Do all good schools "manage" their intake?

[DetailMouse]

I used to work in a small, oversubscribed infant school. Ofsted outstanding.

The head conducted all the new parent tours herself. Not because she wanted to sell the school, there was no need for that, but because she wanted an opportunity to persuade the "wrong" families that the school wasn't for them.

For example, she knew the addresses she didn't want and would tell them what a full and expensive extra curricular programme they led and anyone who's child had SEND would be told it would be very difficult for a small school to meet their needs, had they tried xyz school.

She was very good at her job, completely committed to the staff, the school and the children. Ran a very good school for those children lucky enough to have a place, but I only stayed 2 years because this made me so uncomfortable.

I went on to a struggling school with an equally committed head, but very many social problems.

Should I have realised all "nice" schools do this? Also perhaps this is what parents at nice schools want?

Can a truly mixed intake school succeed?

I think this sails close to the wind. It’s putting off the “wrong” type catchment applicants. It also states the number of applicants so parents need to know how the successful ones were actually determined. You are put off from choosing it because it’s your nearest school if you are the wrong type of parent/child. So presumably the head’s former school, Newfield, gets the unsuitable applicants. They have overlapping catchments I think.(could be wrong). Seems wrong to me but I guess parents can avoid this “traditional” (draconian) atmosphere if they need to.

Forgot attachment!

So 900 children applied, but of course every family put down 3? 5? choices (I don't know the standard for all LEAs but know it varies). If 3 then that's effectively 300 applications - what's their intake?

@drspouse
180. It’s not on the school admission policy as far as I can see. Sheffield LA do list it as 180. It’s very hard to find though. They also list applicants as 384. So not sure where 900 comes from.

Sorry: 364.

I do know heads who, in the past, would try and discourage parents. As a former LA officer we would not accept this if we heard about it. SEN was the usual issue. Cannot provide what’s on the statement. Too many SEN already. Travellers DC often not welcomed. I didn’t see parental income as being an issue but some heads were very difficult with SEN children who were catchment. Worse about ones who were not. I do think a lot of that has stopped now with a new generation of heads. We did insist DC were taken if there was space but relations between La and the school soured. We then had to deal with exclusions…….

My DS was offrolled due to "can't meet need" in the only school he actually liked. Then PEx (which was totally unnecessary as the school could have asked us to do a managed move, or spent brief time in PRU, but it's now on his record). Then about 10 schools have said "can't meet need". This includes ones we rang up who said straight away "if he has a 1:1 we can't take him" "this is our behaviour policy and everyone adheres to it regardless of SEN" "if he needs time out of the class we can't take him" - one of the latter was a Catholic school that had a good reputation historically for SEN but the Diocese wants them all to be Academies so was pushing them, I assume, not to break ranks.
His first school basically said "we can no longer have him out of the classroom for any time at all" which seemed to us NOT to be rocket science - he was in class the most out of the school day of any setting he's been in since then.

‘His first school basically said "we can no longer have him out of the classroom for any time at all" which seemed to us NOT to be rocket science - he was in class the most out of the school day of any setting he's been in since then.’

That’s both shortsighted and frustrating.
When DS was about 9, he was observed in the classroom by (iirc) a psychiatrist.

School said ‘The problem is we haven’t found any reward that he wants. All he wants to do is get out of the classroom.’
Psych looked at them with raised eyebrows and said ‘You have literally just told me what reward he wants. Reward him by time out of the classroom.’

No they don't. Put "good" in scare quotes as well. It's hardly a good school if all they are doing is pushing difficult or lower achieving students onto everyone else. "Nice", well maybe, but nice for who?

It is true though that small schools can struggle to support children with additional needs (narrower experience and less flexible resources) and perhaps the head wanted to counter the naive idea many parents have that a small school will necessarily be more nurturing than a large one. But a child with SEND whose parents ignored an open warning that they weren't welcome would hardly be "lucky" to go there.

@drspouse
@Lancelottie
When you put these “behaviour first” schools into the mix you have a recipe for distasteful for DC with various behaviour traits. You will also find that parents seem to like these zero tolerance schools. This policy also ensures other schools have to take far more than their fair share of SEN children.

If a child has 1:1 then surely DC has a plan naming the school? However schools are playing fast and loose with the legalities of admissions. Academies have not helped and church schools are often the most bothered about having sen children. Certainly not wanting excluded DC from elsewhere. The VA ones very much have an ethos of trying to control admissions.

Definitely schools gatekeep in this fashion. That may be in attitude or via the uniform (£110 blazer at one of our local schools) but where I've really experienced it is with SEN. A primary school head who suggested "families like yours might be better off looking elsewhere". Secondary schools who came up with the most amazing reasons they couldn't meet my child's EHCP eg "we can't facilitate weekly home-school communication". SENCOs who were unavailable, or who actively tried to convince us other schools were more appropriate.

The problem is, whilst at a broader level I wanted to make complaints and expose the lot of them, when it comes to my individual child I don't want to send them somewhere they aren't wanted.

