Primary school admissions - 14 miles apart

[Ruralparents]

Hi all

I thought I’d join to mine your collective wisdom!

We live in rural Cambridgeshire, 6 miles from our nearest school in one direction and 8 miles from the next nearest in another.

Back in the depths of lockdown we had to a choose a school for our eldest to start at in Sept 2021. My wife teaches at the school 8 miles away and so we chose it because it would be handier. We didn’t know if our eldest would get in there but she did. And it turns out that her catchment school, 6 miles away, was oversubscribed.

Now, in 2023 our daughters school is over subscribed and our youngest has been placed at the catchment school. These two school are 14 miles apart! We lost our appeal and have now got the prospect of trying to manage a 28 mile school run, twice a day.

Cambridgeshire council don’t care, they are hiding behind their protocols and passing the buck.

We asked if our eldest could move schools to be with our youngest and they’ve refused because her year group at the catchment school is oversubscribed.

Out of catchment siblings get the same priority as in catchment siblings in Suffolk and Norfolk, but not Cambridgeshire. And when you live 6 and 8 miles from the two schools it’s fairly obvious you’re going to be at the bottom of the admissions list when either school is over subscribed.

Has anyone had any joy appealing on the grounds of unreasonable journey times etc? I just don’t think anyone should be made to do over 10000 miles a year on the school run. School transport hasn’t been offered but even if we can get it, someone still has to be available to put a 4 year old in a taxi and to collect them etc, it doesn’t help the logistics.

There is an ombudsman, but I think they have just rigged the whole system in order to do as they please and screw those who live out in the sticks.

School lost out on a brilliant teacher they've not been able to replace. All for 8 miles.

I do think, though, that you always need to think about the ‘other’ child - the actual 30th child in the class, who would have to be displaced if priority was somehow given to the child you’re discussing. They also have reasons for their place - whether that be proximity, siblings. etc etc. A line has to be drawn somewhere- with the infant size rules, it will be a distance or a criterion - and that be difficult whoever is the 31st child, the first to ‘miss out’.

@cantkeepawayforever I get that but personally I'd rather my DC was being taught by a qualified teacher. If that means my DC being bumped down the list to get a place, I accept that.

So you would accept your child not getting a place if all teachers’ children were given priority? Even if that teacher eg only worked in the school for a year, or took a short term role to get their child in who was there for 7 years? What about siblings of those who got in under this rule? You have to think of each admissions criterion in ‘the worst case scenario’ as, for popular schools, ‘gaming’ the rules is a genuine issue that can deprive tens of children of places that would more fairly be theirs.

i would . Ultimately there will always be those who play the system but I don't believe it's the majority. Part of keeping qualified people in any job role is making it attractive foe them to stay. A teaching job is not particularly attractive or even possible for someone if they have to get their kids to another school, half an hour after they have started their job at the school they work at! Unfortunately teachers are also often underpaid in comparison to other job roles, at least in this part of the country. The majority of teachers are still (I believe) female. This means that you will get a lot of situations like the op where the burden would fall on the woman to give up her career job as the alternative just isn't practical from a financial perspective and the community then loses a good teacher.

@Imborednow22 pretty sure to add or amend such priority criteria a school has to go through a consultation process in advance of implementation in subsequent application years, not vary existing as it suits them.

Yes, I was being serious. I am fully aware about farming seeing as I come from a family of farmers. The child would not be wandering around unsupervised, they would be with a parent, who would be vigilant for their safety as is the norm for farming parents. It's no different to them having the children at home on their farm on evenings and weekends, so why is it suddenly so shocking to you that the child is at home on their farm full-time, like presumably the child already is, being under CSA.

You say there is absolutely no way OP could do this, yet I know farming families who have quite literally done this.

Honestly, I get that you've had bad experiences with friends children being seriously injured, that is a risk of farming, but these children already live on the farm, so that risk is already there and can be overcome with supervision and being vigilant.

In my experience of growing up in a farming family going back many generations, I don't know of any 4yr old who hasn't worked and helped out on the farm. That's farming life.

@cantkeepawayforever Yes I would.

To put it into persceptive. If there's 15 qualified teachers in a two form entry school, lets say 7 of them are mums with 2 children.

That's at most 14 children getting priority. They're not all going to be in the same year groups, so there's an even lesser chance of it being all the time.

And like @Leftlegwest said, there's so little to attract teachers. What an advertisment for the school to "It's good enough that our teachers send their DC here"

I though council has to provide transport of the catchment school is more than 3 miles away? Maybe that's only in Scotland though...

Sorry to say but not sure you have much ground for appeal. It was your choice to out your oldest into our of catchment school.

Could you out one of them onto a waiting list and chance the school once/if space becomes available?

I completely agree that in the current climate of teacher shortage, teacher’s child priority may become a thing.

Your calculation of numbers doesn’t take into account teacher turnover, though. Say in year 1, 3 of the 15 staff use the priority. One of those 3 then goes on maternity leave, and 3 more teachers leave in the usual way. Of these 4, two have children with priority, as well as two more from existing staff. Total children gained in this way - 7 in tear 2. In year 3, two of the original staff and one of the new staff gaining priority leave teaching (normal) and are replaced by parents etc etc.

