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

Yes, I know, you're die hard Labour, they can do no wrong. I respect your consistency

Yup. That’s about it.

I can only talk about my individual experience, obviously, but in our case, it’s not the school it’s the area and the majority of people who live here.

The school do so much. They put on free clubs every day after school for the children for everything you could want. Spots, science, cooking, art, games, drama, dance, chess, ones just to hang out and chat.

Yet you know, and they know, the children who will attend. It’s the more middle class families in the area that take them up on it (I volunteer to run a couple of classes as a helper to the teachers who stay to do them, I hear them talk). The classes are there for the taking. They are free and your child gets to stay in school until 4:30 doing something fun - win!

The school also do a SATS club everyday for the term before SATs. Afterschool and free with snacks and games after. The uptake is so low. Dd and some of the other children on her year last year didn’t need any extra support, but the school asked if we could send them anyway - just becuase if there was no uptake for the children who did need help, they might not get the go ahead to run them in future for children who were identified as needing extra lessons. They needed to keep the numbers to keep it going.

Sometimes, you can put all the opportunities you like in front of someone for their child and they will laugh at it, or can’t be bothered.

I’m not die hard anything except accuracy. The facts are simple. The government is proposing to reinstate part of the Equality Act to extend the obligation of local authorities. This has been spun - and the Telegraph article actually says this - into a fiction about school place allocation.

The Labour government has done a lot of things I’m disappointed by, to the point whereby I probably won’t vote for it again, but blame it for what it’s done - God knows there’s enough - rather than what the opposition says it’s doing.

So you are saying they are working their way down the social hierarchy blaming each in turn when the previous group of parents didn’t magically improve things in failing schools?

Wind them up and watch them go.

What has Labour said about this? It seems like a pretty major story. Have they stamped on it?

Exactly.

As for the don’t talk about it posts, I recall similar from pro Labour against welfare cuts.

You can talk about it all you like but you’re discussing a work of fiction.

Well your permission is not required, but yes you and others said similar for welfare cuts. It was ‘media speculation’ then.

For this no chance, majority yanbu they’d lose votes.

Precisely.

And I'm still waiting for 6500 teachers. RR had two thirds of her annual take from VAT already, where are the teachers???

Another good point. It's all over SM. If it's not true it takes one 2 min interview or BBC page to get it shut.

😂

Is it fiction though?

Dd has been applying for jobs. As well as questions about sexual orientation (myob) and ethnicity, two applications asked about parents’ jobs and their level of qualification. We’ve let her down!!

A pity they don’t ask about grandparental jobs as then dd would be ringing up three bell fruits.

The ideology seems to be that you should only become “middle class” for one generation.

Yep. It doesn’t cost much and some people will still rally for them.

Whilst they make it harder to get a good education.

Not if it doesn't include faith schools. Eg the school I work in 40% FSM. The faith schools at the end of the road 4% FSM. This proposal won't change that.

Why is that funny?

A denial would be easy. There’s clearly a government comms team working over the summer. They had to firefight the story of the homelessness minister chucking her tenants out, after all.

Yep why the usual emoji

I enjoy discussing fiction. Nothing wrong with that

Your dd should refuse to answer and tick the
prefer not to say on all personal questions

Faith schools are partly funded by that faith with buildings and grounds owned by that faith.

Then her application will be binned by the AI that’s increasingly being used at the Sift stage.

Labour deny it in the article, which no one appears to have bothered to read.

Do you mean the Telegraph article? There’s no denial in that. There is some meaningless waffle from Labour, but no straight denial.

You know you don’t have to tell the truth about parents education and jobs, right? What are the going to do, turn up and shake you down for your certificates?