Am I the only one thinking the system is crazy?

[chiaralev]

I've been living in the Uk for 18 years and I still can't believe the amount of time parents, including myself, spend researching schools, debating the pros and cons of state vs independent education. In other countries you just get on with it, and I promise the academic results are quite outstanding even though children may start reading and writing at the unbelievably old age of 6 or even 7. I'm also appalled by the fragmented society we are creating with religious schools (paid by us taxpayers, by the way) and mushrooming independent ones. So after much agonising, I decided that if my child gets a place at the local Primary, rated outstanding, I take her out of her hot-housing nursery she's attending and give her the chance to experience a fair and inclusive environment. Is anybody there that share my dilemmas and views?

No it was his local school, we moved there when he was 7 so not a normal admission. There were a handful of children who could not get into the local school while others shipped their children in.

I think a sibling policy operated then which may have been a factor, I don't think they can do that now. Families rented in the village, got child number one in and then moved back home. All the others then attended automatically .

That often seems to be the case when you move house or apply outside the normal admissions round - pressure on places means that you can't always go to the most local school.

I was talking about making a choice between state and private tbh Katpiss, and about doing serious homework about which school to pay for if you choose to pay. It would be bonkers to pay 10, 15, 30k per annum without having looked long and hard at what you were going to get.

The vast majority of the 'which school?' threads on MN are choices between private schools- which is a reflection on MN.

But the pressure is on places because people do not go to their local school. The school that my son went to was undersubscribed and had plenty of places in every year. We knew quite a few children who lived in the town that my son went to school in but went to the school in our village. In a similar manner, it was not unusual to get an invite to tea from a school friend and find they lived in our village and like us were shipping their children into school.

I think it is a bit disingenuous to say you have decided to send your child to the local school, as it happens to be outstanding. What if it was failing? Would you send your DC to it then, in some kind of egalitarian spirit? Or would you hope to find a better school for your DC, whether a state school, which was further away, or an independent school?

I absolutely agree that it is better for children to attend a local school, in theory. But to do this, we should expect all schools to be outstanding, and they are not.

But even if people did just go to their local school, that might not have helped your son because then it would have been local children from the village filling up the spaces.

Somebody might also argue that you had moved to the village 'late' rather than your son having been born there, therefore are not much different to the people in the town who moved to the village temporarily for the purposes of admission.

I recognise your frustration, but the problem lies in wider issues of birth rates, concentrations of population and people moving around. Most schools don't have many spare places and those that do are vulnerable to closure, redundancies or uncomfortable changes such as having to amalgamate year groups part way through a school year. I taught in one such school and it was not a pleasant or settled environment.

and one contributory factor is that some parents choose to send their children to a different school creating a local sink school ... where no one wants their child to go ...

I did not move to the village to get my son into that school and we have stayed there eversince. What is more I kept my son at the local secondary school rather than shipping him off to a grammar, because I want my children to have a community based education. If my son could not have got into the school because it was full of children from the village I would have been miffed but understood.

It is well know the you will struggle to rent family houses here during admissions time. Strangely there are certain families who do not rent houses for very long .

It is definitely an imperfect system. But did the old system of catchments work any better? I am fairly sure there used to be issues of some children being 'put down on the list' for schools when they were babies and getting in because families knew the headteacher.

Does anyone have any experience or comments on the old system?

What s this go to do with the system? The system round here is that you go to your local school the same as a lot of countries then like other posters have said just as in France some people at some schools then spend lots of time trying to get out

Replies in the states have announced they are moving to avoid being allocated certain schools, rellies in NZ only wanted to live in certin areas (and certain streets in those areas) because of zoning for schools

Surely all sorts of people in all sorts of countries care deeply about the schooling their children receive

Maybe your local otstanding school just happens to draw it's children mainly from streets with million pound houses in? I'd probably be pretty happy to send my children there too, the last school my dcs went to was rated outstanding BTW but was actually pretty average.

