So is anyone else reading this stuff about school admission lotteries...

[UnquietDad]

...and thinking "if they try that on round here, there will be blood on the streets?"

Because I know I am.

Maybe some people like the idea...?

pw - but the reason that some schools have excellent results is partly due to the catchment. i'm sure if they got rid of catchments those schools would not maintain their results.

I think it would be a good idea to get rich and poor kids mixing a bit more. It would help with social mobility. I would like schools to have ablity banding maybe using SAT results to ensure that all schools have a reasonable number of clever and stupid children.

A bright child in a school with a lot of low ablity children often do not get the simulus they need. Bright children need to mix with bright children.

In the past the poor bright child could go to a grammar school. Now a poor bright child is dammed by postcode.

FAQ - I'd be a lot happier with that than the present situation, because then the local sink would have an entirely different pupil base and a much more motivated parent body. Let's face it, middle-class parents tend to have sharper elbows where education is concerned and would be on the head's arse until the school was sorted out. Also, middle-class parents have more resources, monetary and professional, to offer the school.

It was bad enough when my then 5-year-old DD had to go to a school a 2-mile/5-minute bus-ride away, because we couldn't get into the local school at first. We felt no "attachment" to the area and all her local friends went to the school she couldn't get into.

Thankfully we won our appeal and she got the school of our choice from Year 1 onwards.

I really think they should go back to the old fashioned catchment area but a school should not be allowed to wiggle lines to only take in the best areas like some tend do!!!! People should go to their nearest schools, yes you get the fluctuation in house prices but it has to better than lotteries.

Of our 3 pretty poor senior schools in town the best one is actually the one that's in the roughest estate in town. The one whose catchment area includes the most expensive area to live is still on special measures and has been for years! The "middle" on has a catchment from both poor and rich areas.

Yes, eliminate "choice" (which is just an illusion of choice) and say catchment is catchment, no exceptions. And give schools the resources to take everyone in the catchment.

Hmm, I can see the points about community and so on but I just don't think they are as important as enabling children from lower-income homes to get access to the best comps. Education is more important than the things that you mention - not that they are unimportant.

policy - but surely if YOU are motivated (which you obviously are) there must be other parents who are motivated whose children (under the present system) would also go to the same school.

And has already been mentioned I bet many of those middle-classs parents with better financial resources would simply revert to the private sector!

Some of the "best improved" schools are not uncommonly found it very poor areas........

UD, have you bought a house in the catchment area of a good comp?

i can't see how the logistics would work. school buses are already pretty rubbish, can you imagine the pandemonium?

round here kids who live 3 miles away from the catchment secondary school have to either pay for a bus or walk down an unlit country road, because the lea deemed it a 'safe walking route'

Meant to say that even if my chid were given a place at the best school in the world, I still wouldn't be happy about it.

FAQ - yes, I'm sure there are other motivated parents - I know some of them. However, despite this the school is not far off special measures, whereas literally two miles away is a comp that is in the top 20 nationwide. Our school is in an historically working-class area, the second is in an historically prosperous area. Call me suspicious but I think that the two things are related!

As to people going private - yes a lot of them probably would. Their choice. I'd abolish private schools if I ruled the worls, but in the present circs I guess a lot of parents would bail out. I still think a lottery would be more equitable.

beautifuldays - we have 3 senior schools in town - which don't have enough places for the children living in the town - so many parents HAVE to send their child to senior school in the next town (about 15-20 minute drive away) - admittedly it is an excellent school - (unlike the local ones) but even with no enough senior places for students the town doesn't pay for ANY school buses!

There are a couple of schools in Hertfordshire that use ability bandings. I can't remember their names so I can't check if they are deemed 'successful' schools but I like the principle.

They are allowed to select 10% based on aptitude. The rest is made up of 30% higher ability children, 30% middle and 30% lower. Presume siblings make up some of these figures

The admissions lottery that they were using in Brighton - was that last year or is this the first year they have tried it and no one knows the results yet? Interested to know if most people are happy or not.

policywonk, of course that is important, but a lottery is the wrong way of going about it.

We bought our house 4 years ago when there was no place available at the primary school. And the secondary school was always OK but has improved even more since then. We'd still have got in, probably, from our old address. The school wasn't the main consideration, but of course it was one.

but i still think if you tried to force kids from some families to go to 'the local sink', especially bus them across town to do so, it won't work.

just from the experience of how Houston Indepdendent School District tried to do this in order to integrate schools in the 70s.

people just sent their kids to private school or HE'd rather than send them to a school in a bad area - even if it meant 2nd or 3rd jobs or remortgage to do so.

so what they did was offer certain programmes of study - the International Baccalaureate, for example, at certain schools, and people had to test in on merit to go to them.

anything over 3 miles and the LEA pays for transport.

yes, taht is true. i registered DD1 for school yesterday, and got a transport form to complete, because it's over 3 miles.

but it is the only school around for miles, and only 60 pupils.

still, it's not just the distance - here, that's a neglible amount because it's a rural area.

it's the idea of forcing people to get their kids up at 6AM to take a bus to a school in a bad area.

it doesn't work as well as you'd think unless there's something in it for them - the stick approach just pisses people off and makes them belligerent and rebellious.

"I really think they should go back to the old fashioned catchment area but a school should not be allowed to wiggle lines to only take in the best areas like some tend do!!!! People should go to their nearest schools, yes you get the fluctuation in house prices but it has to better than lotteries. "

ISTR that you live in the catchment area of the secondary school that SCC offered us. It was a case of 'over my dead body', but only slightly worse than the school within walking distance.

I actually agree with you that children should go to their nearest school (or local CE or RC school), but then I would do my utmost not to live in a less desireable area.

I don't think today's families should have to suffer the endemic problems of the education system. It should be the role of government to sort it out, and they should start at the very beginning and work on basic parenting skills. The worst thing about the educational system is poor behaviour, and no one should be subjected to this as if they were part of some social experiment.

hamster - yes, the ability bandings (presumably on basis of SATs?) is also an interesting idea I think.

From what I've heard about Brighton (I lived there until fairly recently), parents who are in what was previously the shoo-in area for the good comps (highest house prices in the area, natch) are up in arms and private school applications are up. However, I haven't heard what the feeling is among those in the different catchment area who are being offered access to the good comps that they didn't previously have.

From what I've heard, the Brighton scheme has a big flaw, in that it's effectively operating between one very affluent area (containing the good comps) and another fairly affluent area (in which the local comp is dodgy). What it is not doing is offering access for children from really reprived areas. So it's basically being used to garner votes for the council as far as I can see.

there really should be 'good' schools and 'bad' schools. They should all be well funded with well trained teachers.

I'm genuinely surprised by the force of anti-lottery feeling - it was the same on the other thread. I guess expat is right to say that people won't respond well to being forced, so in that respect it might not work unless it could be sweetened somehow for those who are 'losing out'.

I suppose the tenacity of middle class parents in clinging on to their privileges comes from the same place as their capacity to improve a bad school, so you can't really have one without the other (haven't expressed that very well).

It does make me a bit mad that parents - people in general - are willing to defend a system that it patently unjust (in that it rewards those who are already privileged with a better education than those who are not), but are not willing to even countenance a system that might offer a solution, even if it is only a partial one. Some people see this sort of my-family-first-and-bugger-the-rest-of-you attitude as admirable, but I think it stinks.

well our LEA doesn't fund transport for those that have to go to a senior school further than 3 miles away from their home........