Catchment areas should they exist / are they fair?

[Vicky777]

Hi mumsnetters,

This is the first time i have started a thread and i really need your opinions.
I am doing an Access to Teacher Training course and i have to do an education project, i have chosen catchment areas. Should they exist and are they fair? As this is a subject personal to my family at the moment. I need as many different opinons as possible to put this assignment together so any help would be grately appreciated. I am looking forward to hearing from you all:)

my local area has a feeder school system, which takes precedence over geographical closeness. In practice this seems to mean that anyone moving into the area after their child has started foundation will find it difficult to get their child into any local school because the places are all taken up by children (many of whom lives miles away and get the bus/train in) who managed to get into a feeder.

In our LEA (and most others, I think), the priority criterion for children with special needs requires the parents to provide evidence (from a paediatrician or other professional) of a medical or social need, which that particular school is best able to meet. The decision on whether to admit under this criterion is then taken by a specially-convened panel.

The starting assumption is that schools should be able to meet the needs of most children, and so to get a place under the social or medical need criterion, the parents have to show that the child's needs are beyond what most schools can cater for and only the preferred school can meet those needs. I don't know the statistics for my LEA, but at the primary school where I'm a governor there is probably one child a year admitted under this criterion.

The figures being bandied about last week (from an Ofsted report) were for something slightly different.

Should have added, the irony is that the LEA insist on referring to their schools as 'community schools'.

thanks asmallbunch. it did seem a strange otherwise - such a large percentage getting preference even if the school wasn't particularly suited to them

Yes, it's the being suited to the school element that's important. As I said, schools are expected to cater for a certain level of need, and it's only above that level that the social/medical criterion is likely to kick in.

Social/ medical needs is very small. In my authority in 2009, there were about 140 applications under this criteria for more than 150 schools and only 20 were accepted as being appropriate.
So the honest answer is that you have to have some very specific special needs to get under this criteria. In my LA it is actually social needs that most of the 20 were accepted under. For instance, issues where there were child protection issues and also issues of mobility of parents.

Thank you to all of you for your feedback so far. What if you think of it from another angle, those who ony have a choice of the undersubscribed schools because of the area they live, would you then agree or disagree that catchment / priority areas then have repercussions on the standard of education the child receives through no fault of their own. Thanks again x

I've never been a fan of "closest to the school" because we have always been in the position where the house we can afford is in an area that is not great. When we did move just yards from a decent primary they refused to take our kids.

When I started school back in the 60s all primary schools in the town I grew up in had catchment areas. They were drawn in such a way that each school got a mix of posh areas, bad areas, MC areas, and a mix of children. Of course that was long before the cap on infant class sizes, and league tables.

When DD1 started school in 1990 they had done away with catchment areas. We chose to send her to a village school a bit further away because our 2 local schools were very poor.

On the one hand I don't see why somebody who can't afford to live in the nicest areas should be stuck with a crap school. On the other hand it is ideal to be able to walk to school. I don't know what the answer is.

At secondary level we were lucky enough to be in a grammar area (since we weren't in the area of any school) so having passed the 11+ DS3 & DS4 went to grammar.

We're in Scotland, and I am not sure that I agree that the catchment system here is any better than in England. What is good about it is that we don't have the ghastly applying to LEA for a place, choosing preferred schools etc. We just got a letter asking if we wanted 'denominational' (ie Catholic) or non-denominational school, then a nice letter from the head teacher of our catchment school inviting us for a cup of tea. The problem comes if your catchment school is not a good one. Then you have to put in a placing request and you're into the same lottery as the English system, plus you lose your automatic place at the catchment school. In parts of Glasgow there is exactly the same ridiculous house price inflation to get into the catchment of a good primary/secondary.

I'm not sure how it works at secondary level in England, but here, each secondary school is part of a 'learning community' with feeder primaries. I quite like that, as the older primary pupils get to visit 'their' secondary for certain activities (eg some sports or music activities) while they are still in primary, which I imagine helps the transition (we're nowhere near that stage yet, so apologies if I'm talking out of my arse).