TBH I'm wondering whether your hothouse nursery is attached to private school and this is all about 'slumming it' or whatever
I'm wondering whether the hangup is all yours and nothing to do with the system in the UK

Under the old catchment system my junior school fed into two main senior schools. My mother applied for me to go to another school (after I had been promised that I would be beaten up by someone at my designated senior school).
I didn't end up at one of the schools that everyone in my very working class area was fighting to get their kids into. The school I went to was better than the one I was zoned to go to (which didn't let you study quite normal combinations of subjects), it was also closer to my house.
I was cross that my mother hadn't fought to let me sit the 11+ for the grammar in the neighbouring borough (especially as someone who lived 20 yards away and in that borough choose to go to my designated school instead) she also didn't let me try for the C of E school which would have been a better fit too. But I still got a better education than if we'd taken the designated school.

I also knew working class kids who got bursaries and travelled a long way to pretty good independent schools. Never mind the local cheap fashion store owner who moved his daughter as soon as he could afford it to a private girls school.

Sorry OP but anywhere where my DC have to spend such a large amount of time is going to be massively important to me.

Anywhere that is going to have such a disproportionate effect upon their adult lives is going to be massively important to me.

I wouldn't choose a place of work based on what was nearest to where I live so I'm not going to let that be my guiding premise for schools.

Can I assume that your oldest is the one at the "hot house nursery"? If the outstanding school is a state one then you are deluded to assume that you are sending your child to a "fair and inclusive environment". In the UK if you buy a house in the right area you can greatly increase your chances of sending your child to an outstanding school. That's hardly "fair and inclusive". (BTW I speak as someone who has taken advantage of this and bought a house where my children can go to excellent primaries and secondaries.)

Lots of "outstanding" schools get an outstanding rating by teaching children well for SATs and pressuring parents into keeping the school's attendance percentage high so don't assume that "outstanding" doesn't mean "hot house".

I totally agree about the faith school situation. It makes my blood boil that my children can not attend certain tax payer funded schools because of my religious choices.

For Crazygracieuk- my only daughter goes to the hot house nursery. And the outstadning primary is in London, NW2 . Actually there is a mix of people, my neighbour from Lebanon who cannot speak English and for sure did not do any reaserch about schools, had both children there. She didn't buy. There are also some council etsates nearby, and some very nice deteched houses, so I guess there is a degree of social mix. And I'm all in favour of keeping attendance and discipline. Although quality of teaching a support are more important.

No, I don't share your dilemmas. Like the vast majority of the population (not reflected on MN), private education isn't an option. We're not on the bread line, but we're nowhere near being comfortable enough to consider private schooling. Our only worry was whether our children would actually get into our nearest schools as we want them to be able to walk to school and be surrounded by friends from the community in which we live. It would have taken massive issues/worries for me not to choose my local schools.

If my children hadn't got into the state school we wanted, we couldn't have done what some of their friends did and toddled off to a private school - they'd have gone where they were allocated a place, and we all would have made the best of it, which is what 'Mr and Mrs Normal' do every day of the week.

And no, religious schools are not responsible for a fragmented society. After many years as a primary school teacher I could write essays about our fragmented society: believe me, religious schools would not get a mention!

Out of interest ... would you be pulling her out of the hot house nursery if the school didn't have that magic outstanding label?

Imnotacelebrity, would you really have been happy for your children to go to a school where there is a very high percentage of drugs, teenage pregnancies, barbed wire around the school, and way below average results in all areas? I would say that most people would at least be very nervous about their children's prospect in a school such as our local one. I know some parents who had no choice but have sent them with a heavy heart and have had many many issues there.

Their children have certainly had a rough ride, with many problem children to have to deal with every day and very shabby teaching and non existing academic expectations.

I can't comprehend why anyone would be happy and relaxed to send their children to a school like that.

No, itsonlyyearfour, not happy and relaxed about it - of course not. The point is, though, that for the majority of parents, this is the reality. Private education is a luxury, afforded to the privileged only, so the rest of us have to make the best of our 'ordinary' situations.
Luckily, there's little evidence of drugs or teenage pregnancy at our local primaries which is what the OP was agonising over.

You are right ImNotaCelebrity, just got carried away there!!!!

It's even more crazy from the inside:

www.amazon.co.uk/Ramblings-of-a-Nobody-ebook/dp/B007HRACLQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333191197&sr=8-1