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!

@Catsandcheese did none of your dc travel independently?

Secondary kids cant always get themselves to school. Around here the buses are sometimes full up so pupils have to wait and be late. 30 mins between buses too.

No no you don’t get to try and rewrite intent when the recruits are just there..

So, you think he should have sent them to a private school?

Still this morning I never thought I’d write a flippant comment about RR Child’s school place. Never mind people get het up about / not comprehend it..

Oh you have more thoughts @RipleyJones! 😆

Not even children of famous people?

Exactly.

"Never believe that [they] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. [They] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

— Jean-Paul Sartre, 1944. He was talking about anti-Semites, but you can insert any other form of trolling and it's as true today as it was then.

Of course, totally understandable when you have children at both primary and secondary.
For most of us primary is around the corner or within a 10 minute car journey.
But secondary is often further away and there is not always transport provided.
So once you have one in primary and two in one secondary 35 minutes in one direction, and another in another secondary 35 minutes in the other direction it is not unreasonable to find this difficult. especially when you add neighbouring county holidays into the equation.
Of course it was our choice to have 4 kids if we had stuck to two no problem.
Anyway I hope Romesh is successful in his appeal

Agreed further than a typical primary but not always far enough so that several families who are regular church goers cannot get a faith education for their children.

Fair point and I agree if the policy changed then that's on them for taking that risk... I still think it's reasonable to want all your children at the same school. Obviously, there are circumstances where people might choice different schools too.

God Almighty, you'd think the guy was demanding that some lesser child be removed from the register so that his could be admitted to the same school as his siblings. He was having a bit of a moan and it got taken up as a point of interest, with so many parents going through the same thing. It's nothing to do with his income or politics. I suppose his finances make travel options easier for the family, but still.

Sorry I had 4 kids at one point managing 3 schools. Not for the faint hearted when there are only 2 parents.

My mum had this but by choice & also the fact the secondaries were single sex. She also did a lot of single parenting as my dad worked abroad for months at a time.

Catchment areas change every year and aren’t set in stone before applying though. This is such an out of touch comment.
You can’t just live in or live out of a catchment. Last year the intake for my local primary extended to over a mile and this year it was 0.2 of a mile. None of this information is available at the time of applications though.

Aw are you bored? Me too

Yes the single sex schools thing is a good point - common in London I believe so then the DC have to go to different schools.

I take the point about holidays being different but still think you would need to be on a county boundary - however ofc you could be.

My DC went to infant and junior schools and are two years apart - there was one year in their entire school careers when they were all at the same school. It was fine.

Yes some schools are not walkable for some people obviously! But the school near me takes students from a pretty small area, max of 2-3 miles, which is either walkable or well served by buses.

Amazing I also had 4 by choice and my husband was away for weeks on end. Your point is?

Aw are you bored? Me too

I'm enjoying myself, surely if you are bored you have something better to do?

Also to choose single sex is your choice, not arbitrary admission rules.

@Catsandcheese I meant different schools
were by choice...my point is that lots of siblings go to different schools & many travel
independently. Fair enough for you it was incredibly difficult.

Also to choose single sex is your choice,

Which is why I said by choice... many of the very good London schools are single sex.

Not at all. This is good for a bit of time. Sofa, dogs, rose, writing about a celeb who had a passive aggressive tantrum about something for which he is completely responsible.

That's not always the case tho. In some places (parts of London for example) many of the schools are single sex.

Where I come from if you got into the grammar it was single sex. If you didn't, you went to the single sex sec mod. I think that's still true actually.

This.

Thank you, it was difficult but we are now out the other side with mostly every body left school now and at university.
We are on a county border so that's why we ended up with different holidays.
I just will never understand why siblings are not a priority. I remember when our primary school changed the rules, it was the year after our youngest joined there, otherwise we would have been going to two primary schools as well.
Never mind Romesh, ordinary families are caught up in these scenarios too, and is very difficult. In the end up we had to move house to make the secondary schools work, not the other way round!

That's not always the case tho. In some places (parts of London for example) many of the schools are single sex.

A lot (all) of the grammars and catholics are single sex & then a lot of independents.