In this way, the ‘14’ children from a stable staff can be multiplied up quite substantially due to staff turnover.

A bit like the OP thinking ‘it wouldn’t be a problem for out of catchment siblings to have priority’ only to find that, due to families moving into and then out of catchment, the ‘effective catchment for siblings’ becomes 10km and the ‘effective catchment for non-siblings’ shrinks to less than 500m.

Well neither of my DCs went anywhere near the farmyard when they were little, let alone worked and helped out on the farm.
You are clearly either deluded or being deliberately goady.

Well their parents should have been supervising them properly, plenty of farm kids do things like that and are fine.

No it doesn’t but being accepted through appeal makes them an ‘excepted pupil’ meaning the class size can go over 30.

The school making an adjustment to their admissions criteria and presenting this change as their reason for granting the appeal to the panel would work, in my LA anyhow.

I’m a head teacher and could (and would) do this under these circumstances.

I know, but a) the appeal failed therefore that criteria doesn’t apply, and b) that isn’t what the poster I quoted meant, they said to ask the HT/governors to allow the pupil to attend as an excepted pupil and that would not happen.

I do think that it shouldn't be beyond councils to collaborate and come up with a 'best practice' on admissions criteria and priority. Something like:

1. Looked after /SEN DC
2. Teacher's DC
3. Siblings *if address hasn't changed since older DC joined the school.
4. Siblings *if address has changed since older DC joined but is within x miles of the school
5. Distance within catchment
6. Distance out of catchment

I know I have probably missed out some key criteria but you get my gist.

Happy to be told my suggestions are ridiculous

When my dc were at our village school all the teachers kids went there. In the 11yrs I had dc there that was 5 dc of teachers. That’s not many to accommodate over 7 yr groups and several years. The average school population was 120 over all years so a small school.

Because the wife works at the other school!!!

School transport will take care of the youngest’s school run. It would only be the younger one who has an entitlement to transport (as they will be attending the nearest suitable school). My point is that by the time school transport have gone round the houses to pick up/drop off other children, the wife is likely to be at home at that point anyway with the other child.

As a teacher - primary, with children who never attended the schools I taught in - and also a teacher’s child, I am musing whether it is desirable for teachers’ children to attend their parent’s school.

The childcare / transport aspect may seem desirable - but where should the child be in the time before school and after school while their parent is preparing / attending meetings / talking with colleagues (often confidentially)?

Is it desirable for a teacher’s child to attend school far from their own community (ime, teachers often commute)?

Is it desirable, especially in eg a 1 form entry primary where they will inevitably have their parent as a teacher for a year, for a child not to be able to be purely ‘a pupil’ and not also ‘x’s child’. Whether the child is picked for the school team or actively ignored, other parents will watch and mutter that ‘it’s not fair’.

Is it sensible to put in place a policy that makes ‘nice schools in nice places’ even more desirable as workplaces, and further deprive more challenging schools of good staff (I can anticipate a drain of experienced staff to ‘better’ schools wgen their children reach 4 or 11)?

(I don’t really have an answer. I deliberately never applied for jobs at my dc’s schools, nor sought to move them to mine. I preferred, and they preferred, to keep my teacher and parent lives separate. I was taught by my own parent, briefly, and it was awkward. I am not saying these are universally true)

Teachers I know don’t always teach the same year group, so even in a single form entry it is not inevitable that you have to teach your child.

The head could do it if, like me, they were obstinate enough.

My own children were separated siblings so this issue is one that really pushes my buttons.

I’m currently a head teacher and also do outreach work for the LA.

if this happened to a teacher in my school, I’d simply tell the LA that I was accepting the child and would support a re-appeal, change my admissions criteria with immediate effect and let them know how outdated and ludicrous their admissions policy is (and why, in detail).

My LA might try to tell me I’d done the wrong thing for a few days but by the time I’d finished they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

HTs cannot lawfully retrospectively change the criteria places were offered under. They could consult with a view to making changing going forward. But, even if the admissions criteria change, any ICS appeal should not be successful based on the argument the child would have gotten a place if the new criteria were in force then (with the caveat of the assumption the previous criteria complied with the admissions code etc.). If an appeal was successful on this basis then it would be open to legal challenge.

I wouldn’t be changing offers, I’d be accepting an extra child using my own professional judgement.

I could, and would, do it in these circumstances. It would cause a few ripples but I’d take the hit.

I agree it wasn’t great for at least one of the teacher’s dc at our school. They got away with murder, nothing could be said against them by the other children and they became very unpopular. They lived about 25 miles away though so it was probably the only way their mother could still teach there.

The other teachers managed it well and their year groups would swap to avoid them teaching their own dc.

I don’t think it works in secondary schools, even for non teaching staff.

Im wondering what would happen if you couldnt drive🤔.
Could you contact your mp or local councillor?