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 agree!

Although just found out our boy only got into third choice despite living less than 0.5 miles from both first and second choices. The catchment area for both schools this year is smaller than last. Oh well...here's to hoping we make it into one via waiting list.

In Scotland,all schools (unless they are a private school) are run by LA. They know how many children live in any particular part of a town and are able to plan ahead. Class sizes are legally limited,so they don't "squeeze them in". They might add portacabins style classrooms if needed.

Children should go to their nearest school. More kids walking to school less parents driving!

@Whyisitsodifficult
This. Exactly.

Another thing along with school choice angst that doesn't really exist in Scotland is the school run because kids mostly walk to the nearest school.

Some people just do not understand the system. We get a leaflet through the post telling us how to apply online and strongly recommending we apply to our catchment school (plus how to check this) but it doesn't cover things like why you shouldn't just put one school, what the additional information box is actually for, and Other Common Misconceptions.

When DD was in preschool our autumn keyworker meeting checked that we knew we had to apply but again, no extra info given.

🙌🏼

Doesn't work oke that though. For example, my lad we t to a school a d 10 minute walk away, and I didn't actually have time to drop him off, walk back to car and get to work, so had to drive him and drop off and zoom straight to work!

And I think in Scotland school building/expansion/planning is still all in the hands of LAs?

Unlike in England where LAs have the responsibility to provide education but aren't allowed to open new schools, and are severely limited in their ability to expand schools. And the process for opening a new school basically involves feeding a golden newt with the milk of a baker's goat and taking it to the wise woman who lives on the third hill to the west.

Absolutely this! Would reduce parents needing to drive to schools. Would allow children to see their friends much more easily. Environmentally and community friendly.

I suspect some of the problem is due to building developments expanding uneven to the catchment areas as much as parents choosing the 'good' or 'outstanding' school which is close enough.

For example, Town has 2 schools. #1 is in the north, #2 is in the south. North and south have a roughly similar number of family homes. Development happens in the north and school 1 expands to an extra class. Those children go to secondary school and their siblings come through adding another class a couple of years later. Meanwhile, a new development happens in the south and young families move in. 4 years later, the siblings in north school have left but the families in the south need school places. They apply to south school, but there are no spaces. So their second choice north school, gives them a reception place. They have to walk past south school every day to get to north school.

This pattern continues on every few years with both schools adding and removing a bulge class occasionally as development expands family homes on both sides of town. Then developers build a new school in south side and continue to build family homes nearby. Eventually the new school fills up with families moving into south side. The bulge classes are dropped from school 1 and 2 as the pupils age into secondary. Then, another new development is built on south side. School 3 cannot expand because it has no room to. But schools 1 and 2 have extra classrooms due to those previous bulge classes. Families near school 3 once again apply to their closest school hoping to get in but are allocated a bulge class in school 1 or 2 instead. They then send the siblings to that school as well as sibling ranks just below in catchment for a place. Due to increasing aging population, both those schools have been losing pupils as families get older and parents stay in the family home. And so the cycle continues. Until one day Mr Smith applies for a place in school 3. He's on the edge of a relatively new development and gets the place but due to expansion of homes later, when it comes time for sibling to start school, there is no space for her. 30 children have all moved in closer to the school and are priority 1. Sibling is sent to school 2, which is still in catchment due to less pupils joining that school, but is on the other side of town.

If developers actually looked at this when building homes, I suspect fewer people would be disappointed. But given homes go up quicker than other infrastructure such as schools, gp surgeries etc, I suspect there is more money in building houses than building businesses.

Not a thing where I am in Scotland. They have to provide a place in your zoned school. Each postcode is zoned to a school. You re guaranteed a place in that school.

I think the illusion of choice is confusing for many parents new to the system. Given that this has been a problem for years, instead of criticising parents who just want the best for their kids and may even have their own issues around literacy, learning etc, we could just make the system easier to navigate. Common problems that I see are: 1) people only putting one school, thinking that if they only choose 1, they'll have to be given it. 2) people choosing only out of catchment with no local back-up, and 3) not understanding the correct additional forms needed in the case of church schools. All these scenarios can very easily result in a school place so far away, it's not viable. Parents genuinely think that if they put the three best schools they know down, they'll have to be given one of them. On the face of it, that's not so crazy as they are asked for their three choices.

We have an RC school in our town. It claims that it has to keep a certain percentage of places free at each stage for RC pupils who may movd into the area.

(Usually trotted out when we have a child with behavioural needs is looking for a different school)

Similar in Australia. Pre-fab classrooms are used for an extra class, teacher funding based on student numbers, often mixed age classes are needed.

This.

Because they remember bullying in their own shit school

@Tandora this is exactly my experience and around where I am, renting a property just to get the address and then stopping renting it once the DC gets their place in the preferred school.

