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

If this just means adding fsm in the admissions criteria, ahead of distance, I dont think its going to be a big deal. Most parents want thier closest school for logistical reasons.

The type of fsm patent who wants thier child to go to a further away school as its better, It already invested in education in a way that they are prepared for a bit of awkwardness. This isn't going to ruin a previously nice school.

It would push out a few children on the periphery, to further away schools but this is the case on high birth years too.

The word “impact” is such a loaded term. My children went to different schools-one disproportionately privileged, one disproportionately under privileged. Both would have benefitted from more balanced cohorts.

Labour don't care about social mobility. They say they do but they repeatedly then penalise those who try eg VAT on school fees, talk of this admissions policy etc.
What they want is a ceiling of mobility which no-one, other than the members of the Labour Party, can go above. Clearly evidenced by their ridiculous classification of "working people" in the list of "approved" jobs for access to the Civil Service internships.
So you can be aspirational if your parents are train drivers, but not if they are nurses or taxi drivers.

It’s not “loaded”. Dc would be impacted by this policy.

Yes I agree with this. I worked at a school in Birmingham in a very rough area. Most of the pupild at that school did not pass gcses. They trialled a pilot scheme with the council and college to do nvqs. It was a massive success with kids predicted to fail, passing motor vehicle mechanics, beauty and painting & decorating. Most of the kids went there after school to progress further. One boy who was written off at school became a mechanics apprentice 2 years after leaving school because of the nvq program, made me feel happy.

Some of the things you have mentioned, beauty, painting and decorating, are looked down on and it’s ridiculous.

My dh did really well at school and he really wanted to be a plumber. His parents were devastated at that, apparently. His school told him not to “waste his talent” by doing it.

He did actually do an apprenticeship with a plumber for a little while, but was talked out of it to go back and do A levels and go to uni, which he did. His friend, who my in-laws looked down on as he wasn’t academic at all, stayed on his plumbing apprentice, straight out of school. Guess which one earns the most money and has more earning potential now at 40, has their own business, loves what he does, can work when they like and has the least stress?

It’s not my accountant husband. But hey, my in-laws have his uni graduation photo on the wall, so that’s all that matters.

Its a shane more schools aren't given funding for vocational subjects alongside academic. My DDs school offferss Construction, Business Management Catering and Animal Care (farming area, although the course is domestic animals). They ate really popular subjects, even amongst the "academic" children for a bit of a range.
(Mine is doing Triple Science, Spanish, Geography and Animal Care).

Important to remember that it was the Conservatives who introduced BTecs

I'm sorry but l don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all of England's bus routes. It was just a suggestion!

Also this new mooted scheme is just another load of Labour Hocus Pocus Drivel.

This week's gimmick from a bunch very feckless people who call themselves a government

Not denying that. They then destroyed them.

Well, mine would both have been “impacted” for the better.

Yes you said. “ “

AI is apparently going to destroy middle management so trades will be more important in the future? Educationally, we are potentially on a cusp, with all these technological changes and Governments aren’t really thinking ahead with this social mobility agenda. They should be speaking to experts about skills required in the future including soft skills and changing the education system accordingly.
The reality is that in just a few years most MC DC will have outstanding EdTec and an AI tutor to their specific needs so no need to panic about what school they go to.
It was also obvious that they would first have a go at private schools and now outstanding comps where people have bought their way in via catchments and there are massive differences in cohorts and affluence. That is an undeniable fact in some schools.

I think it's the older generation who look down on blue colar jobs. I'm encouraging mine to take apprenticeships over degrees as they'll be earning and won't have a load of debt. Obviously it depends what they want to be, as some degrees are manitory for certain jobs. My husband's friends range from electrician to plumber and they are definitely higher earners.

Yes, Labour are stuck in 1970s class warfare whilst rest of the world is hurting through 21st century.
They have no ideas or interest past the 1970s gripes!

I think this has changed somewhat now. And probably will do even more if / when AI take out a chink of jobs.

I am not so sure about AI. LLMs is just text prediction that relies on human input to learn. If they draw too much from AI they descend into a doom loop. I think that fatal flaw will become more apparent as time goes on. Of course there will still be a role for AI but there will still be a need for a large amount human input.

Good point. Hopefully we’ll realise it.

“I'm encouraging mine to take apprenticeships over degrees as they'll be earning and won't have a load of debt.”

@GAJLY - my younger 2 are also keen on this path but I feel Covid has set them back socially and emotionally and real world experience wise, so I worry about them missing out on the whole university and growing up/forming social relationships phase that is university.

But maybe that is another MC hang up I have. We went travelling to Asia and Africa and to university etc. However, we never had a parallel virtual social world. DD who is 16 tells me she knows our whole area and everyone in it across all schools “virtually”, whatever that means.

My eldest did the police degree apprenticeship (although I think that was scrapped last year, where we are at least).

I had a few comments from friends and family about missing out on uni.

For him, it was a way of getting a degree and not having huge debts. He didn’t want to stay in the police, he wanted to go into the military (which he did), but he needed a degree for the route he wanted to take. He thought the police would be great life experience, as well as getting paid to complete a degree.

Unfortunately, it was very tough. He might not have debts, but he paid for it in other ways. He was working full time as well as having to do his uni work. They got a couple of months over the summer to attend some lectures (mainly online), and to do work, but during that time, he was still getting phone calls of cases he was working on and had to give information on and wrap up. He found it really stressful. He didn’t have time to go out and be young, he was always under pressure from work.

He wishes now that he’d gone to uni. Yeah, his friends that did have debts, but they had fun, travelled, whereas ds had the responsibility of being a full time police officer, working shifts and doing uni work around it plonked on him from 18.

The only thing that confuses me is FSM not changing next year ?

at the moment it’s not everyone on benefits it’s only those earning less than 6k ? I thought it was changing to anyone from next year ( September 2026 ) to anyone on UC etc so this will include single parent nurses / teachers etc depending on how many children they have.

The only thing that confuses me is FSM not changing next year ?

at the moment it’s not everyone on benefits it’s only those earning less than 6k ? I thought it was changing to anyone from next year ( September 2026 ) to anyone on UC etc so this will include single parent nurses / teachers etc depending on how many children they have.

This poster's DCs won't be impacted by the policy.

The rest of middle class MNetters should welcome their kids being denied places in local to them schools and send to rough ones or having significant number of kids from those rough areas to join their DCs in their better schools. Why would anyone be against it? it's for the sake of social mobility!
🙄

I think the point with AI and tech is that the Government should be doing all they can to make sure the population can benefit from this growth area and that starts with education and then creating the right business environment. At the moment it is the US, China and India coming up with the biggest wealth creators in this area. I think you first worry about the wealth being created and then you address the sharing element. You have all these new billionaires and potentially less workers and sharing will have to happen one way or another. But you do not cut of the growth opportunity because you worry about people not sharing!

Absolutely. First work out how to get wealth creation and have it here at all to tax.