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 it tends to be more of an issue where schools are terrible. Also where schools are so full that they keep changing the catchment areas (lived in areas both of these things were happening)

My local primary for example my friend taught at and so many dc didn't speak English or even each others language that year 1 was basically spent teaching basic spoken English between the many languages as most of the parents also couldn't speak English my friend also spent a lot of time splitting up inter racial wars over the years and other dd did get caught up in these fights which could get quite violent despite it only being primary,

Didn't want all the politics of the school spilling over into my dc life. My dc only get one set of school years I genuinely believe the pressure is real!

Tandora
I think everyone might be over idealising the system in Scotland a bit too much. Just the other day there was a row on a mums group I’m on because one mum (in Scotland) said she was going to lie about her address (use her parents) to get her son into a nicer school as the one near her was too rough, and she couldn’t afford to buy property in the nicer school areas. Didn’t sound so diff to me!

@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.

"Popular" schools in Scotland have within their acceptance criteria that if you move out of catchment you have to reapply and if there are children on the waiting list then they will get your place.

Unlikely to actually happen in practice but certainly cuts down this kind of cheating.

Not the person you asked, but I believe in Scotland you just automatically get your closest, there's no application. That's what it should be like.

When I was at primary in the eighties, in my last year, there was a sudden influx of kids in the year below (aged 9-10, really no idea why!). It meant they had to accommodate maybe 40 kids (10 new), in a classroom built for 30. So they split my year, which had something like only 20 of us, and mixed us with the other year. I have no idea how the teachers of each form managed, but they each kept us year 4s on one half of the room and set us work for our age, and the year 3s (as it was in those days, now years 5 and 6) were sat in the other half of the room and had separate work to us older ones. We would mix with the other half of our year group occasionally, or allmbe one massive group for sports or stuff like that.
Everyone seemed happy, as far as I can recall.

It was also nice for my brother (18 months younger, but only one school year below me) and me to be in the same form for my last year of primary.

I can't recall what they did for the last year of that year below me once we older smaller set had left.

-

ExH went to school in Scotland. His younger brother's year was oversubscribed. They built pre-fab corrugated iron classrooms for the excess. They are still being used 30 years later (ex PIL still live directly opposite the school, so I've seen them myself).

In my first house our catchment junior school was rated the worst in the country, I would have been in denial too had we been applying to the attached infants too tbh.

Ah. Portacabins. Cross-posted with my long-winded "pre-fab corrugated iron constructions" above, but yes, same, that's the kind of thing I meant too.

I think numbers are more likely to go up where there are new housing estates nearby and no extra schools. We had space at DS's school.

There were smaller class sizes in the infant years so composite classes were common even with steady intake numbers. Unless you had an intake of 60 maybe so could have three classes dropping to two at year 3, but numbers dropping only slightly could see you lose a teacher and end up with lots of composites.

I think the English system is good as there's generally more flexibility and fluidity for movement than the Scottish system. Though you may struggle to get a place in a very oversubscribed school - waiting lists exist so they may eventually get a place. You can also move your child quite easily if there is an issue. My nephew is in an abysmal secondary in Scotland - as my SIL couldn't afford to be near a better school - and he is being bullied/assaulted weekly but the school are useless and the LA won't move him. I wish they could move down here as she'd have more choice.

Our DC are not old enough to be thinking about it yet but our local authority has a shortage of secondary school places almost everywhere, except in one very rough school, in Special Measures, in a very well-known sink estate and one slightly better than that school which is miles from anywhere else and gets really poor exam results.

Our local secondary school is totally over-subscribed and being re-built currently. Our DC will be ok because we live so close and there is nowhere for them to build between us and the school. But it's madness what happens. I have sat in the Appeals procedures before. There are many parents who don't even send the forms back on time and then get upset when they are allocated the really poor schools. They appeal with the most ludicrous justifications - have a right to appeal and often are successful because they are often very vulnerable families who can meet the criteria for admission. Then there are parents who apply to the two Outstanding secondary schools and who don't get places because they don't live near them and end up being allocated to the poor schools because their nearest school is also full.

We had parents who were 'shopped' for putting grandparents' addresses down as theirs because grandparents lived near the Outstanding schools, parents who rented a house near one of the Outstanding schools but didn't actually live in it- just wanted it as an address. We had a march of parents protesting about their children being allocated the two poorer schools and saying they would refuse to send them there.

