Labour reviewing school admission criteria

[JustAlice]

"Sir Keir Starmer plans to update the Equality Act to give public authorities a new duty to consider a person’s “socio-economic background”.
The changes could mean that schools are forced to give pupils from a working-class background priority when applying for school places, according to Conservative research, instead of judging applications based on how far away from a school someone lives."

Last year BBC had articles on how Brighton and Hove Labour council implemented similar policy, and now substancial % of school places goes to children on FSM instead of childre living closer to the school, making average % of FSM in them closer to the council average.
Protests didn't lead to anything.

If Starmer is going to rollout this model for the whole country, I'm torn, because though I'm against class division and think that current model encourages it

1. I strongly disagree that the families on less than minimal wage income are the only working people in the country. Maybe call them deprived to be honest.
2. In Brighton, faith schools are still not impacted.

YABU - we should be happy about this
YANBU - not a good idea

So are Labour going to pay for the transport for those children on FSM to come from further afield? Surely it would make better sense to target the areas in which these schools are with high number of children on FSM? These are the areas that would benefit from free adult education courses, a reformed version of sure start and extra funding for pre natal care.

I think the money this would cost to implement is actually directed in the wrong way personally.

All schools should be good.

How can we ensure that?

Tbf he and Reeves haven’t helped their tax, borrow and spend with their recent £50bn drop.

Is your thread title true?

No, it’s not. It’s a travesty of a travesty.

Do we know it isn’t true? It wouldn’t be the first time that things have been leaked to the media.

Assuming people are right that the good schools are due to parents and pupils. So due to this plan, the shit schools become good? And good schools become shit? Then do Labour try to swap it round again later on? So the newly shit school ends up becoming good and vice versa? Haha. Mind blown.

The article itself says that it is based on “Conservative research”, so no, I don’t think it is a Labour leak.

🤣🤣🤣

Let’s face it, it’s just to increase tax via VAT by more parents saying bollocks to this messing about, I’ll just go private and skip the ball ache.

This is the opening of the article. The second paragraph is fact. The rest is Tory conjecture.

Middle-class children risk being shut out of the best schools as part of a Labour policy to impose equality on Britain, the Tories have claimed.

Sir Keir Starmer plans to update the Equality Act to give public authorities a new duty to consider a person’s “socio-economic background”.

The changes could mean that schools are forced to give pupils from a working-class background priority when applying for school places, according to Conservative research, instead of judging applications based on how far away from a school someone lives.

The Tories said the new duty could also mean that working-class people leapfrog the middle classes on NHS waiting lists.

Yeah, I can’t see anyone from a nicer area being keen to bring thier children to our school, bang in between two notorious council estates. They just wouldn’t do it. And I wouldn’t blame them one bit.

I mean, The school is what you make of it. My children do really well, the teachers are fantastic. If you engage, get involved, push your child to achieve then you really get the best out of it.

But man, any one turning up from a middle class area (as I did when I moved here), would really struggle at how most of the parents are (as I did at first).

Also, a lot of the parents here don’t value education. They teach their children that it’s a punishment. They would drag the better schools down. People don’t like hearing that, but it’s the truth.

The Brighton & Hove one is dreadful. Children being bussed all over the place. It’s a total lottery.

But that doesn't show that grammar school system didn't help social mobility? If your Dad's parents stopped him from going, it's not a fault of the school system.

My grandma also passed the 11+ but her poor, working class parents stopped her from going. She ended up having a shotgun wedding at 17 after falling pregnant. Sometimes I wonder if she'd been allowed to go how her life would have been different.

I also think a lot of kids would be happier learning more bricklaying, car mechanics and dress making and less physics and Spanish. If there were vocational and academic schools that were equally good, I don't think having a divide would be a bad thing.

Where I live, there are grammar schools around 25-40 mins away, yet hardly anyone here takes the 11 + (it’s a deprived town in the West Midlands).

My dd was the first one to take the 11 + at her school for as long as anyone can remember. I don’t understand why, when we have one of the best grammars in the country a 20 min drive up the road.
The secondary schools in my area are dire.

I am not from here, I grew up in an area with lots of grammars, where everyone just did the 12+, as it was there then, it was just what happened. So it was normal for me for dd to do it.

Dd is going to the grammar in September. They have to take a certain proportion of FSM chlidren and the pass mark is much lower for them. They get two sets of uniform given to them, there is a school coach which they can take for free, music lessons are free for them or heavily subsidised, as are school trips. I asked the head why more children don’t do it and he laughed at me, and said “the parents wouldn’t even think about it, they wouldn’t put the effort in.”

Which is true (I’ve posted about the school and the parent’s upthread). But it’s such a shame for children to not even be givnen the opportunity to try.

