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.

The obvious solution is for the wife to look for a new job in a school with places for both children.

This is not a solution for the short term, however - under standard teachers’ terms and conditions of employment, the next point at which she can resign is October half term, which would then lead to the first allowable time to leave being Christmas. It may be that the waiting list at one school or the other moves sufficiently to give the children both a place at the same school before then.

OP, it seems quite late in the day to still not have applied for transport? Term starts early in September and it may take some time for the application to be processed, especially if there may be reluctance to grant it?

Catchments rather than pure straight line distances can be useful in urban areas where schools have, for historical reasons such as a previous grammar school system, been built close together in one area of town, leaving some addresses a short distance from several schools and others a very long way from any.

@cantkeepawayforever Yes. Depends on geography! Our LA has catchment for towns too. Also some linked infants and junior. We also have 3 secondaries sharing a catchment in a town. So horses for courses. I looked at my nearest two schools, both take catchment over sibling. So if you are catchment, whether sibling or not, you are higher up than out of catchment sibling. One school had no teacher priority at all. So it’s a mixed picture but all have their 24/25 admissions policy posted.

Yes, although here the favoured solution to that seems to be a priority admissions area.

I’m very aware that some LEAs don’t differentiate between siblings in and out of catchment, but some do. There’s a lot of clamour here for treating all siblings the same, regardless of whether they’re in or out of catchment, so I’m pointing out that that can have negative consequences for the in-catchment children who might be squeezed out. The formal process for amending admissions criteria provides an opportunity for the arguments for and against to be thrashed out.

To be precise, I was referring to priority admissions areas not catchments - and entirely agree that sibling priority from far away can really skew admissions of first children, so is definitely not something to be demanded lightly.

As I said earlier, I am most familiar with circumstances where priority, after obvious EHCPs / LACs, is given to all within the priority admissions area, followed by siblings then others outside, and this has successfully maintained a position whereby all children within the priority area who applied have been admitted. Interestingly, there is now an experiment with a priority for children of staff, but with restrictions on how long the staff must have worked at the school before application in order to be eligible.

Yes most schools I know do take staff kids out of catchment or before distance kids. But you have to have worked there 2 years. All staff not just teachers BTW. So ta's, office etc as well.

My secondary has about 10 staff kids that I can think of attending now and 2 starting in September but my eldest didn't want to plus didn't quite pass the 11+

Straight line distance would not work on the edge of towns where the school is set at the edge of a catchment that stretches into rural outskirts of town. It would mean town children would always get priority over a number of schools compared to those on the edge of catchment who would just get what was ‘leftover’.

In Scotland it is catchment but you can apply to other schools if they have spaces once catchment are allocated. If you apply on time you should be guaranteed a place in catchment. Catchments are hard to change and developers threaten to sue if the council suggest changing boundaries for popular schools before they have flogged their houses (then house owners kick up a fuss). Which means some schools end up struggling with over capacity but other schools close in the same town due to reductions in numbers. All run by the council

That’s a good point. In England it us extraordinarily difficult for LAs to coordinate changes in catchment areas in response to demand now schools are a mixture of MATs. I remember one school trying a unilateral ‘land grab’ by extending its catchment into an affluent part of time while carefully withdrawing it from a more deprived area. That didn’t work, in the end, but I remember the LA saying they no longer had power to negotiate with the different schools, in the same way as they no longer have power to build a new school themselves.

Move house? I guess there are always going to be downsides to choosing to live in a very rural location unfortunately.

Or nanny / au pair?

This is why with young children i wouldn't choose a home so far away from the amenities needed.

The OP is a farmer, living in tied accommodation, so they live rurally and aren’t free to move.

Go to the omburdsman - what do you have to loose? You’ve stated the rules they’ve ignored clearly enough

Some insensitive comments here.
The school gave a place for the eldest, the mum works at the school.
The school has an obligation to take the second child.
It is extremely unreasonable to give child 1 a place but not child 2 regardless of his teacher mum and anything else. No one can expect parents to do two journeys in different directions for primary school.

Has everyone lost their common sense?

Eh? The OP’s problem is that rules have been followed to the letter. The younger child was not, according to the published admissions criteria, high enough on the older child’s school’s admissions priorities to be given a place. That has left the children potentially attending different schools. The appeal panel clearly didn’t find anything which would allow it to grant the appeal. There’s nothing here for the ombudsman to work with.

And it’s not about common sense. It’s about what’s doable, when school capacity is fixed, the government has set the infant class size limit at 30 and schools and education authorities have to abide by their published admissions criteria. Appeal panels don’t have a free hand either; the grounds on which they can allow appeals are set out in statutory guidance and ‘rogue’ decisions can be struck down by the courts.

But you are self employed so can do the school run .

The school has no such obligation (and it’s not the school who decide!)

the admissions criteria where followed. The OP and his wife knew those criteria both times they applied to schools.

hopefully the new arrangement they have found works well for them

There is a box on the form when you make the selection in the first place where you put all these arguments down. We made it clear why we wanted our child to go to School A and not B and that's what we got.

On the practical side, people move and shift. I would talk to your preferred school about going on a waiting list and hope a place comes up promptly.

That box is for things that they take into account

eg parent is a police officer and so child can't go to school X as the child of people they have locked up are there
proper medical reasons/social reasons etc

things about school runs etc get ignored

This is a common misconception about being self employed I find!

Maybe it works for plumbers, or software developers who can just down tools and the work will be where they left it when they get back.

You can work out your day so you can do the school run
Or you can pay someone else to do it
Or a mixture of both

Like thousands of other parents do, every day

Will the catchment school move your older child up the waiting list as a sibling? Good luck and where I live the council would need to provide transport to nearest school.