Can someone explain English school places to me

[chergar]

I live in Scotland so don't know how the English system works. I have seen loads of posts about school waiting lists and getting children in to schools. How exactly does this work, are schools not allocated by residential address?

Up here every address has a catchment school - the local school that your child is entitled to a place in, you can put in a placing request to have your child enrolled in one outwith your catchment, if that school has space once the catchment spaces are filled then your child gets a place, if more placing requests than spaces then there is a list of criteria to be met with some criteria having more weight than others.

Enrolment happens in January for the upcoming school year (starting in August) you cannot enrol your child before this.

It's not the same for every school (depending on the published admissions criteria), but basically it works as you say - siblings usually first and then the remaining places are allocated by distance. There aren't usually defined catchment areas though - places are just offered in order starting with the closest until the cut-off is reached. Some schools also have a 'feeder school' method where applicants from named primary schools jump in front.

The main difference I suppose is that you're not guaranteed a place in your closest school (eg if it is your closest school, but there are still enough applicants living even closer who fill all the available places) - this can certainly happen in densely populated areas.

Local authorities have their rules, individual schools have their rules etc It isn't a uniform system. For example, local authority I live in (highest attaining in England) has the following for secondary: selective grammar schools that admit based on academic exams, faith schools that prioritise children of that denomination, a banding school (admitting a fair proportion of children of every ability band), as well as schools admitting on distance from school. So a bit of confusion but you also tend to get different options.

Oh, some places you fr it defined catchments, a feeder school system or part-selective schools, or any conbination of the above.

If you're religious then religious discrimination applies and you get a wider choice of a better funded schools.

Where I live each school has there own catchment and entrance criteria.

You apply with three prefdered choices and then get placed at one. If the three schools you've selected are full, they'll just put you elsewhere.

You can appeal it but unless it's to get all your children into the same school then I don't see the point.

My nearest comp prioritises 4 feeder primary schools. If you move into the area you are not guaranteed a place, even if you live within half a mile, because feeders come first.

Now many children travel several miles to these feeder primaries, so essentially you could have children attending the comp who live 6x further than the child who has moved up the road from the comp and hasn't got a place.

We have denominational (faith) schools as well so each child has two schools available to them ( denominational and non-denominational) you don't have to be practising to enrol in the faith school but if it is oversubscribed the LA will prioritise those who are baptised/practising ahead of everyone else, even those with siblings already in the school.

Can you apply to schools in neighbouring LA or does it have to be in the one you live in?

The English way seems like a bit of a lottery and a bit chaotic, what are the benefits of having it this way? Do you think it would be better having a set catchment area with the option to request a place elsewhere?

The English way seems like a bit of a lottery and a bit chaotic, what are the benefits of having it this way? Do you think it would be better having a set catchment area with the option to request a place elsewhere?

Nail. Head.

Yes it's a bloody nightmare. The idea of people wanting a 'choice' is suck Tory nonsense. People don't want a choice of schools, they just want the one near them to be really good.

I currently have two primary school age kids with no school place, and no school is obliged to take them. It would be great to get them into one close to us but no joy so far.

For my LAyou get 6 school choices in order of preference. They allocate space at a school based on sibling priority, SEN children, looked-after children, and after all of those kids have been allocated a spot, the remaining applicants are done by distance.

I live in London, it's not uncommon to be rejected from all 6 of your choices and have to be allocated the next available one closest to you.

I live 0.1 miles away from the closest primary school, yet some years the furthest place offered for that school has been 0.07/0.08. So there's no guarantee in London of even being accepted at a school across the road from your home.

Can you apply to schools in neighbouring LA or does it have to be in the one you live in?

Where I live you can, yes. The schools don't give preference based on Borough, but distance from the school.

Most the posts about schools are from people in very urban areas, often there's 2-3 schools in easy walking distance and parents don't put down their catchment school (called priority area here). As schools cannot exceed their PAN number if more children live in the priority area than places some will not get a place, you can't magic up a spare classroom. When we lived in rural area everyone got a place.

People don't want a choice of schools, they just want the one near them to be really good.

I disagree. I like having a choice it's just that it's not really a meaningful choice.
As a child I went to a school further away from the closest one to my village (didn't live in London then) simply because my parents didn't want to send my to an Infant school where you have to change to a Junior shool in Year 3, so i went to a primary school where Infants and Juniors were in the same school.