@Brianthedog can children from your town take a bus there?

Yes. Very easily. It’s only 20/25 mins up the road from here. Direct public bus which runs every 10 mins, with a five min walk to the school from the closest bus stop.

Or, there is a school coach which goes through our town. It’s free to children on FSM (but obviously takes longer, around an hour as it goes though lots of places to pick up children to get there).

The other grammar schools are in the closest city, 35 ish mins away which you can get a train to from the station which is a ten min walk from the school, or again, buses. Dd isn’t going to one of those, but I assume they have coached too which probably come through our area, children travel a long way to get to grammars - dd isn’t going to school with some children who are live over an hour away from it and that seems to be normal.

Is it well advertised that thus help is available for FSM pupils? Does the school encourage them to apply?

Or for all schools to be equally as good.
Its the only way to truly start levelling up.
Abandoning some Schools and the children in order to provide for a few isn’t tackling the problem.

Every child deserves a good school at the very least.

It’s a very well known school. It’s in all the school guides you are given in year 5. At the end of the day, it’s another school choice. Yes, it’s well signposted regarding provision for FSM children. Dd isn’t in receipt of FSM but I know all about it as it is very, very clear on their website and literature.

Our closest city, where most of the other grammars are, is well known for having grammars. It’s hardly hidden knowledge and wouldn’t take much to find out about it you wanted to.

There are adverts on the local radio all the time about registering for the 11+

When I spoke to the head about dd having time off for the exams, he said no one else has bothered in years. He always seems exhausted by it though, him and the other staff put up with so much abuse from the parents. A lot of the staff bent over backwards to help dd with exam prep, they would have done that for all the children, they are fantastic.

I know that they have told other parents about their options, as dd had some low level bullying when other children found out what schools she had applied for and that she was taking the exam, I had a couple of shitty comments from parents, “local schools not good enough for you then?” “I wouldn’t send my kid to those stuck up schools” and shit like that. It earned me the nickname “kate Middleton” (I don’t have the local accent, so I’m fair game).

It’s is a shame as a lot of the kids in DDs year are really bright, it’s a shame they didn’t get the opportunity to try.

So what do you do in a school like my children go to, where a lot of the parents went there themselves as no one seems to leave here. They hated it, they have passed that hatred of it on to their children. The parents fights with staff, and each other in the playground.

It’s not the school. The school, if you want it, engage with it and work with them, are fantastic. My children are thriving there, the teachers are amazing, so engaged and put so much in. But it’s the majority of people who live here who ruin it.

You can’t do much about that.

im talking about my children’s primary there, but the secondaries are the same.

Every child matters equally. Governments should never ignore certain schools because the solution is
too difficult,
too costly or
takes too much time.

It’s those schools that need the most focus and one solution will not work for them all.
I would expect Labour to level up and at the very least give every child a chance of success

Again, it’s not my child’s primary school that is the issue. They actually have a lot of funding as 57% of children are in receipt of FSM. They do so much but many parents don’t want it!

A lot of the parents just want to fight against everything and teach their children to do the same.

God, when ever I post about where I live, I always say I wish you could come and spend a week here, come to the school everyday, see the people who live here, you’d know exactly what I mean. It’s so frustrating when people just don’t get that people love a life of hanging out of windows shouting, smoking weed and big dogs.they couldn’t give two shits about education and don’t want to change.

I’ve lived in the Medway towns where the A &E waiting room is regularly full of teenagers after a school fight, at school.

Ive lived down the road from Broadwater farm
I’m well aware of atitudes
I’m well aware of crap schools

That’s why I’m well aware we should never abandon any child. That’s why I’m against academic selection at age 11. The Medway towns are Grammar areas and anyone who doesn’t get in is marked for ever. The prescence of Grammar schools is why the others are rough and really quite crap. That is why I am against academic selection at 11

Giving up on kids because of their parents attitude or academic ability is not how society moves forward successfully or fairly. I’d hate to think my taxes were paying for that.

You are doing whats best for your kid at the moment.
You have no choice at the moment and that’s what we do
It doesn’t mean we have to agree on the existing system

Okay, I’ll shout it louder - it’s not the schools!

Children who have parents who engage, who instill education into them, who don’t encourage them to fight with teachers - they do well!

It’s the parents who hold their children back and make them turn out just like they are, it’s not the schools.

My husband works in education for our local authority, he says it’s like they are banging thier heads an against a brick wall half the time. Everything the children need is there for the taking. There are lots of adult education programmes, free classes for parents, free activities. Not many are taken up.

the grammars here don’t affect the local schools, They are too few and too far. That isn’t what is bringing down the local schools here - like I said, vanishingly few children in this area take the 11+ anyway, it’s not comparable to Medway.