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

This suggested policy isn’t about improving schools or society as a whole though. This is about moving pupils around so there’s a different mix across better performing and worse performing schools. It’s not about improving the poorer schools. It’s about prioritising some pupils for entrance into the better schools. It won’t help the worse schools.

Interesting how they’re allowed to publish statistics on ethnicity for education purposes. But not on ethnicity for crime purposes (another thread running on this somewhere on MN).

Clearly
Additional funding should remain in place then

I’m surprised Labour has the backing at all. Education will be worse off.

There shouldn’t be ‘bad’ performing schools though. This is the key issue.

Is there any evidence that Labour are actually considering this or have we all reacted to a right wing made up dog whistle?

They’ll end up with people needing transport which council will have to pay for.

No idea tbh.
It’s only in one ??? Paper

Maybe Labour have leaked it to the Telegraph to see how it would go down with Mumsnet

We are an authority on the subject ☺️

Did everyone / anyone see the drama recently where a young boy stabbed a girl to death. They were about 12 I think. Anyway that school, he attended in the drama, was exactly the same as the school I attended. And is exactly the same as many schools across the UK. Dreadful. Not sure what the answer is. Poor teachers.

children should suffer because thier parents made bad choices

Of course not. Children should suffer because their parents made good choices. Typical Labour

Labour are lurking taking notes

oo
extra transport costs…didn’t think of that
pollution….didnt think if that
less tax payer hours….didnt think of that

I absolutely agree and I’ve made that point in previous posts. If all state schools offered an excellent education there wouldn’t be a need for parents to move houses/tutor/use private education etc.

I haven’t seen a single idea from the Labour government that’s going to do anything to improve the poorer performing schools though. It’s all about knocking the better performing ones down. They are aiming for equality by dragging the better ones down, rather than dragging the worse ones up.

People said the same re welfare cuts on here ‘media speculation’ / whistle nonsense etc, which turned out to be happening.

It’s a good idea. The houses in the catchment for the outstanding schools in my area go for a million +.

I’m really happy with my kids (non-outstanding but actually very good, and more diverse) school, and we wouldn’t class as lower income anyway, so have no dog in this fight, but I’d like to see the kids of non-high earners also get a good education too. High earners have gotten away with gaming the system for far too long.

Or poor parenting

Ah yes well said.

Oh they did. They just don’t gaf.

Interesting because I thought I was being sarcastic

Oh I know, I think I agree with your take

I think the policeman said it best, when he said the school was more a herding pen than anything else.

Agree they wouldn’t gaf
Don’t agree they’ve thought it through because they never do

My cousin said her kids school was like that
No idea why she seemed to think that was funny

Some posters have, quite reasonably, been questioning whether this policy actually exists. It may well not do.

But whether it does or it doesn’t, it won’t happen. The left-wing middle class who proudly announce their opposition to fee paying schools but buy into a good comp’s catchment area would squeal, and this idea would disappear.

I think the possibility has been questioned because of this part of their manifesto

“Respect and equality for all
Everyone in this country deserves a government that matches their ambition. Labour will ensure no matter whatever your background, you can thrive, and therefore we will enact the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act 2010.”

It’s under the section “break down barriers to opportunity” which is largely about education.

They’ll have to be pretty loud as Labour have a tendency to barrel through regardless.