Not all schools are the same, even if really good. I am currently doing the applications for next Sept for my DD. Do I want the one that does Spanish but doesn't have an on-site pool, or the one that doesn't do Spanish but has a pool? I'd hate to think I only had option - the local catchment school.

People do want the illusion of choice, most kids here go to the catchment school though, (mine didn't) but educational attainment is low and parents see school as childcare - in areas where parents are higher educated school places are more competitive

You can have 2 schools within a mile and fall outside the catchment for both as they have shrinking catchments

Plus people move into catchment - get the eldest one in and move out.

House now occupied by kids a year younger and get a place the following September

They move out -

So effectively you could have 5 families who were in catchment and aren’t any longer

Not all schools are the same, even if really good. I am currently doing the applications for next Sept for my DD. Do I want the one that does Spanish but doesn't have an on-site pool, or the one that doesn't do Spanish but has a pool? I'd hate to think I only had option - the local catchment school.*
*
But then why aren't all LA schools the same? I don't understand why some offer better facilities, what advantage does that give them, it's not as if they have to compete for business.

But then why aren't all LA schools the same? I don't understand why some offer better facilities, what advantage does that give them, it's not as if they have to compete for business

Schools are controlled by their governors and the head teacher, not the LA. The LA has some influence over community schools and sets the admission criteria for some schools but it doesn't control thm.

Different heads and boards of governors will have different ideas about what is important, so schools are different. And, since funding depends on the number of pupils they get, they are in competition with other local schools. Every head wants to be running a popular school with a long waiting list.

Schools move up and down in popularity though and OFSTED ratings so you can have a school that becomes suddenly popular and then the area the pupils come from shrinks massively. For secondary schools you look at exam results.

At the moment, the schools local to us have hardly any spare places due to a bulge in the population (it lasts for a few years yet as well) so even normally unpopular schools are full and the popular ones have taken an extra class.

Where I live, there are a lot of schools overall but none nearby so the distance criteria does not work for us. We were given a school further away than our first choice!

@prh47bridge aahhh right, that makes sense then, when I have read about the board of governors before I thought it meant the parent council/PTA 🤦🏻‍♀️

I'm pro-choice when it comes to school. As you've noticed yourself, they're all different. The ones near me include a couple of sports schools, a STEM school with links to a hospital, a school specialist in the performing arts etc.
Primaries have their own ethos, facilities etc Realistically, you don't tend to have a chance at more than 2-3 schools but that's a bit of choice at least.

When i was a kid in the 70s there were school catchments where i lived. It was a bit crap though as it meant i couldn't go to a nearby highly regarded school because the catchment line was drawn between our house and the school which was less than 5 mins walk away. I had to go to a school further away that wasn't as good. Nowadays I'd have got into the nearby good one as it's about who lives nearest rather than catchments

In the 70s my Mum put herself out to get a placing request in as I was terrified of the "catchment school", as threats had been made. I actually ended up in a much better school - but was fortunate that we hadn't requested either of the really popular schools - as I might not have got in.
For my DC, the closest school would not have met their needs (and I'd worked in it for a while). It was good enough just not necessarily great with SEN. Nowadays it is possible we wouldn't even get a place there - and could well end up with a place at the less popular schools across town. As it is my eldest got a place after starting at 25+ on the waiting list, and the younger ones followed by sibling preference.
But England has a much greater population density in parts (Edinburgh sometimes has real issues providing enough places for all pupils too).

It's the population density that means we can't just have a catchment school, with all local children offered a place.

There are lots of really great schools where I live - mainly 2- or 3- form entry, but the more popular ones have a 'last-distance-offered' of under 500m.

Think about what that means:
school A took in 90 reception children, and reached capacity with children less than 570m away.

School B is 700m away from school A (walking distance, less as the crow flies). It took 60 reception children, and was at capacity after offering to those 300m away.

Catchments with guaranteed entry simply don't work with that kind of population density - not with the maximum infant class size of 30 which they aren't allowed to go over.

I don't get the "population density" argument: I live in inner city Glasgow - lots of tenement flats and families with a large number of kids. Other parts of the city have high rise flats. We still manage to have fixed catchments (actually for two schools: non- denominational and denominational/RC)

The problem in England seems to be more related to the idea of "choice" (and Academies) which for many people is not a true choice meaning that proper holistic planning can't happen.

There is evidence that systems in which schools compete for pupils produce better results for pupils than systems which don't. It may be that this is part of the reason for the poor state of Scottish education.