Romesh Ranganathan - School Places & Entitlement

[FightingFish]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewgj1ry9x7o.amp

I’ve seen this story popping up a lot on social media and we are only seeing one side of the story. Schools publish their allocations policy and apparently RR has moved house since his older children were allocated a place. He obviously didn’t consider the implications of moving outside of catchment at that point. There are only so many places, AIBU to wish that he would acknowledge that? I also feel sorry for the kid, if my father was a multi millionaire, I’d rather he shelled out on a place at a private school instead of bleat on about how hard done by he is!

Similar here. I’m in a small city with several outlying villages, and we have catchment areas (as in a defined area on a map) for each school. I assume it’s based on population density as the village schools have large catchment areas covering the village and surrounding rural areas, while the inner city and suburban schools have smaller catchment areas, presumably covering the same number of houses/ estimated population. Seems a logical way to do it.

Priority for admission is usually looked after children/ children in catchment with siblings at the school/ children in catchment/ children out of catchment with siblings at the school/ children out of catchment. Church schools have extra requirements like proof of church attendance.

The council states that over 95% of parents get their first choice primary school, but if you look at the published data (I got a bit obsessed when applying for primary school and really looked into it 🙈), most people applied to their catchment school and got a place there. Would be interesting to know how many people got their first choice if they applied out of catchment, for example.

As it should be.

Otherwise it's just another way the well off game the system at the expense of local families and communities where their own children are pushed out of their local schools.

Although it is catchment that allows rich parents to choose a school by house price and it is bussing as I think Brighton did at one point of poor children into rich for schooling that perhaps achieves a purer fairness.

It's perfectly acceptable to request that a child attends the same school as their siblings, being famous doesn't change that desire. I though most schools prioritised siblings unless it is a selective school.

Only if they haven’t moved meantime.

Presumably your child wasn’t revising for his exams in the early days of you being prime minister?

Neither was his.

Apologies. Got my dates a bit muddled. “During the election campaign.”

Posh areas do not equal good schools - I live in an expensive area and our local comp is inadequate.

No, not always the case. Perhaps read the full thread and educate yourself.

So many people have missed the obvious point here. He lives in a £3m house. And chose to MOVE OUTSIDE the area for his preferred choice of school. FFS.

Yes maybe primary. Ha! Interesting question!

Maidenbower.

No where in Crawley is THAT posh 😂

Geoff Norcott did a programme on the BBC about how some middle class parents gamed the school system. It's not currently available to watch, but he had points iirc.

Crawley is awful. You couldn’t pay me to live there. All power to Romesh choosing to use the state system.

I can sympathise with him. Clearly he should have been aware of the rules but I can understand how you could have a good understanding of the admissions criteria at one point but then not be aware they have changed. The school has a duty to consult on changes to the criteria and failure to do so adequately can be raised with the school adjudicator (no idea whether the school in this case did an adequate job here, but there should have been letters home etc).

We've been in the position of not getting into a school we had a reasonable expectation of getting into and it was absolutely devastating, it's not just an "ah well shucks" thing, it's 5-7 years of your child's life, their wellbeing, education, future that is suddenly all thrown up in the air. However rich or famous or whatever you are it's not something I'd wish on anyone.

Unnecessarily snippy!

@FishfingerFlinger Quite. In my experience even headteachers don't always know the ins and outs of their own admissions policies, especially if the school isn't its own admissions authority and they don't oversee the process directly. It's no wonder parents often get confused about oversubscription criteria and make assumptions about what works and what doesn't.

Oh god don't get me started - the school we didn't get into has fairly convoluted admissions criteria and (outside of the actual admissions criteria document itself, which isn't easy to comprehend) almost every piece of information the school shared (verbally and in writing) about it's own admissions was factually inaccurate. Documents with whole priority groups missing, false reassurances about 'guarantees' of admission, incorrect stats. And in this case they are their own admissions authority so should have no excuse! And then parents get the blame for not understanding.

Exactly.

Maidenbower.

I’ve just read on Facebook that the son didn’t get a place on appeal. I think it reflects well on the council that they didn’t cave to celebrity pressure and stuck to the admissions policy.

If you listen to him in his podcast, you'll see that they changed the policy. It used to, like many school, take siblings into the school as one of the top considerations so he moved based on this rule and then they changed it. So yes, I'd be annoyed.

It won’t be the council it’s an independent admissions panel that decides when you take it to appeal.

it doesn’t sound like there’s any suggestion that the admissions criteria were applied incorrectly, only that he didn’t know what they were.

And it is quite difficult to argue that you should have priority on the grounds you have a sibling at the school when the school has explicitly adjusted its policy so that siblings don’t have priority.

so it isnt a big surprise he lost.