Thanks for all your replies, particularly the sympathetic/helpful ones!
Just to note: if someone asks me a question and I respond with my thoughts and opinions, that doesn’t make me entitled, nor think that the system should be designed to suit me.
That said to try and respond to some of the points -
Any parent will try and do what’s best for their children. I do not think a system which allows infant children to be placed 14 miles apart is fit for purpose. If an eldest child doesn’t get the school you want then that’s going to be disappointing, but once you know, and you know that all your children will follow the eldest sibling, you can then structure family life around it, jobs, childcare, uniforms, getting involved in the school, you name it.
Therefore in my view, siblings should be entitled to follow the eldest child into the school they are placed in, that’s my view and I make no apology for it.
Also, 2 parents should not have to do the school run at primary school age, the fact it happens elsewhere doesn’t make it ok. If two schools can’t be offered within a couple of miles of each other then all siblings should be offered a place in the same school. Once the children are at senior school that’s of course different, but we are talking about infant schooling.
I have looked up the admissions allocation criteria back as far as 2015, our youngest wouldn’t have got in in either 2015 or 2019, (and of course 2023) in the other years he’d have got in, some years it didn’t fill the class up, so it wasn’t an unreasonable gamble.
We did what we did in 2021 as it seemed the best thing to do for our family, after my wife chatted with other staff, family members and so on. Hindsight is of course the best sight!
I don’t think what has happened benefits the LEA to be honest, if both of our children were in the same school then they’d essentially have her in a golden handcuffs deal for the next 7 years, she’d carry on the deputy head training process and probably up her number of days teaching, she’s not likely to move on unless something goes catastrophically wrong. This is government though, they don’t do joined up thinking. From the schools point of view my wife is much less likely now to turn up early and finish late, she’ll want to be keeping her day at school as short as possible.
A lot on here seem to think we have put no effort into finding alternative solutions, we have, we’ve applied over the county border and investigated all sorts of avenues, the basic answer is that in the near term there aren’t any good solutions, we are simply working on which is the least worst. Regardless, that wasn’t the initial point of the thread.
Someone suggested I was against all wraparound care, that’s not the case, our eldest already goes to breakfast club and after school club the days my wife teaches. We could alternatively try and find a child minder. The issue is that the youngest will have to be dropped off very early and picked up very late, so that the elder can go to her wraparound care whilst my wife prepares to teach and finishes up at the end of the day.
Obviously I am going to try my best to pick up as much of the slack as possible, but a lot of the time it isn’t. Clearly a lot of you know a lot more than I do about the way school admissions work, and would not have made the mistakes we’ve made, but many of you think you know farming, livestock and fresh food production better than I do as well, you don’t.
I don’t farm where I work, the egg laying hens are a few miles up the road in another direction, I get that admission panels don’t take account of this.
I did the pre-school drop off for 2 mornings a week for 2 years, it was just about manageable, the pickup wasn’t, the pre school was near where my wife works and she did the pickups on the way home. I couldn’t have done both. Unless anyone knows any reliable poultry farm managers looking for long term work?
We don’t think we should hold our son back, he has a cousin he sees a lot of who’s 2 weeks older than him, it doesn’t seem wise to have them in separate school years when they’ve passed all other life milestones together and will do in future. Also, he’s ready for it academically, not super advanced or anything but he’s good enough at his numbers and letters that holding him back a year is too long we think.
The suggestions about asking the school to change the subscription criteria to allow children of staff to be higher is a good one. However I suspect parents at the school will object, particularly if mumsnet is any guide! They will on the one hand say they want good teachers for their children, but on the other that the teachers shouldn’t gain an advantage. It’s worth an ask as there are other teachers who this might affect but I’m not hopeful.
I have considered contacting the press, I’ve done a few interviews before for various farming stories with various media outlets. I haven’t though for a few reasons. 1. Parents probably threaten this all the time. 2. August is a slow news month, it would probably get in the local papers but if it’s not front page it won’t have any impact. 3. My wife’s job, we do have to consider some sort of level of professionalism here. 4. You can lose control of a media story pretty quickly if it blows up. I’ve taken some flak on this thread, multiply it by 1000 if you get as far as national press. I did a video interview with the Guardian once about livestock farming and I wouldn’t have let my Gran read the comments underneath!
Transport hasn’t been refused, we haven’t asked for it as yet because if he goes to the out of county school option it’s very unlikely to be allowed? If he goes to the catchment school it’s likely we will need a childminder or wraparound care which means delivering him to the wraparound care anyway. Once we have made our choice and put him in a school we can apply for it.
The question arose as to ‘what about the 30th child that’s bumped out. The 30th child is an eldest sibling, and they would be placed in the school 2 miles the other side of the village that we were not eligible for, which is also a good school. I agree it’s not great, but having your eldest child in a different school to the one you wanted is not the same as having your two children miles apart.
Another response was that allowing siblings to follow on would let people move into catchment to get their eldest in and then move out. Well a simple address check would show whether or not someone was doing that surely? You can’t borrow money without providing your addresses over the previous 5 years, so there’d be a way to check somehow.
We weren’t sure if it was desirable to have our child in the same school as her mum, we talked about it a lot at the time, but concluded it would work because the school moves the teachers around year groups regularly to give experience of different year groups to different staff etc, and also because it made the logistics work.
I’ve probably missed some questions and I haven’t replied in chronological order but I think that’s most of them covered.
Anyway, there are people out there with worse problems in life, we’ll find a way round this in the end. But it’s a shame that the solution will probably involve removing our eldest from a school she enjoys, she’ll soon bounce back of course, but also it will involve my wife leaving her LEAs employment, which they could have avoided with different criteria, but obviously don’t see teacher retention as an issue.