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

It’s a pain as some do well. Better to flatten everything and say it’s at least the same. Just all worse.

To be fair not everyone who is against it is being snobby here (although lots are!) my reasoning is that I dont want kids to have to travel further than necessary to school. We moved house because we were in a black hole for secondary schools. Meaning that we weren't within the "furthest offered" for any school nearby. This would have meant that we'd have been offered a place in ANY under subscribed school in the borough. For our London borough that would likely be a very long way away and involve complicated travel for the kids.
Obviously we chose a school we liked and moved within 0.7 of a mile of it to be sure we get in. So if we get squeezed out of that one we're back to square 1 of having no undersubscribed school nearby and could be sent anywhere again.
I actually think our intake is reasonably mixed between kids from mega mentions and kids from normal homes. No idea on FSM numbers though.

Yes the travel and distance is more my concern too.

For us, dd gets really travel sick even on short distance journeys so I really wouldn't want her to have to travel further than necessary and feel poorly every morning and afternoon just because she's not an fsm child.

There is snobbery and inverse snobbery towards all types of schools though.

The grammar DS is attending in September - a lot of his primary cohort would never put it first, even if they did get in, because of the dominant South Asian demographic and Science/Maths/Computer Science focus, that many of them do perceive of as a negative. Similarly, plenty of people are suspicious of private education, church schools, and floaty yummy mummy schools with a strong PTA and an expectation to contribute your time/money - the types of school where people care (sometimes too much) about what reading level their DCs are on actively puts a ton of people off.

So which one is worse? Snobbery or inverse snobbery. I think they are as bad as each other. And if the State were to decide to actually force poorer children into schools with an affluent demographic, rather than just widen their choices, it would likely backfire.

Labour have this thing where they believe that socially mixing people more and educating them more leads to more Labour voters. Personally, I think only if those people get the actual choice.

Well I’m against it as this is yet more looking like they’re doing something, without investing in schools. It’s pitting parents against each other again, whilst not giving schools more resources.

It’s Tory speculation. Nothing more. It’s an interesting thought experiment - concoct a rumour based on a single fact and then watch it spread and enjoy how upset people get about something that is unlikely to ever happen. It’s the entire basis half the political spectrum operates on.

Which half?

It’s always ‘speculation’ until it’s not. See welfare cuts. And another ‘white paper’ where there’s already pitch rolling by Phillipson.

Convince enough people to overlook it and more chance it’ll go through.

The one that’s confected this nonsense.

The option to include PP children within a schools admissions category was put in place Dec 2014. We decided not to add it as we operate our own admissions.

Ah.

I thought it couldn’t be Labour. Not with their spotless track record of not lying about Tory WFA cuts, the need for the Tory chancellor to declare an emergency budget (but not Labour, obvs), the Tory insistence on M25 expansion of ULEZ, the cost of the Track and Trace app, corruption over Covid contracts or in support of the totally genuine Carl Beech and his claims about Tory paedo rings.