Surge in school admission lotteries??

[Tansie]

here

Makes me shudder and be grateful that my two are safely in their naice, leafy, MC comp, one that I got them into by buying a house in the catchment.

"The head of one major chain of academies said it was no longer “inherently fair or good for our society” to let parents move into the catchment area of a leading school to get a place."

So, the only DC who will stand any chance of 'getting the good jobs' will be from a private or academically selective school, in other words. Until that glaring inherently unfair loophole is closed, I shall do what I can for my DC. FGS don't take that away, the only thing that us less well-off parents can do to increase our DC's life chances! And no, I have no problem whatsoever with my DC sitting in classes with 'forrin' DC, working class DC or managed SEN DC (DC whose SEN is being properly attended to so the DC can participate in mainsteam education before I get flamed for that)- providing they're all singing from the same hymn sheet in terms of values. As are the DC at my DC's school. What I do have a problem with is that my DC's academic band could condemn them to a school miles away in a grotty area with a disastrous disciplinary record.

All this may do is 'dumb down' all schools since it has been shown that you actually only need a couple of drop-kick DC in a class to wreck the lesson for the rest. Sure, there are potentially such DC at my DC's school but they are utterly in the minority and their behaviour is rigorously managed.

I am glad that one can still effectively buy that. And yes, there are council houses in the catchment, and small 3 br flats. Though yes, I also concede the housing is largely 3-4 br privately owned and most parents in the area are here because of the school.

[ShadowOfTheDay]

I went to a sink-school full of the un-engaged and unteachable... I floated.... came top, got As in O levels and A levels - because of who I am not where I came from ...

as always I am purely "anecdotal" just because I did it does not mean it hold true for everyone...

but I think it does, people just don't want to admit they want THEIR children educated with naice MC kids, not riff raff from the council estate

[AmberTheCat]

Tolerance and understanding of people who come from different backgrounds than your own. Tolerance and understanding that some people have significant barriers to overcome to do what you take for granted. The sort of tolerance and understanding that I'd like to see more of in the people that rise to the top in this country.

Tansie, I'm clearly not going to win an argument with someone who can state that keeping the children of unengaged parents out of good schools is a good thing, so I'm not sure why I'm trying, to be honest.

[WooWooOwl]

Shadow, I am admitting it. I don't actually care where other people's children come from and it's not that I want my dc to be educated with only MC kids. It's that I don't want my children's education to be disrupted by children from dysfunctional families.

If that makes me a snob, then I'll happily be a snob.

Shadow, you may have done well at your sink school because of who you are and good for you. But what if who you were wasn't able to do that? I'm reasonably confident that one of my dc would be the same if put in a sink school, but the other one, who actually has more natural academic ability, probably wouldn't because he's easily led and needs a constant kick in the bum to go in the right direction.

It's not a risk I'd want to take when my child is ten years old. You only get one chance at secondary education, and at 10, how do you know if your child is going to be one that manages to float or not? I could easily look back at my dc in ten years and see the assessment I've made above was completely wrong.

Like I said, school is not (IMO) there to teach tolerance and understanding, but either way, children will get some of that no matter what school they go to because oddly enough 'naice MC' families have plenty of challenges, economic diversity and ethnic diversity amongst themselves.

[WooWooOwl]

Maybe you're right, but that's a choice that should be left up to individual parents.

And let's be honest, proposals to introduce lottery systems aren't there for the purpose of teaching the easily led kids that they should try not to be so easily led, are they? The idea is to dilute the effect of the negative and disruptive behaviour so that schools have half a chance of being able to deal with it when it happens and to try and use the

And it's not as if there aren't plenty of opportunities to misbehave in schools that are considered to be leafy MC comprehensives. A child doesn't need to be surrounded by dysfunction to learn that they have to motivate and trust themselves before other people if they are going to succeed in life.

[Tansie]

Well said, woowoo.

So, tiggy, I do wonder why less well off parents whose DC are at 'less good' schools with a significant proportion of disruption are in the slightest bit concerned about their DC's future.. when their DC, surrounded by 'challenge' will obviously rise up above the snobby, studious, well-behaved, spoon-fed naice MC DC at A level and university- I mean the evidence that poor schooling and a disruptive, non-engaged background in no way hinders your future- so why worry?.....

I think you'll find that, by and large, your 'anecdote' aside, the DC from MC-valued families do tend to be those who become the MC-valued of the next generation.

[cory]

Can I just come back to point out that the reason a lot of dc's friends live in a less leafy area and attend a less MC school is that their parents work in jobs which provide essential infra-structure to the parents of the leafy areas, and are consequently less well paid.

If everybody who was capable of doing it had to be given a well paid job, then the system would collapse. There can be only so many managerial jobs, however many potential managers there may be. The fortunate families are absolutely dependent on work done by the less fortunate: they couldn't function for a day without it.

I am not actually in favour of bussing schemes- I think it would be ruinous to the environment for a start.

But I do hate this idea of relying on the work done by other people and writing them off as lazy and disengaged at the same time. If everybody living around or below a living wage were actually lazy and disengaged, this country would have collapsed long ago.

