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

Was Sir Kier's home even in catchment? I heard his wife was a governer there so maybe it was a shortcut.

I think it means that catchment is no longer a thing. And places are based on how poor a person is. The poorer the better and more likely to get a place. If a person is wealthy and lives a street away, they might not get in. Though we’ll have to wait and see.

This is what I don’t understand. Too many people, including politicians, are obsessed with getting less well off families into better schools and bleat on about “fairness”. Why don’t they strive to make all schools excellent? It’s not “fair” that any child, from any background, has to put up with a poor education.

Some children without supportive parents need a supportive encouraging school

ideally every child would have both but we all know that doesn’t happen

The poorer the better sounds like a good Labour slogan 😁

There is already a criteria for the most vulnerable children - those who are looked after, under social service care or are statemented. This seems like social engineering where, yet again, children of parents who have been successful in life (per whatever arbitrary criteria Labour are using this week) will be penalised. A race to the bottom, rather than scaffolding those who need support so that they may climb too.

If we’re equally poor and education is bad for all dc at least it’s the same or something

How would this work if a tutor needs to make a living?

Anyone motivated enough could find out what books and resources are needed. But this would still cost money.

In fact there is actually a tutoring place locally who accept kid vouchers and it is free if you get certain benefits.

We did a few weeks but it was crap. They had high school kids tutoring the children. And the high school kids were getting the answers wrong themselves so I left it. But obviously that tutoring isn't geared towards grammar school applications and just general literacy and numeracy.

There is plenty of interventions aimed at kids who are pupil premium but I think unless the child has parents who are motivated towards educational achievement for their kids - it won't make a difference.

Locally there are loads of kids who are eligible for pupil premium- the ones whose parents are motivated towards educational achievements do really well and excel.

The parents who don't care their kids don't stand a chance especially at that income level. No intervention from the gorvenment will make a difference.

It's a great idea to balance out those schools whose catchments are all one way. House prices will go WILD in my area!

@JustAlice

The Poorer The Better!*

*not including us

In my experience well over 90% of parents don’t look further than their local catchment school.

When I started talking to them about LA admissions data and listing which schools they could get into they were totally disinterested and had made no effort to carry out any research whatsoever.

Maybe that’s how they’ll get votes after all.

I agree with this. Our kids went to a “good school” because we worked our arses off to be able to buy in the area.

We are fairly close to an area where around half adults of working age are on benefits, despite there being jobs available. My friend who likes to think she’s a liberal was all about “levelling up” until her DH got a job in the high school in this area. He says he spends about 30 minutes of an hour long class just settling the class down, dealing with drama and general disobedience. Homework is never done, parents don’t come to parents night, the schools academic results are some of the worst in the country.

Whilst I would love to think that mixing up the demographic would be fair, I think it would penalise the kids in the “good school” - there are some kids in the school who get bused in from the rougher area and they have to change out of their blazers before going home to avoid getting beaten up.

And before I get accused of snobbery or whatever - I am from a poor, working class background, had alcoholic parents, experienced a lot of childhood abuse and a really terrible start in life generally. So I know what’s it’s like to grow up in poverty.

So you're saying that m/c parent scare more than FSM and deprived parents. In fact it's often the opposite those kids value education because they know how important it can be to social mobility. If they get into schools where they have more resources (computers to do homework and revision on etc) and where they're pushed to be as ambitious as possible they will do so. Rather than what often happens which is telling them to aim low because of their family backgrounds. Those parents cannot attend parents evenings because of shift work, or working nights in non formal 9-5 jobs, they care but they have very different lives, rather than blaming them schools should adapt to their population and families. Rather than doing information morning at 10am like people don't have to work and can't take of that much time, because fundamentally they need to feed their kids first. Rather than schools giving kids detention the minute they have to wear trainers (because their schools shoes have holes) and their parents honestly cannot afford a new pair of shoes for a couple of weeks. It's not impossible it just requires adaption of policies and more consideration and training on trauma informed care and caring for deprived students

Also some parents cannot help, especially if they are not highly educated they cannot help with homework and that doesn't make them worse parents. Also they nay have to work evenings, do extra shifts so yes they're less present or can't read every night but it's not because they don't want to, but often have to prioritise bills. These populations are also more likely to be ethnic minorities who definitely have a massive emphasis on education and doing well and their kids take this on and often do a lot of work themselves simply because of the attitude their giving, even if sometimes their parents don't have the skills or the ability to help as much.

