s so nice, so it delivers us a brilliant life.

If we had stayed in our old house we would have had to apply ridiculously out of catchment and would have ended up god knows where and stressed to the hills. It was that realisation that made us halve our sqm and pay literally twice as much for the new house. You get what you pay for ultimately!

Now we have a choice of amazing primaries and secondaries with not a single bad school option. We are highly likely to get the one we can see from the garden, but if there was some freak of nature that meant we didn’t all of the other options are wonderful (just less convenient as require a car drive).

The other issue is religious schools.
For example, for primary I did not want to send my DC to a CofE or Catholic school. Our catchment school was CofE, and the next two nearest were CofE and Catholic. So I ended up applying to schools a few villages over. Fortunately no over-subscribed primaries in that location (apart from the Catholic!), but I did resent having to drive DC miles away just to avoid a faith/denominational school.

God I do love the English exceptionalism on these threads. It's so predictable. A flawed system is criticised and there is a volley of WELL WHAT OTHER SYSTEM DO YOU SUGGEST THEN, apparently ignorant of all the other places in the world (and even in their own country) that successfully run other systems. Some of which are densely populated, some of which have highly mobile populations, some of which are comparable in other ways.

I agree completely.

"The best" for my family - and I would wager many others - is going to school close to home, as part of your local community (mine go to the old people's home and have local groups in for harvest etc), travelling on foot or by bike, having local friends and short commutes etc.

My DC have not gone to "outstanding" schools but they're thriving, achieving well with good friendships and have had the pleasure of increasing independence getting themselves to school etc the whole way through. There's a family living opposite who drive their kids to a "much better" school and seeing teens and near adults be ferried around by their parents all the time cements my decision to stay local for mine.

Fascinates me how random the process is. Our neighbour’s DC goes to a school out of catchment by quite a distance but another neighbour far nearer didn’t get a place. 2 kids round the corner went to the formerly super popular no uniform school and parents tried and failed to switch them when the Ofsteds did a switcheroo

The English system is batshit

We don't have all this in Scotland. In January parents must put their child's name down for their local school then they can ask for a placing request if they want to go to a different one. However it's very rare that children will go to a different one as most just walk to the nearest one. I never even considered anything else, A relative who moved up from England was obsessed with getting their child into the best school and was quite taken aback when I explained that it just isn't a thing here,

It's the lack of realism that's the issue.

Tbh I think the majority of people walk around with their heads in la la land in some way or another so I don't think it's a huge surprise.

Not if the closest has absolutely zero wraparound care and no childminders (rural). Where we lived before we just couldn’t have used the nearest school as we both work and have no help.

So we moved to guarantee better options with wraparound. But nearer is not always practical!

I don't understand the massive hype over schools either. What makes an amazing or crappy school? Is it just the ofsted rating?
I think friendships, good teachers and locality are most important. I'd never spend tens of thousands to move closer to a supposedly good school!!!!