[Tansie]

I'm a Band 6 NHS HCP. Does that count? DH was til recently a Band 7 Help-desk manager for the NHS. Any good? My neighbour is a taxi-driver, his partner a NHS pharmacist. People next to them are SAHM and a prison officer (of a rank that requires he works nights). Next to them, primary school teacher and a DH who is a cop of the rank that still has to work nights. Yes, like in many non-London catchments, there are some parents at my DSs school who obviously earn a pile of cash, drive this year's BMWs and AWD vehicles and live in 6 bedroom houses on quarter acre blocks- but we significantly out-number them! The majority of their DC go to the comp, a very few to privates (you see the bus come through).

If ours are seen as 'dream jobs' that thrust us up to the dizzy heights of the financial and social ladder to otherwise unavailable opportunity and boundless choice- well, someone's standards aren't that high!

cory I guess the primary point I will disagree with you on is the belief that if you distribute the 'problem' DC evenly, the 'problem' will go away or be wonderfully diluted as these DC are buoyed up on a tide of MC-values. Nowhere has this proved to be the case. Whilst genuine problem DC from dire backgrounds aren't that many in number (though it has been shown that it only takes one or two of these in a class to wreck the lesson for all!), ask yourself how many of the ordinary, every day parents at one's own less-than-good school really are that fussed about how well their DC do. How many shrug with a smile at their inability to understand Y8 maths- though an hour on a PC should bring any average adult up-to-speed where necessary (I've had to do that to help my DS1 with Y10 maths and I failed my maths O level first time round!). How many will actually read a crib-notes version of Hamlet to discuss the use of language in it? How many will make a game go at checking Spanish recital as your DC memorises and chants it at you?

My DSs first primary had quite a mixed intake. I was always amazed at how many of the perfectly pleasant, chatty mums in the playground never checked homework, never read to DC, didn't 'bother' with parents evening, kept all their DC off school one day because one was feeling unwell and it was 'too much hassle' to take the rest along, laughed at how their 9 year old's maths or English was 'beyond' them. Sure, not an O level or GCSE between them, but even so, no real interest in their DC's education.

Classrooms full of otherwise well-behaved enough DCs but with such low familial expectations also don't necessarily lead to good educational outcomes for all, either.

So while we continue in a culture that generally doesn't really value education, appears to have no effective methodology to deal with serious discipline issues in school, an OFSTED that penalises schools for every exclusion and suspension (though there's no money - and a lot is needed- to successfully intervene in turning the whole family of the miscreant's lives around which is often the only way to 'change' that DC's attitude) and, dare I say, and I know this for a fact because there were 2 such women at this first primary- a system where some women will go on having carefully spaced DC to avoid having to go out to work (one, a friend of mine (!) was actually horrified that she'd 'lose' 2 years of benefits because she got pregnant 'too early'- she was actually a caring and committed mother to her 5 DC, but had lost control of the older ones by just having more DC than she could cope with or house properly).

So whilst these factors persist unchecked, and schools can't interview prospective DC and parents, I'd much prefer to be able to send my DC to schools where the vast majority of DC and parents value education, thanks. Even if that makes is a MC-valued 'monoculture', as that's the culture I want to imbue my DC with.

[miss600]

Whilst Shadow's experience of a "sink" school 30ish years ago is all very interesting, I'd really love to hear from parents who have actively chosen equivalent schools for their DC in recent times. Are they all actually leaving with reams of top exam results and tolerance in spades? And say, you were the parent or guardian of a child who fell into one of the "marginalised groups", would your decisions be the same?

[AmberTheCat]

I doubt many people actively choose 'sink' schools for their children, miss600 - particularly not people who post on Mumsnet education forums! I'm certainly not suggesting that that's what parents should be doing, or that children who attend seriously underperforming schools will find it easy to leave with reams of top exam results or, for that matter, a tolerant outlook (and why should they tolerate poor teaching?).

My argument is that it's the very act of creating the nice, mc leafy schools that OP is so pleased her children attend that in turn leaves other schools to struggle with more challenging children, and therefore to find it harder to give those children the sort of education I think they deserve.

[WooWooOwl]

Some parents choosing to send their children to 'nice, mc leafy' schools does not create struggling schools with challenging children.

People who don't parent properly and who don't support behaviour management and provide a positive attitude to education are what creates struggling schools and challenging children.

You are trying to fix the thing that isn't broken instead of the thing that is.

[AgaPanthers]

"Some parents choosing to send their children to 'nice, mc leafy' schools does not create struggling schools with challenging children.

People who don't parent properly and who don't support behaviour management and provide a positive attitude to education are what creates struggling schools and challenging children. "

Well no.

A struggling school is one without enough high attaining children going in at 11. If the children going it at 11 are struggling, the school will perform poorly.

That is entirely independent of bad parenting and behaviour management. If you take in a cohort of below average ability, your school will get poor GCSE results.

Conversely, a 'good' school is merely one with many high attaining children entering at 11.

Parents chase schools which have an above average intake. They run away from schools with a below average intake.

