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

Depends on your definition of social mobility @CurlewKate The grammar my DS is starting at certainly provides a huge amount of social mobility for certain immigrant groups in the UK.

When you say you care is if just a removed thing? ie something your dc won’t be impacted by

I couldn’t give two shits about social mobility. I don’t care how anyone else wants to live. And like I keep saying, the people on the shitty estates around me are always ten times happier than I am, I’m truly starting to think that I’m the mug.

I don’t care that the people here bring my children’s primary down. It’s not the teachers, they like me and my children, we like them and they are extremely helpful and supportive to us. My children are thriving as I want them to. I put things in place to help that. I can’t force other people to do the same for their children. It’s sad that it means we don’t get any school community, but that’s life.

Life isn’t fair. We used to be in a much better area, a much better financial position (and we still are in a much better financial position than most, we have no debt and chose to live in a cheaper area while we were getting out lives back on track after we lost everything due to some really awful bad luck and circumstances over a six month period. That wasn’t my children’s fault and I’m thankful dd got into a grammar so she doesn’t have to be dragged down at the local secondary school and she will be around more middle class children like her who want to learn and are motivated and not ones who see school as a punishment like so many children here do.

life is what you make it. Not everyone wants the same things out of life. Not everyone everyone has aspirations for themselves or their children and that’s okay. It’s none of my business. I mean, it’s shit when they can’t pick up their children from school without lamping each other or screaming at teachers, but that’s just how it is.

If they didn’t want to live like that, they would change their behaviour, but they seem happy.

In bucks you literally cannot pass the 11+ without tutoring/help at home that exposes you to more advanced content, because the test includes material only taught in y6, but you take it in september of year 6 before the test is taught.

The single biggest factor would be if schools had adjusted class sizes in areas of high fsm%. High fsm = 20 kids in a class instead of thirty plus a guaranteed full time TA and you would see a HUGE difference. More if you could have an extra 2 hours a day with a third TA.

What frustrates me about discussions on how to improve social mobility is that it ignores how important parents and home are. The truth is there are lots great teachers, libraries, resources. The kids on the local estate the me get free school holiday clubs while mine gets the odd day here and there as that's all we can afford. I worry that the more that people hear 'its not your fault' that they will do even less for their kids.

The kids who did best at my school were migrant children or refugee. Their parents knew it was up to them.

I honestly think we need to scrap the idea that eveyone has to be academic. It’s quite clear the children who aren’t going to do well academically and they get so frustrated. Pushing people to get a certain grade in English and maths when they can’t, or just don’t want to is madness.

They should do vocational things, and I am not talking about the health and social care and childcare btecs that a lot of kids are forced into, but trades as well.

If they are going to hang about the park for the rest of their days smoking weed, forcing them to do GCSEs isn’t going to stop that. But maybe if you don’t force kids and make them feel like shit for failing something they were never going to pass in the first place and had no interest in, they would find something they did have an interest in and want to do. And if they don’t? Well, they were never going to anyway.

Completely. So many people are really blinkered to how huge swathes of this country live as well - me included, until I moved to where I am now. You can’t change it. it’s not like they are sitting and crying about their lives. The ones that are will change it - as you said, immigrant families statistically push themselves and their children to succeed academically.

Education is there for everyone. No teacher is going to refuse a child who wants to learn. No teacher is going to turn away a parent saying, “please help me motivate my child to learn.”

I don’t think anyone is ignoring the importance of parenting. Improving social mobility requires mitigating the impact of parents who won’t or can’t do the super job us middle class types do.No point saying “But they SHOULD….” They can’t or won’t or don’t know how. We need to start from where we are.

‘We’ as in other people’s dc?

”We” as in “us”.

The answer is to improve the badly performing schools, not force locals to travel to badly performing schools outside the locality. It's class envy, nothing more.

Why not take steps to improve badly performing schools instead of sending local kids outside the locality? This is levelling down, not levelling up. Socialist class envy at it's worst.

Maybe they think, or have done research that shows, that mixing up the intake is a way of improving schools?