Well, our local school is "satisfactory". And, actually, local counts for a lot. We were under no illusions about the school when we sent the dc there, but felt local was important.

I've moved my youngest now, but resisted for a very long time, because all the benefits of local (friends, ease of getting there) are actually huge, and their loss has a vast impact on a child's education and social life. In some obvious ways, and some unexpected ways.

It has a huge impact on your family life, too, and your freedom as a parent, during school hours. Again, in some quite unexpected ways.

In the end we moved her for a whole bundle of reasons, but I am still very unsure whether the benefits of a "good" school, further away, aren't outweighed by the loss of attendance at a local school.

And we didn't move our other child.

So, on balance, I'm still in favour of sending your children to the local school, even though, in practice, we are no longer doing that.

Well I think that no one should only have a choice of crappy schools because of where they live. All schools should offer a decent standard of education to the children who attend.

I think one of the problems with non-catchment arrangements is that it exacerbates the problems for unpopular schools (and especially those in socially and economically disadvantaged areas) because all those in the community who can opt out of their local school strive to do so, which effectively leaves the 'sink' schools to pick up those children whose parents don't care enough or don't know enough to fight for a decent education for their children (alongside those who were unlucky enough to be allocated the school and couldn't get in elsewhere). The biggest problem with this is that those children who are most in need of a good education from the state (because they don't have parents who are able to support them through school for a whole host of reasons) are lumped into poor schools where the teachers become disillusioned and very few get anything positive out of the situation.

While the idea is no without flaws, there is something to be said about proper community schools whose intake reflect the range of economic and social circumstances of their local areas. Even highly stigmatised areas are home to a range of people, many of whom are motivated to help their children to the best of their abilities (despite what the daily mail might think). These communities are harmed because they aren't provided with the kind of schools they deserve.

And I agree with animula about the importance of local school. I've never managed to get ds into our local school, which means he's always been miles away from his friends. It makes it very difficult to feel part of a local community.

His current school is a feeder for our local high school, but it's the furthest one away from our house (and the least sought after by far, due to the legacy of having been in special measures in the past, which is the only reason he got a place there at all). DS2 will be going to our closest school when he's old enough and then I'm never moving house again because I want the boys to be able to walk to school and hang about with their friends without excessive parental organisation.

Yes. I can't help but feel that concentrating on the whole catchment issue is like looking at the hot-dog seller, whilst the goal of the season is taking place.

The issue, surely, is to make sure there is parity in state education. And whilst intake is big in that, other things are also important. Funding that is targetted at schools that have to deal with social need. Lots of help and intervention for schools that are not doing so well.

We've had a fair bit of that, and it's helped things. And we need more.

Fwiw, my dc's rather poor school was not in a particularly crappy area. It was just a crap school. Which was interesting, really. It's made me realise that the issue of crap schools isn't always down to the socio-economic make-up of its pupils and parents.

There are pros, cons and ways round catchment but I do believe it's the fairest system, though that to an extent depends on how the area is drawn. It's never fair for a child to be forced into a failing school, but in an ideal world no school would be failing and we'd all be in catchment for just the one school. As it is the system gets played so where you're in catchment for more than one you choose the best option - that's just natural.

Hint for your project: for additional marks/insight try comparing the systems in other countries using English speaking expat sites like angloinfo to get you started. Is catchment the norm in other countries? How does it work there? Are the good and bad schools? Do children just attend their local school as a matter of course? Is there anything Emgland could benefit from in their system?

vicky - not sure its as simplistic as that. as a very massive generalisation i've noticed that all my children's friends come from similar backgrounds and they all tend to be in the top streams. if you get rid of catchment areas surely this will still happen and you will get a certain type of child from a certain background grouping together. all the children round here go to 1 of 2 middle schools and 1 of 2 secondary schools. all of which are quite good. but the children with doggy looking parents tend to be in the lower sets still.

"What if you think of it from another angle, those who ony have a choice of the undersubscribed schools because of the area they live, would you then agree or disagree that catchment / priority areas then have repercussions on the standard of education the child receives through no fault of their own."