This race is a battle of resources of various kinds, often financial - the parents that lost and ended up at the 'bad' school are not bad parents. What they are is parents at a school bereft of high achievers, because they all ran off to leafy-land.

[WooWooOwl]

Definitions of struggling can vary though.

It's not all about GCSE results, there are ofsted reports and value added scores to consider as well, and schools can score highly on those even if they do have a consistently low achieving intake.

What is it that's going to cause a school to have, over a number of years, a low achieving intake?

You can't blame the school for the children they have to take, and it's highly unlikely that whole areas are going to have hundreds of children who are all born with lower than average academic ability.

I realise that there will be good parents that 'lost' and ended up at the 'bad' school despite doing everything the parents at the leafy schools did, but the parents at the leafy schools aren't the ones who caused their predicament.

[AgaPanthers]

Who said anything about being born that way?

Academic achievement is very highly correlated to parental wealth, so a school in a wealthier area will attract higher achieving children naturally.

It's not a genetics thing.

[CecilyP]

^Some parents choosing to send their children to 'nice, mc leafy' schools does not create struggling schools with challenging children.

People who don't parent properly and who don't support behaviour management and provide a positive attitude to education are what creates struggling schools and challenging children.

You are trying to fix the thing that isn't broken instead of the thing that is.^

I disagree. There will always be parents who value education more than others; this is not something that the state has control over. There will always be children who are brighter than others and children who are not bright at all, and that is also something that the state can't control. Also, children are not challenging simply by being average or below average.

The system is broken if one supposedly comprehesive school has a huge percentage of higher abilty children while another school a mile or so away has barely enough bright children to form a reasonable top set. And it becomes a vicious circle as more aspirational parents, or parents whose children are doing well at primary, seeing the raw results of the first school, choose it for there children. Then the second school's results become even poorer as what should be their able children are actually being educated elsewhere. It is not that whole areas have children with below average ability; it is just that less aspirational families, or families of lower ability children are less likely to apply elsewhere, less likely to play the system, less likely to go to appeal. Of course you can't blame the school for the children they have to take, but LA's can do something to try to redress the balance. The ultimate result of failing to do so could leave the struggling school with insufficient numbers so it has to close which will mean that the LA will have to change its catchments anyway.

I can understand that OP being pleased with her choice, but she does seem to want a publicly funded school that excludes the poor and a comprehensive school that excludes the less bright.

[Tansie]

No, I want a publicly funded school that can limit the impact of the less engaged on my DC's education.

I have never said 'Less bright'. I do not necessarily equate being less bright with being disruptive. I'd agree that being able to be MC tends to mean you are someone who is maybe brighter than average, someone who's done well enough financially to be able to exercise some choice in a DC's schooling, and your DC's IQ is related to your own, but my DS2 is not particularly 'bright'. Which is entirely why I chose this school- because its lower 'sets', such as they are (they don't make a big deal about setting at all, the DC's sometimes aren't exactly sure which 'set' they're in relative to others) contain just the less academically able, not, as can happen in so many schools, the bright-enough-but-can't-be-arsed. Who go on to wreck the lesson for everyone else, for fun. You so often see it on TV, teachers lamenting a DC who is obviously bright but also absolutely determined to piss their future up against a wall via truancy, marching out of lessons, abusing teachers, throwing things around- a 15 year old behaving like an ill-disciplined toddler having evidently not been developmentally guided past that behavioural point by a concern parent.

You don't tend to find this in a MC-valued school. So DS2 is endlessly heaped with accolades for his 100% effort level. He tries his best all the time, but his best is a B, tops, maybe a C. So he sits in classes with other genuine B/C graders.

I have also said that I don't care how rich or poor the DC are because I don't equate being 'MC-valued' with income. What I care about is that my DC's fellow pupils are school-ready, ready to be taught, ready to listen, ready to contribute when asked, ready to shut up where necessary. DC who will do their homework, will recognise the importance of qualifications. That's not god-given to the wealthy but it has to be said, and I'd be being disingenuous if I denied this- because of the sort-of meritocracy we live in now, by and large those that can attain, have attained. It's not like the 1940s days of The Grammar School which suddenly gave a leg-up to loads of very much working class but very bright DC, those who had previously been held down 'in their place' by the virtual feudalism of pre-war England (my own father is a case in point, his dad being a clerk at a mine); these days I think you'd find 'the clever' of those communities long-gone, fled to leafier areas for MC employment- and MC schools. As an aside, my mum's farm-labourer dad paid to send his non-RC DDs to the local convent school rather than the state secondary on offer as he wanted 'better' for them.

amber -"I'm certainly not suggesting that that's what parents should be doing, or that children who attend seriously underperforming schools will find it easy to leave with reams of top exam results or, for that matter, a tolerant outlook (and why should they tolerate poor teaching?)." You see, we have to disagree here, because it's not poor teaching that 'fails' these DC, by and large; you are falling into that political trap of blaming schools for all our social ills because that's far easier than pointing the finger where blame lies: inadequate adults casually birthing DC, sure in the knowledge they'll never be made to 'pay' for it. These are the crap parents who send unengageable, aggressive DC into school, that make the act of teaching practically impossible.