Where does the physical classroom come from? Do they have spare ones sitting empty?

Not necessarily. One thing that can be done if a school looks to be getting full is to put a cap on placement requests. The other is to not accept out of catchment siblings. So a school that is very full higher up will not necessarily take the full complement of P1s. Composite classes are also pretty normal.

But where do you put these prefab classrooms? We barely had a playground at my inner city primary, let alone a field, if we did sports day it was on the park over the road. Not really possible to just add classes.

There is often an element of choice but you have to choose wisely to have a chance of getting what you want. Choose only one school and you are likely to be placed wherever, but if you choose all your options you have more chance of one of them coming good.

There definitely is a bit of controversy in Scottish schools.

I used to live in Jordanhill but my house was build after 19something and was explicitly not part of the Jordanhill school catchment. The other local primaries were much of a muchness, the usual Catholic, non-denom and even a Gaelic medium were all on offer.

For secondary though it was a whole other thing. Hyndland secondary was considered wonderful, as was the local Catholic girls school but the Catholic coed was awful meaning Catholic boys would be placing requested to hyndland and end up at St Tams.

I now live in Bearsden and both non-denoms are good but the Catholic kids are bussed to a less good school in Kirkintilloch. Every year a parent on the local face ache page cries that she sent her kid to the Catholic primary here (so undersubscribed it's ludicrous) in the hopes of a place at Bearsden Academy (they're next door to each other) but now she needs to either send her kid to Kirky or go to Drumchapel high (which is basically always on fire).

I live in a deprived inner city area with 10 schools within a miles walk of us. I remember primary school applications well as my oldest went to nursery class at a strangely sought after school (I think just because it was small). Many people who were further away (but still within walking distance) had it as first choice. Why shouldn't they? They may be lucky, few siblings that year, or idiots not filling in forms on time (there was ALOT of individual support from the school on it). Prior to it being closest as the crow flies there was a catchment and so there was still a lot of misinformation regarding that. The school was next to a main road and if you lived across that Road from the school you were not in catchment. The catchment area was entirely one estate to the other side of the school. Even without the social engineering aspects of catchments I think the current system works better. Just put your last option as one you're guaranteed a place in. Spending time getting your head round an application is easier then looking at catchments when you move house maybe years before you have kids (during that time schools can change vastly anyway).

For me, having been messed up by primary school, I worried and worried and made spreadsheets and read school newsletters and put a wildcard as #1, the school we were very happy with and expected as 2 and the tiny local one as 3. Got into 2, were very happy for several years and then big staff, teaching and ethos changes sent it drastically downhill. My youngest got a place in the wildcard school after a couple of years but to all those people saying "I would move if I didn't get the school I wanted." It wouldn't have helped if we'd moved into the pe shed at that point, as if there are no spaces you remain on the waiting list until a space comes up. Far easier to get into a school at application time than in year. Lots of movement at start of reception though.

Anyway I've rambled. OP, your mums are unreasonable because they claim to care but don't engage with the details. To everyone else, remember the best school for one family isn't necessarily the best school for yours.

Yes to this.

Lots of people think they can game the system

i know some very (usually) intelligent people who think they can game the system by putting their preferred, but out of catchment school first, then only adding schools even further out of catchment. They believe that this way they MUST be given their no 1 choice

they are wrong

I love the Scottish education system and there's a lot of great things about it but it really does benefit from falling population numbers and that population being less dense than England's.

Every school my family have gone to since the mid 1970s have had empty classrooms so if there's a bulge there's always somewhere to put them. In the more rural and remote areas the wee village school might only be one or 2 classrooms and the whole school can get mothballed for a couple of years before opening again when there's an intake.

We do have a more sane system than England but I think if we faced the same population problems we might be the same.

I'm in Scotland. Our catchment Primary school would have been a 25 minute walk. Luckily we got a placing request to our non-catchment school which is geographically closer.

There has been a major amount of new house building locally over the past 5 years and the new estate was meant to include a new Primary School, which was actually a condition of Planning for all the new houses.

It came as no surprise to local residents who know the way the Council operates this has not been built, and what was a 2-stream P1 when my DCs started was 6-stream this year.

In answer to a PP, there are now portacabin classrooms in the playground and the Support for Learning, music and art rooms are now regular classrooms.

There is no other local school for these new kids to attend but there is also now no Breakfast Club for P1 or P2 and the after-school club was already full.

The system gives the illusion of choice,which often isn’t really there
In Scotland if you are in catchment you get in 99% of the time

But often people pay a lot to move into catchment pushing the house prices up

I have to confess to doing this,can totally sympathise with people wanting their DC to go to the best possible school