I think the difference in background to achievement can be seen in my parents.:

My dad is very clever, very ambitious and an over-worker. He also failed his 11+ so went to the secondary modern due to the situation he was in. His parents had left school at 12/14, and had no qualifications. He was offered to switch over to the grammar at 13+ and again in the 6th form but chose not to because he thought it wasn't for "people like him". He did maths (gaining 2 better grades than his teacher), and another A-level at school, and had to take the third at a night-school as his school didn't offer it - actually they didn't really offer A-levels at all; they just did it for him. He took 3 years over doing them because
There was very little support from parents because it was out of their zone entirely. I have no idea whether they were proud of him or thought that he was wasting his time when he could be earning.
He worked 3 jobs each week so he could afford to run his motorbike to get to school/night school and for books etc. He got BCD (I think, certainly not higher) and went to uni.

Dm was from a different group. She went to grammar; her parents would have degrees nowadays, but the war kind of got in the way. They would have supported her, got her to school etc. She was well motivated, but not pushing in the way df was. She got three As and also went to uni.

Now I'm not saying that Df is cleverer than dm, but he's certainly comparable - but the grades aren't.

So I'm very supportive of schemes that help those who are in df's situation. But they have to be prepared to help where they are. Df chose not to move to the grammar, even though it was clear he should be there, because it wasn't "for people like us". He had to work to get to school, and push to do what he wanted to do.

What is needed to be done is make working fashionable. So those, like df, who want to work aren't pushed out by peers. Df was more than capable of dealing with that (v. sporty too) but many aren't. Give them opportunities to learn inside and outside school. Help them to see that working can take them out of that situation
And lastly, bring back grants for poorest students so they don't have to work just to keep their heads above water.

They implicitly acknowledge that some schools are worse than others.
Blame it on the pupils/parents.
Do nothing to address the actual cause.

But this levelling-down agenda somehow addresses an unmet need of 'fairness' while the country slowly crumbles.

Grammar schools were generally smaller, well they were in my city, so I was in an intake of 90. It became a comp by merging with the boys school nextdoor and the secondary modern on the other side of the field. In taKe now became over 300 a year. Still the same buildings but if a new comp was built, as some were, they were much bigger than the grammar schools. Other areas might be different but that was my city.

But how would it be more cost effective? Surely Five hundred children require the same amount of classrooms, equipment and teachers whether they are in one large school of 500 or two smaller schools with 250 pupils in each. Grammar schools, especially back in the 1950’s and 1960’s (before tutoring became so widespread) gave thousands of bright children from poorer working class families the opportunity to have a solid academic education which often led to careers that would have been closed to them.

TICK ✅

Or allow schools to support more able pupils with 11+ prep. Labour has banned state schools from supporting children going for the 11+ beyond doing 1 mock test with them. Private primaries fully prep their children going for the test. The fact that many more get in the private primaries than state isn't because they are brighter, but because they are fully prepared.

Our tutor said she offered some free sessions to our local primary, they just has to select 6-8 children who the school thought had the ability to pass but not the ability to pay, but the school said they were unable to accept. She wanted to do it to level opportunity but also as she had free time during school day as all tutoring is after school, so it had to be via the school. I mentioned this to head and she said DfE wouldn't allow her to accept.

Allowing state schools to run free or low cost prep sessions would equal the opportunity, but that's levelling up rather than levelling down, so doesn't fit with the labour agenda.

Is it a shame that all schools can’t be good schools

Yeah, having those poor kids in your middle class school will drag it right down, much better to leave the poor kids in their own poor area so that your children aren’t infected by it.

Or, you could look at the statistics which show where poorer kids attend schools with a majority of wealthier kids, the poorer kids do better. This policy isn’t going to mean better schools are full of poorer kids, it just means a greater spread. If every school has 30% poorer kids and 70% wealthier, then that’s a good start.

Or, scrap the 11+. It is entirely unnecessary.

I agree. And the environmental impact too. We should be encouraging people to walk to their local school, not drive to a further one.

Agree