To say that catchment can have repercussions is, I think, missing the point. There has to be some system that allocates school places on an equitable basis, that is relatively easy to administer. It is not the catchment system that is the problem - it is the fact that not all schools are good schools and therefore parents are using the system (whatever it is - it happens to be catchment, it could quite easily be something else) to try to gain advantage for their DC.
Have you seen the John Humphrys thread?

There will never be a perfect system that works for 100% of the population. The best that you can hope for is the least worst solution.

senua - agree and not all parents are good parents. if you haven't been brought up to love books, have high expectations and a wide vocabularly whatever school you go to you are going to struggle. And attempting to mix children from different backgrounds doesn't appear to work - looking at my kids anyway - they stick to their own 'type'. I think you would have to abolish streaming in schools - and that would be to the detriment of the brighter children

I'll ecco everyone's opinions on Bristol City Council's ability to manage a catchment area...

"We'll just 'scrap' the catchment area formally but have another model called APR which means we can cherry pick poor kids from poor areas and stick them in the good schools in the wealthy areas. Then we avoid the politics of everyone saying we're not doing anything about our failing LEA because we're giving a great 'social mix'. Oh and don't forget, the private schools will continue to take ~8000 children off our books every year so we don't have to plan/provide for them either."

The biggest joke was when they 'ummed and ahhd' about buying a failed private school for £2m when planning/building/developing/staffing/etc... of a new school would have cost over ten times that. Then they get congratulated for rescuing it - buying that school was a bloomin bargain!

I don't know...Bristol City Council...grumble....

I don't resent financially planning to send my kids to private school, I resent knowing the alternative would condemn their lives.

Seems to work fine in Scotland. What I find shocking about England is some people seem to end up with children at different schools, madness, how can you be in 2 places at once.

It can work well for rural schools. Where we are is about 3 miles from our nearest town, and 3 miles in the opposite direction from our catchment village school (the school in our village was closed many years ago now). They have bundled lots of villages without schools together into the defined catchment for the village school that is still open, which is better for the community in general and more likely to keep the one remaining school open.

animula: I agree, the standard of a school is not directly tied to the parental income of its intake. My poor DS has been to far to many schools, the worst of which have been in the 'nice' areas. At one point he went to an absolutely brilliant 'scheme school' with about the most disadvantaged intake of any school in the city.

Interested to see Ceolas think that catchment areas work in Scotland.

We moved here a year ago, and it did mean that there was at least some certainty about which school the DCs would attend. However some things (in our town at least) mean it is a pile of nonsense.

No question about which secondary school the kids move on to means that through the (brilliant) programme of introducing them to the secondary, there is no question about whether or not it is a) as good a school as it could be b) the right school for the child (one size has to fit all)

For primary in this town, there are three. One in a relatively "nice" modern estate, one in the middle of an ex-council estate, and one in the middle of the park. The smallest of the three is in the middle of the town, and the so called catchment area is so messed up that children living facing the school gates are not in catchment, and have to walk a mile in the opposite direction to get to school.

The main problem apart from stupid catchment areas is that with the intake numbers guaranteed, and the council making it hard/impossible to get children placed in schools out of catchment, the school is under no pressure at all to improve, keep up with the times, cater for anything other than the needs of the teachers to have as easy a life as possible.

I used to be a school governor in an area with lots of good schools, and so a huge competition for numbers. It wasn't only important for the school to be fabulous for the sake of the children already deliberately, or accidentally there, but because maintaining numbers actually mattered, and had to be done by constantly ensuring that parents, and prospective parents actually knew what was being done to ensure the best possible education for all the children. A bit of a rant, I know, and obviously very biased, but the level of complacency which fixed catchment areas seems to allow is completely staggering to me. Many many fewer inspections here too seem to make this easier. Not that I was sure of the benefits of regular inspections before, but seeing here, that unless the school is a complete disaster, they will be praised for some spurious bit of good practise, and then left to get on with being mediocre.

And before I get shot down in flames, I know this is just my view.

Oops, just looked back and see that Ceolas is not the only one to comment from Scotland. Rant over.