One of the issues we found where I worked was that heads knew which head was a soft touch. We had a few schools with very high proportions of SEN children. Often smaller village schools so it made a real impact on budgets. Schools that were under subscribed but pastorally good often had more than their fair share of rejected DC from elsewhere. As you say, the DC were welcome there and parents were much happier - but the budgets!!!

In my experience, as the parent of a Y6 child this year, there are numerous ways for schools to manage their intake. Aside from the obvious ones like faith requirements and carefully-drawn catchment areas, and the ones many posters have highlighted here there is also the ironically-named "fair banding test". While schools would have you believe that these are designed to ensure they get a full spread of ability in their intake, they are in fact just another barrier to certain types of families, eg EAL families, those too disorganised to get their children along to the test on time, or even to make themselves aware of it, and those with SEN children who don't want to put their children through the stress of several tests for several schools.

@staringattheceiling

In my experience, as the parent of a Y6 child this year, there are numerous ways for schools to manage their intake. Aside from the obvious ones like faith requirements and carefully-drawn catchment areas, and the ones many posters have highlighted here there is also the ironically-named "fair banding test". While schools would have you believe that these are designed to ensure they get a full spread of ability in their intake, they are in fact just another barrier to certain types of families, eg EAL families, those too disorganised to get their children along to the test on time, or even to make themselves aware of it, and those with SEN children who don't want to put their children through the stress of several tests for several schools.

Fair banding tests are designed to get a full spread of ability. When they first appeared, they were supported by many of those working with deprived families. Barnardo's recommended that all schools should adopt them to ensure that pupils from deprived backgrounds could get into good schools. The opposition at that time came from those who regarded it as an attack on the middle classes and branded it as social engineering. The idea that fair banding may cause disadvantaged children to miss out emerged later. Many in education still think that the advantages of fair banding in allowing pupils from a deprived background to access good schools outweigh the disadvantages.

fair banding doesn't work in the long run, not because it's badly designed, but because like any type of barrier to entry, it's being eventually figured out by people with time and resources (ie those with higher socio economic status).

who gets their DC to sit extra tests? how likely it is that they crowd out places 'from the top'? a way to see this is to use the extreme example of say, 100 extra kids out of 'traditional' catchment applying, all major outliers on ISEB/CAT/name your metric, they'd eventually take over the top band, reducing access for 'local' DCs to a smaller proportion

but if you don't do banding, then housing prices do the sorting.

so barring the very unpopular method of doing lottery admissions, any 'intervention' ends up favouring higher income families, because they are the ones who have the time and flexibility to figure out the solution (and schools happily look the other way in some cases)

Alternatively ensure every school is good and no child has a poor education. That’s better than any admissions system.

@alejandro

fair banding doesn't work in the long run, not because it's badly designed, but because like any type of barrier to entry, it's being eventually figured out by people with time and resources (ie those with higher socio economic status).

who gets their DC to sit extra tests? how likely it is that they crowd out places 'from the top'? a way to see this is to use the extreme example of say, 100 extra kids out of 'traditional' catchment applying, all major outliers on ISEB/CAT/name your metric, they'd eventually take over the top band, reducing access for 'local' DCs to a smaller proportion

but if you don't do banding, then housing prices do the sorting.

so barring the very unpopular method of doing lottery admissions, any 'intervention' ends up favouring higher income families, because they are the ones who have the time and flexibility to figure out the solution (and schools happily look the other way in some cases)

The whole point of fair banding is that you cannot gain an advantage by scoring higher or lower in the test.

Imagine a school admits 180 pupils. It uses fair banding and has 9 bands. 1800 pupils apply for places. The fair banding test will put 200 pupils in each band. 20 pupils will be admitted from each band. Therefore, you have a 10% chance of success regardless of which band you are in. There is therefore no point in out of area pupils trying to crowd the top band and crowd out local pupils. It doesn't increase their chances of getting in.

@TizerorFizz

Alternatively ensure every school is good and no child has a poor education. That’s better than any admissions system.

Nice idea but no-one has ever succeeded in achieving this and it is unlikely anyone ever will. There will always be good schools and bad school, I'm afraid.

@prh47bridge

the ability of extra pupils sitting the test is not uniformly distributed. if a school is highly prized, imagine the extreme case of 200 super high achieving from outer area sitting, putting total applicants to 2000. the new 200 are all (again, going to the extreme for illustrative purposes) in the top band, so people who would have no shot on distance only now are 10%, and the 1800 locals are now redistributed to 160 places

in practice you rarely have that many bands, and the less granular the banding, the stronger the effect

That scenario is highly unlikely.

Your last sentence is completely wrong. If our imaginary school had just 3 bands each admitting 60 pupils, it would need 900 applicants from outside the area in the top band to force all the local children into the lower bands. The fewer the bands, the weaker the effect.

So all banding does is ensure different DC end up at the poor schools. I’m not sure this works for them either. It’s shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic.

It seems we cannot improve all schools but why do we continue to have SLTs that are poor? So much effort is put in.