The local council has allowed massive building of new homes but not built any additional school- there is a real need for one in one particular area but if it was built, the two struggling schools would probably close because so much of their intake comes from children being allocated from that area.

It's a mess.

Is the answer that we are evolutionarily primed to turn into absolutely insane resource hoarders when we produce offspring? This is the modern day equivalent over snarling over the juiciest carcass.

It's natural to want the best for your child, some of us are able to control the crazy better than others... I say that having felt truly neurotic about primary places.

The system delivers some unfair results and perpetuates inequality, although I don't know what a better alternative is either. It feels like "rich" areas will always get more resources (parent/community donations, engagement, etc). How do we do this better?

Exactly how it works in Scotland

Oh and to those saying "just be allocated your nearest school" I am equidistant between the tiny school which has zero space to expand/have bulge classes and school 4, which is on the other side of a railway line and a pain to get to on foot but impossible to get to by car due to one way system, closed roads and bus only roads (buses that dont actually go to the school though).
The tiny school is right by a lot of tower blocks and so would be the closest school for so many more pupils than it could fit on its site.

My little block of 15 homes sends/has sent kids to 7 different primaries and 5 secondaries. They all had reasons for choosing their secondary schools and were happy (apart from one). I would not have been happy with at least 2 of those schools and I would have been so sad if I had had to move from my home because my kids had to go to the very closest secondary. (Also v hard to get HA swaps so only the privilaged have the capacity to move into catchments - even just to rent for a few months. If its not a choice for everyone it's not a choice).

Oh to live in a perfect world where every school was great. Maybe if all the influential people didn't send their kids private...

She might try, but I'm pretty sure there are some fairly rigorous checks.
We needed to provide a Council Tax letter and two utility bills in our name (PITA when everything is now online), plus the nursery would have provided the Council with a list of kids and addresses for the "meet the teacher / visit your new school" sessions (as obviously based on catchment). I think they even asked for the GP that DCs were registered at.

The other way it works in Scotland is that P1 class limit is supposed to be 25 going up to 30 in P2-3 and 33 in P4-7. Mine was in a bulge year had 28 in each P1 class - they kept the same classrooms but had extra teaching time. Later years that were bigger were split into 3 classes in P1 then back to 2 in P2 onwards (using the music room as an extra classroom)
The catchments can be a bit bizarre esp in high school as they’re based round feeder primary clusters - kids who live next door to our local high school won’t go to it as they are in a different primary cluster, but overall it all works okish.

How is that any less batshit than the English system, where kids go to secondary based k t ebri primary cluster?

There’s no real angst about the applications - if you are in catchment A you go to school A (you are automatically also in catchment for a denominational (Catholic) school but these schools have a much bigger catchment per school.) You can make a placing request to go to a different school but won’t get a place if the school is already full. You can only apply to one school - catchment (guaranteed) catchment denominational (guaranteed) or placing request (not guaranteed).

I dunno, I have friends in linlithgow who would beg to differ.

Historically rural comprehensives were the only ones to work as population density was low enough that a range of social economic groups had no choice but to send their kids to the nearest school. This was national, not specific to scotland. Whenever you get more people, you get "better and worse" schools, with the people who are able either through money or understanding of the system, able to get their children into the "better" schools, thus amplifying/entrenching the situation.

Just move to Scotland.its perfect there apparently...

By all means put your dream schools down, but have a realistic insurance or two.

Where I am - they change the amount of classes per grade each year depending on enrollment. We are all placed at the school for the catchment we live in - only difference is if you want French immersion and your local elementary doesn't have it.

If you want a place at an out of catchment school for a language your school has, its possible to move. However if a student moves into the school catchment and needs your space, you will be bumped back to your school

Am I the only 1 that thinks that what school you go to doesn't make a huge amount of difference to a child's propects?

I mean if your parents are drug addicts or lawyers, thats going to have amuch bigger impact

"And what if you're equally distant between two schools?"
What-to the metre? How likely is that?

The answer is simply to go by proximity alone. No other criteria.

Ok. My house is equally distant from 2 schools.

Which one do I get?

I'm a secondary teacher. We had someone do this a few years ago. AFAIK the mother hadn't applied to any schools (new to the country I believe). I think we enrolled the pupil. We were not oversubscribed though.