new admissions code

[audie]

have people spotted the new (and very under-reported by bbc, guardian et al) admissions code for schools, effective for sept 08 entry?
behind all the guff, it encourages oversubscribed urban schools to drop the distance criterion and allocate places through a random lottery (after sen and siblings have been accounted for).
apart from church schools, of course, which still use attendance as a main criterion.

This seems a dumb idea from an environmental standpoint at least.

audie,
can you provide a link for this as I'd be very interested to read it. Do you know if they've outlawed the practice that some secondary church schools have of demanding that you place them first on your list of school preferences ie above the local grammer...we're stuck in this dilema.
Thanks.

don't know about that.
have a look at www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2007_0004
from there, you should be able to access the original text of the code, which is very long and boring, but easily skimmable.

This link has some info - looks like your dilemma might be solved summer

I have just had a quick read of the BBC summary on this. It does not make sense.
Apparently one of the rules is that the schools are no longer allowed to allocate places on a first preference basis - and in the next paragraph it states that more parents have a chance of getting their first preference school. Surely this contridicts itself?? (or am I missing something??)

I don't know whether to get majorly worried about this or to ignore it. (ds due to go to secondary in 4 years, dd to go to juniors in 3 years)

It means that you can express a preference for a particular school (or six, usually -- most LEA forms have space for six schools which you will list in order of preference). That has been the case since the unified applications system came in.

What has changed is that the schools will not be told which order you have placed them in, and will not be allowed to give preference to children who have placed them first on the form. In some areas this was already the case, but in others some schools (often the Church schools, or the good comprehensives in areas with grammar schools) specified that they would give priority to applicants who put them as first choice. Since they were massively over-subscribed with first choice applicants, anybody putting them second wouldn't get a look-in. In practice this meant that as a parent you had to take an educated gamble on how likely your child was to get into a particular school before deciding on your order of preference. The risk was that if you didn't get into your first choice school, all the other half-decent schools would be full with their own first-choice applicants and your child would be sent to a sink school miles away that had loads of unfilled places.

Now you can put down the all the schools you really like in your genuine order of preference, knowing that your chances of getting in are not affected by your skill in second-guessing the likelihood of your child meeting the entrance criteria.

In theory it should be fairer.

When I applied to university preference and order were material (I put Durham 2nd so didn't get an offer for example). When my children applied the universities now don't know what your preference order is (my daughter got an offer from Durham). It must be the same here as frogs sets out.

So is it correct that inner city schools are to drop the distance criterion?

Xenia, I had same experience, Durham were VERY snotty about being put second and told me they would only interview me if Oxford rejected me (it didn't).

thanks frogs - that explains it so much clearer! feel less worried now, yes it should be fairer!

my only concern would obviously be if my dd does not get into our local junior school (which is good and therefore oversubscribed) and her friend who lives a further away did get in....

oh well, will cross that bridge when we come to it...

But will it be a 'random lottery' names in a hat type thing? Or will schools choose the children by another method.

Presumably you will get multiple offers? Then another round of offers when parents turn down places. Sounds like a nightmare.

Another question - where we live, if a school is oversubscribed, the LEA decides who gets in based on proximity to the school. The school itself does not decide. I take it that would no longer happen, the LEA no longer get involved?

PGWG, I think the LEA continues to be the admissions authority for all LEA-run schools (ie. those that are not voluntary-aided or academies or otherwise a special case). As I understand it they simply work their way through each school's admissions criteria, and decide who gets a place. Each child then gets the school place from the highest-ranked school that he/she qualified for, and lower choices are redistributed.

Non-LEA schools initially process the applications themselves, then pass onto the LEA the list of which children they wish to offer places to. The LEA then has to crunch the numbers and pass the places around according to people's stated preferences.

The difference with the unified admissions system is that the LEA has to deal with the administrative nightmare that must go with doing three or four rounds of place allocations, and on 1st March everybody gets one offer from the highest-preference school that they got into. Rather than (as was previously the case) some people having no offers while other people were sitting on three or four, despite the fact that they could obviously only attend one school. It is exactly like the UCCA scheme used to be before it was done 'blind'.

For us the new code is excellent news, as all the schools we applied for last year for dd1 had a first preference criterion. This means the stakes are very high indeed, as there is effectively no second choice. Now I hope that when we come to do the same for ds we can make genuine applications to all the schools we want him to go to, rather than not quite daring to apply to the school we like the best because we don't rate his chances of getting in and can't risk 'wasting' a first choice.

Ah! I see. But after SEN and siblings, if distance is disregarded, how will they whittle down the rest if a school is oversubscribed? Will it literally be 'random'?

I had the impression that schools could use a lottery if they felt that their entry cohort was somehow skewed either in terms of people buying their way into the catchment or people doing cheaty things like renting in the area. Conversely, I guess over-subscribed schools in very deprived areas (yes, there are some!) could maintain a more balanced intake by allocating some places by lottery.

But lots of schools in London already operate a banding procedure to ensure a mix of abilities in their intake, so not really sure how a lottery would be fairer.

I saw a report on local London news about this, they went to Haberdashers Ask in Lewisham, which is very oversubscribed, they use a lottery system for all places after SN and siblings.
The headmistress said, that they did this because if the did the allocation on distance, all the middle class parents would buy up all the houses close to the school and the school would no longer be a mixed comprehensive school.
They didn't say who could apply though ie. is it open to anyone who lives in the borough of Lewisham?
Seems a bit unfair to people who may live down the road and not get in then have to travel to some other school.

Thanks frogs!
We are only looking at LEA schools, so perhaps it is not going to be as much of a lottery as non-LEA schools.

Nonetheless, our comfort zone of living near good schools (our first preference schools) appears to have gone.

I wonder if people are trying to get out house purchases as we speak because they're paying £10k more because of the previous advantage of living near etc

Haberdashers as an elaborate system of catchment areas and IQ bandings. There is an inner catchment area around the school. But for some other places anyone within three miles can apply, but with 3,000 entrants for 120 places, they might as well issue lottery tickets.

Woohoo, I think you might be right Rustybear and our dilema has been solved!

Why is Haberdashers' Boys bottom of the Herts league tables ?? Surely some oddity of data collection. They can't really have got 1%.

There's something very strange about those GCSE league tables yesterday, weird. Some kind of labour fixing going on. I would ignore those ones and go by the standard A level ones issued each summer. Anyone who knows anything much about schools knows many of the rankings are ludicrously wrong.

Frogs, I am going to be so piggy-backing off your knowledge as our respective 7-year olds approach secondary school age...

I would - except that, where we are, only a minority of schools have 6th forms and do A-Levels. (Thanks, Labour government and council of 1970s. Nice of you to ruin our lives.) The only schools with sixth-forms in S. Yorks are in the only area which used to be under Tory control. Oh, WHAT a coincidence. I think not.

The school DD and DS will go to if we stay where we are isn't one of them. So A-Level league tables are not much good to me!

We are supposed to be pathetically grateful for the fact that the Trots Of Town Hall deigned to spare those from the axe, and we are all expected to schlepp our kids over to the south-west of the city if we want them to be qualified to do anything more intellectually challenging than frying onions. Or move to a "good" area where house prices start at £300K.