School admissions in the 80s and 90s

[LockInAtTheFeathers]

After speaking to my mum about applying for my primary school place in the mid 90s and some posts I've read on here, it seems that back in the 80s and 90s there was no centralised system for school admissions and you just rang the schools concerned who would add you to their list. It sounds like there were admission criteria of some sort, e.g. apparently the local Catholic school said you had to be baptised and the local C of E school said you had to be churchgoers, while the community primary automatically gave a place to everyone in the nursery.

How did this work in practice? Would schools have a set number of places and did they have to fill them (e.g. would the Catholic school have to take someone who wasn't baptised who applied if they still had places, like they would nowadays, or could they say no and leave the place unfilled?). Could they go over the admissions number if there were more local kids than was thought? Did they fill by first come first served or who met an admissions criteria best? What if all the schools you rang said no? It all just seems so different to today's preference system that is centralised and takes months to sort out.

By the time I was applying for secondary school in the early 00s the equal preference system that still applies today was in place in my LEA, so it seems like a lot changed in those 7 years!

My city had a centralised system. I know this because there was a to-do when my sibling didn't get into the closest school in about 1987. There was an appeal and some measuring of distances with one of those rolling metre measurers.

Thanks, that's interesting. There must also have been a strict place limit then for local kids to miss out and need to go to appeal.

I wondered if this might be to do with population numbers, but I've just been playing on gapminder and while the UK population as a whole grew from 50m in the 1950s, pretty much a steady growth to 59m in about 2000, it then started to grow much more rapidly and is 68.5m as of 2022.

But the number of children under 4 is much more interesting, because during the 1950s it was dropping (after effect of baby boom, I suppose) and reached a dip of 3.5m in 1956, huge spike during the 60s, then a massive drop again in the 80s. So perhaps schools had had this large influx of pupils in the 1960s/70s (thinking about when those under 4s would have been going through secondary school) and then in the 80s/90s there just wasn't as much demand, so schools didn't need strict admissions policies as there might have been more places than children, smaller schools being merged together etc (I certainly remember schools being merged in the 90s).

Since 1990 or so the number of children under 4 has remained much more stable only fluctuating between about 3.5m - 4m.

And I suppose that with a smaller population overall, people lived more spread out and went to their local school, there was not so much expectation of choice, not everyone had cars. Whereas now, we live much more densely, most people have cars so have several possible school options, and we expect to have choices, so a central admissions system makes sense to keep it fair and prevent the "good" schools from being oversubscribed.

Anyway pretty graph showing population/children under 4 over time (1950 to 2022).

www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles&url=v1

When I started primary school in the fifties, parents just took their children to the local school on the first day of term. We all sat in the hall and parents were called in to see the headmistress one by one. I think there were actually too many children on the day it my sister was already in the school. My mother’s first choice of school for her , nearest our home, rejected her because she was too clean and, before we moved house, she went on the bus on her own, with another little boy, to infant school.

My secondary took kids from four local catchment primaries automatically. I think the primary provided names and they wrote to check each child was expecting to go. A few didn't - they had to apply separately for selective or church schools. Not sure how out of catchment primary kids got in - though there were only a handful as I recall. Waiting list maybe?

Maybe classes weren't limited in number? I started school in 1968 & we had 42 children to a class with no TAs. When I moved to senior school in ?1974 the 11 plus was still in place & that was certainly done through the local authority, so I presume they coordinated it all.

I think there were some dodgy practices. I went to a Catholic High school which had a very good reputation. It took students from all the Catholic primary schools and practicing Catholics, but it seemed to run an unofficial selective process to cherry pick bright children from nice families. It was a bit of a joke that all that all the cleverest students were mainly not from Catholic families!

I think it was a bit random when we were kids in the 80’s. It was still done by school when we went to secondary in the early 90’s - I remember each primary school being given two places at the slightly better secondary that was further away and the teachers having to decide who go to go.

when I started infant school we went part time until the term we turned 5, so as a summer born I only had one term in reception full time.