What do you mean by “socialist class envy”?

This post is heart breaking and no wonder why we have the issues in this country that we do when people write off children this quickly who then become adults.

I came from a working class family with divorced parents and grew up on a council estate. I am probably the definition of working class. My mum was illiterate but worked full time some time 3 jobs with cleaning on the side to keep a roof over our heads. She was an amazing mum who taught us well. Our parents loved us and raised us with respect for all those around us. I went to the local girls secondary school. My sister dropped out of school due to a SA incident and got a job at 15 and worked her way up doing courses on the way and is now very successful in her own right although not earning what Mumsnet deems a worthy amount.
I did well academically and pursued my dream but again probably not the highest financial role but an important one !
My children go to the local catholic school and one is heading to a very affluent secondary school.
we were raised well, fed well and our children are also high achievers who have every chance to succeed in life.
we care about their academics but we also care they are respectful, kind, polite and that they also have fun outside the pressure of education.
not a single one has ever been in trouble at school and have amazing school reports.

of course not all working class families are perfect and there will be some terrible parents but I can bet you there is also a bunch of adults who were raised in middle class families who don’t have a good word to say about their parents !

TBH, the working class tag for the families at poor schools is unhelpful. The problem isn’t class as such, it’s terrible parents of disruptive, aggressive children and who behave badly towards the school staff themselves.

To judge by MN posts there are enough of these parents and children to make a destructive difference in many schools. If the social and educational engineers on here can think of a way to weed these people out of catchment busting, then I’ll listen. Otherwise it just seems to me that more classrooms in more schools will suffer.

Expulsion seems to be frowned on these days. Any other ideas?

I think this is important.

The idea that social mobility is the answer assumes that the best kind of life is a middle class life and that everyone wants that and if we just educate everyone enough, they will all become middle class.

But actually, not everyone wants that or is cut out for it. And why should they be, there are all kinds of work that are important.

My dp worked his whole life in building, he didn't have a formal trade but learned on the job as many do, painting, plastering, drywall, some tiling. He liked what he did and was sought after because he was a perfectionist, and would have had no interest in becoming middle class or going to school for any longer than he did.

It's great to make it possible for kids who want to do something differernt from their families to do that. It works in differernt directions too, kids from professional or academic families that want to go into trades or something like agriculture are often at a disadvantage too, particular with apprenticeships or getting work experience as teens, which can be important pathways.

Butas a social policy to better society, I don't see social mobility as an answer.

Perhaps we should have a system like the Dutch where you are tested in primary and then placed into one of three levels of secondary school with differing curriculums?

I think it was a Conservative move to end grammar schools.
"
"it was actually the Conservative education secretary... who made the first move.

Edward Boyle was a quiet, ferociously intelligent, Eton-educated but surprisingly moderate Conservative MP who in 1963 wrote in the foreword to a report on secondary school reorganisation that “all children should have an equal opportunity of acquiring intelligence and developing their talents and abilities to the full”. At a leading education conference that year he said that separating children at 11 would no longer be regarded as “the norm”. "

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/who-was-the-first-politician-to-announce-the-end-of-grammar-schools/

Important to remember that it was the Conservatives tore the heart out of the BTec system….

It was always the “oh we shouldn’t expect everyone to be academic” gang who were the most disparaging about BTecs.

It’s mostly those whose dc won’t be directly affected going by the posts below that are pro Labour no matter what.

That’s usual for mn but I doubt MC parents with dc who will be used this way will want it.

I’m disparaging about certain btecs, yes. I was a welfare officer in a secondary once. The amount of mainly girls who were pushed into health and social care or childcare was ridiculous. some were miserable about it. They didn’t want to work with children or the elderly and some would come to me miserable. Like all they could hope for was to get a shit paying job caring for others.

And no, not everyone has to be academic. But palming them off on btecs that they have no interest in and they might end up in a min wage job for a bit they can’t stand and don’t care about isn’t the answer either. I don’t know is.

Oh, you do like to make judgements about other people,don’t you!

So would your dc be impacted then?