Selection get out clause

[mrz]

http://schoolsweek.co.uk/grammar-get-out-clause-confirmed-selection-permissable-within-trusts/?utmcontent=buffer81f1c&utmmmedium=social&utmsource=twitter.com&utmmcampaign=buffer

They aren't ferrying between sites they are segregating by ability ...effectively two tier education ..

As most schools use streaming anyway, what's the difference?

I was so outraged by this I didn't start a thread as I wouldn't have been able to be polite. Seem to be a lot of objections:

1. It's a clear attempt to evade the law - the sort of shenanigans that gives politics a bad name
2. It's blatantly dishonest - Heads will have stood up at Open Evenings telling people how great the education will be for everyone at their school. Did any of them say "by the way, your children will actually be at a Secondary modern?" 3)Apparently the not-grammars will be "Centres of Excellence".So will the academy chain be admitting that their other schools are not excellent?
3. I believe that to evade the law the children cannot be segregated until they are actually in the schools. So would you choose a school knowing there's an 80% chance of them being in the Secondary Modern? And how will the Head and teachers deal with pressure from parents determined that their child will be the one in the grammar - sorry Centre of Excellence?
4. If the schools are going to be on the same site why not just have one school setting by ability - you could even call it a comprehensive school!
5. I'm not sure how interested Academy chains are going to be in this - the largest ones are already speaking out against selection, I suspect they are aware that when we do eventually have an electable opposition participating in these shenanigans will not have enhanced their brand.

Why is the government trying so hard to evade the consequences of its own policies? Good comprehensive schools for all just seems the simplest way to go. No-one has come up with a reason why we need to have grammars when you have decent comps.If schools are close together why not just co-ordinate timetabling a bit so you can have a more advanced top set in Maths if there are a few children genuinely not being stretched? Or have the £50 million given to schools so they can have smaller top sets in the core subjects. Of course, that might expose the fact that we actually have a teacher recruitment crisis- heaven forbid that the government should tackle a real problem.

Segregation isn't streaming

I'm sure many who think this is ok would change their minds if they suddenly found their child permanently transferred to the "secondary modern" school and not in the "centre for excellence".

Most MATs just won't agree to this, so I can't see it happening in reality.

Really? https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/29/academy-trust-accused-of-discrimination-over-moving-disabled-pupils-dean-trust

But many still won't. The MAT I work for would be horrified by that story.

MATs are supposed to share resources between schools. My MAT already buses kids around at sixth form to widen up the number of courses on offer - kids get transported to my school for further maths A-level and get taken elsewhere for dance. It would be hard to argue that lower down the school struggling kids shouldn't be sent to the MAT school with the fabulous resourced SEN base for support with core subjects, and instead should be kept on site where an LSA will do their best with what we've got. (We don't do this, btw, but I could see it happening)

That's not the same as deciding that a child should go, entirely, to a different school as the one that their parents have selected for them though.

It's not bussing around though

The article says An academy trust has been accused of segregating disabled pupils after announcing that it would bus children with special educational needs and disabilities from a well-performing school to a worse school because of limited resources

Busing to isn't busing around

Indeed, I made that distinction in my post. Busing a child to a specific resource for a specific time (e.g. Core subject support) isn't the same as totally changing a child's school, even if they are transported there from the original school.

A MAT deciding which school within a MAT a child should go to is entirely against the 'parental choice' agenda. But in a time of severely limited resources, and when MATs are being told to maximise use of resources across the MAT, I can see exactly how things like this will happen.

The children in that article above had applied to join school A (Local outstanding academy) and would have been bussed to school B (worse performing school in a different area of the LA) at the beginning of the school day, and returned to the school named on their EHCP at the end of the day. It seems that the parents went to judicial review to get the decision overturned because school A was named on their EHCP.

The article in the op is worrying as it suggests that parents of SEN children without an EHCP (so the majority of children with SEN) wouldn't be able to argue against the decision legally if their children were shipped off to another school within the trust.

Seems a pretty good idea to take children to facilities that are able to concentrate their resources based on what the group needs. Not sure why anyone would be against this.

If that's what they were doing I'm sure people might be in favour

Even if that's what's happening, what would you say as a parent if you had applied for secondary school for your child, presumably carefully examined the local options and decided on school A. You were delighted to get a place at school A, bought a uniform for school A and sent your child off to school A, only for them to be bussed off several miles to school Z where they were expected to spend the rest of their school career? While technically remaining on the roll of school A? Doesn't that make a bit of a mockery of the admissions process? Even with managed moves where a child is doing really badly at their chosen school and are at risk of expulsion, the parent has to agree to the managed move.

I was thinking a bit more about the idea of transporting SEN kids around as we do at sixth form for different A-level choices, and I was thinking about the children in my school that this would affect. The children with SEN who would qualify are the weakest and often most vulnerable students. They are often in the most need of stability, routine and a familiar environment. The idea of shuttling these kids back and forth between different schools, however great the facilities at the other school, just wouldn't be fair on them. Besides, any time spent on a bus, they definitely aren't learning. Our sixth form timetable is managed so that the buses don't affect lessons, but a sixth former has free periods and so on so sitting on a bus during lunch isn't too much of an issue.

What is the difference between walking to a different steam, and getting a bus to a different? Same uniform, same people running the school etc. Specialist facilities, able to changes steams any time. So your essentially applying to a MAT rather than a school. Sounds pretty fair.

steam = stream, obviously

Different sets within a school are nothing like different schools within a MAT. Not the same uniform or head for a start. They're different schools.