I'm not sure that's correct. We definitely had a centralised system in my town. I remember you received colour-coded letters dependent on which school you had been allocated to. Green for one school and blue for the other...this was mid 80s

Too clean? I need to know more

I was speaking to my mum about this the other day as I was a summer born child who turned 5 in 87. I was 5 when I started primary school, and only had 6 years instead of 7. When I asked her why she said that it was how it was done at that school then, you started the September after you turned 5. I thought I remembered children starting in Jan too, maybe it was actually the term after you turned 5? Anyway I asked if it was because she liked spending time with me and couldn’t bare for me to go, but apparently she would have loved for me to go earlier so she didn’t have to pay nursery fees!

That’s really interesting @BertieBotts - thanks!

I started school in 1983. We lived rurally and there was a large village school we all went to. Mum just filled out a form and that was it. Then I went to a secondary school that again, everyone went to because the council put on a free bus. It wasn't a very good education but it was much simpler times. I didn't encounter all the admission stress until I moved to London and had a child of my own. The competition here is insane.

I started high school in 1978.

You were supposed to go to the nearest school unless you were RC. I was in and RC primary so I went into the RC high school.

My next door neighbour and my cousin started high school the same day as me. My next door neighbour should have gone to the nearest school but her mother wanted her to go to a girls' school so when they had moved to their current house they kept her at her primary in the town they had left, her dad drove her 10 miles each way.

Because of this they managed to get her into the girls' school as if she had just moved into the area and my cousin went to the same school as she had just moved too.

@BertieBotts

Don't forget about grammar schools and school leaving ages changing.

My Sons were born 1990’s. I was told when my first was born in 1992 to put his name down at local school as soon as possible after birth to get him a place at the nursery and then primary school. My second son got in as a sibling. Secondary school we had to apply in the same system as present.

I started high school in 1985. Everyone in my year at primary was automatically allocated a primary school by the local authority according to their home address. We were all handed letters telling us which school. One person's family wanted her to go to a different school and they had to put in a request for that somehow.

My London borough had a centralised system.

We we’re also tested in the final year of primary school and banded 1,2,3 according to our results. All comprehensive schools had to take 25% Bands 1 & 3 (higher abs lower performing pupils) and 50% Band 2 (average performance).

This was how it was for me. You just went to the local school. If i remember rightly they changed it all with ofsted etc as they wanted people to have more choice rather than just where you could afford to live.
my primary was a feeder for two main secondary’s, although pupils went to four + more locally.

My brother started secondary in 1995, then me in 1997. Outer London Borough.

I remember my brother getting 5 offers from schools that my parents then chose from.
I got 3 offers.

I started high school in 1991, we lived 5 doors up from the local high school, it had a terrible reputation so my parents moved house so we didn’t have to go there.
My primary school was a feeder school so nearly all my school friends went there, my parents were religious and the vicar of our church helped get me into the selective CofE high school instead. I knew lots of kids in the same situation, when I started high school lots of the girls were in my guide group or were in my Sunday school class, I was one of only 2 kids from my primary to go to the same high school.

I think there was some degree of flexibility as less rules on class sizes etc. I started primary a bit early as was in the nursery attached but as I could already read they just moved me into reception.

Secondary there was a centralised system. I remember my parents applying as I didn't want to go to the nearest school. I remember them listing schools in order and justifying the choice due to my siblings being at the school I wanted

In 1994 there was definitely a centralised system for the London borough I lived in, when I started secondary school.

We moved down south in the mid 80s (year 1) and I couldn't go to our nearest primary school because it was full. I ended up going to a school which was much further away because they had a space for me.

I started secondary in 1987. There was a centralised system in my medium sized town. You had to put down 3 choices. I didnt get any of my choices, 2 probably due to distance as they weren't local, and one was RC and we were CofE so wrong religion. My mum appealled and I got into my second choice.

The right to choose a school (express a preference) has been in force since 1988