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.

Sadly dino, I've only done girls' schools so far. But I guess the principle is the same. I pass streams of kids from the new (as yet unbuilt) Petchey academy on my way back from nursery of an afternoon -- they all look quite civilised! How very different from passing streams of Kingsland school kids...

I think things are looking up around us. [hopeful emoticon]

This new system, it seems to me, will just lead to everyone being equally stressed about secondary transfer, those living near a good school and those miles away. Which is one kind of fair I suppose. Everyone at my sons' primary going thru Year 6 is having a nightmare, unless they have siblings already in a good school.

And the middle classes will overcome it somehow. They won t leave their kids' school to pure chance. They'll be a rush into the private sector

Maybe some cheaper no-frills, less grand and pricey private schools (educational equivelent of EasyJet) will set up. I doubt many parents will just say, "Oh well, the luck of the draw" if they get allocated a failing school.

AFAIK the 'good' schools can appear further down the league tables than you'd expect as alternative exams like International GCSEs don't count for league table purposes. Some private schools probably discourage anything that would harm their position in the table, but I know that at my children's school they feel that the maths iGCSE syllabus is more rigourous and there is less coursework, so they decided the lower league table place was less important. A quick look at Habs' website showed that they have made the same decision.

Unquietdad - the schools round here have no sixth forms. There are two big sixth form colleges in the nearest big town (about 12 miles away), and a large FE college as well. Most people I know are pretty happy with the arrangement. The sixth form colleges are excellent.

LOL Amicissima - snap! I think it might also be the case that students taught out of their 'correct' year group don't count in league tables, so a school which offers flexibility to children with late Aug/early Sept birthdays, or with pupils taking subjects a year early, is penalised by having those results exluded when league tables are compiled. I'm sure I've read that somewhere.

Well in that case if there aren't sixth forms it must be hard to judge. Do they track which universities the leavers at GCSE end up at then and you could do a league table off that but I bet they don't. Even this one is a bit suspect - www.times-archive.co.uk//onlinespecials//2006secondaryschools.pdf
for the reasons given earlier on the thread - they don't count those doing GCSE a year young as quite a few private school pupils do them and they counted cookery GCSE as highly as physics I think and worst of all I think that Times one is just A levels so that doesn't help. What I think they should also chart is how many get A and A (at some private schools there are children vying to get the 11 As never mind 5 passes at C and above) in subjects that count - the core ones languages, sciences, maths, English, history, geography etc.

"And the middle classes will overcome it somehow. They won t leave their kids' school to pure chance. They'll be a rush into the private sector..."

Oh yes. Because of all of us "middle classes" are just rolling in it, and can easily stump up another £5-10K a year for school fees.

But doesn't it mean you're more likely to get the school you want because you'll apply for lots of them and won't be knocked out because you didn't put any of them first?

If all schools could be as good as each other these problems wouldn't arise.

Xenia > yeah, like, doh!

Another one in the papers on league tables - had 70% 5 A - C GCSEs which falls to 15% if you include maths and English.

"The code permits popular schools to use random allocation - or drawing names out of a hat"

But why would popular schools, who currently draw their pupils from an expensive catchment area and do well out of that, opt to use random allocation?

my ds is due to go to secondary school in sept 08. we currently live out of the catchment area but are trying to move into teh area. dd already goes to teh secondary school and will be in year 11 in sept 08. DS goes to a feeder school close to the secondary school of choice. How would we fair?

Ad, the press articles have suggested that those that are particularly left wing and want the poorest etc children to have as good a chance as any will go for the lottery thing whereas schools like the Blair's sons' Oratory school who like to interview parents etc will not use the lottery - bad example because I think church schools may be outside this, not sure.

I personally can't see any motivation for a school that currently performs well to enter into an admissions lottery.

Does that mean weve stumped up 100k extra on a much smaller house to be in area for a good school & we still might not get in anyway

aderyn - because it may not be individual schools who decide, it may be the Local Authority overall. At the moment it's the local Authority which allocates places follolwing parental applications. Individual state schools don't have any say. At least in theory.

sparkleprincess, i too feel your pain.

UD - I see. It might be a different story then if the LEA decides.

But aren't a growing number of schools free from LEA control? In SOuthwark only two are still under it. So won't it be up the schools to choose mostly.

I do have sympathy with banding, however, because it stops one school being saddled with a majority of low-ability kids. But they should band within a small catchment area. Bussing kids randomly all over the place is crazy. It means insecurity for children who will have no guarantee whether they'll be with friends and just spreads the secondary transfer pain to every parent.