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.

I think, reading what Tizer has posted above, eligibility for transport for the younger child will depend critically on a) whether OP listed the designated (catchment) school on their DC2’s firm and b) whether Cambridgeshire accepts ‘on the firm but not first choice’ as ‘applied to’.

If the OP didn’t put the designated school on the firm at all, then the failure of the LA to offer transport is, unfortunately, again down to the failure of the OP to fully appreciate the impact of their choices. However, if they did place this school as eg second choice, and Cambridgeshire is very narrow in their interpretation of ‘applied to’ in meaning ‘in first place on the form’, then I do think (though I am entirely open to the advice of those who know more than me) that that interpretation is one of the few aspects of this situation open to challenge.

OP’s older child has no eligibility for transport unless and until they attend the designated school. Like the being separate from their sibling, that was an entirely predictable and well -documented consequence of their original choice of school, and the OP’s later change of circumstances does not force the LA to change their rules.

There are rights of appeal relating to transport as well as placement, including for exceptional circumstances- much more likely to be considered exceptional circumstances than school placement and exceeding 30 in infant classes - not guaranteed but exceptional could include teacher retention in difficult to recruit area and it could include timing of transport and would be helped probably if youngest was eligible because catchment was listed on the application- so many teacher vacancies at the moment recruitment is difficult even in urban areas. They say no, then allavenues tried, but the LA school then have to recruit a part time teacher in January.

It’s not an acceptable appeal position to threaten to walk away from your teaching job. It won’t circumvent the rules. Cambridgeshire also has rules about getting transport to nearest school but it’s likely OP didn’t choose this either. No parent here is ill. Plus most parents get help from friends, relatives and neighbours in difficult circumstances.

It really is down to reading admissions and transport policies. Considering the “what if?” It’s not ok to say the LA must do this and that to facilitate work because you are “special”. If a parent can afford to lose a teacher’s salary, they are clearly not hard up and could employ someone to help like everyone else does!

You haven’t engaged with the report and it’s implications though have you?

I don’t think anyone - Government downwards - has truly engaged with the massive teacher shortage that is coming down the track, and it certainly hasn’t informed LA guidance much as tet.

That said, there is not, nationally, anything like such an issue in primary as there is for secondary, and in particular for certain subjects in secondary. So an argument that a primary teacher parent is an exceptional circumstance today is not as strong an argument as it may be for a primary teacher in 5 years’ time, and absolutely not as strong an argument as for a Maths or Physics secondary teacher. In fact, for the school concerned, losing an expensive experienced member of staff and having the opportunity to replace them with a much cheaper newly qualified teacher, or even an HLTA under supervision of the job-share teacher, may provide a critical opportunity to balance the books, as budgets are much more of an urgent issue than teacher supply in primary right now.

See This article which predicts primaries being over-staffed and secondaries under-staffed due to changes both in demographics and teacher training recruitment.

‘The situations isn’t great here but it’s not as bad as it is over there’ is hardly an argument to inspire confidence that the LAs have got this under control is it?

The fact is, there’s a zero cost solution to our problem, which essentially places my wife in a golden handcuffs deal for the next 5 years or so. Which would go just a little way to helping with the problem which the LA go to some length to contribute to a report on.

And yet a large chunk of Mumsnet que’s up to condemn that solution as entitlement.

I thought it was your eldest child who was out of catchment but the younger one has been offered a catchment school. So why does the younger one not qualify for transport? It's more than 3 miles away isn't it? In fact for primary it's 2 miles.

https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/residents/children-and-families/schools-learning/school-transport/pre-16-school-transport

The youngest would qualify except we didn't put his catchment school down as his first choice. And now we intend to send him over the county border in order to make the logistics a bit more manageable. We really weren't looking to force the LA to cough up thousands a year to pay for taxis for the kids, the solution we were after was cost neutral!

The interesting discussion on the thread ref school transport has largely been driven by others.

There would be additional costs to admitting DC2 to the school your wife works in. DC2 cannot be classed as an excepted child therefore there would be the cost of an additional teacher as ICS limit applies. Anyone above DC2 on the waiting list would also need to be admitted.

tbh that is what many many parents end up doing- the place we live and the job I do is absolutely because we have schools in mind and that means accepting compromise

You're talking about costs imposed by the Blair criminals rules on ICS though, rather than genuine cost to the school.

I am talking about the costs to the school. Just because you think the law and admissions code shouldn’t apply to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t.

I didn't say it doesn't, I said the costs were the result of Blairs rulings,

Whatever the costs are a result of, they still exist, so to post there are no additional costs is incorrect.

Are you a teacher as well?

I think many parents - teachers or not - compromise when balancing the needs of their jobs and their children.

I may be a little extreme - my teacher-ness is not relevant to the example, but my DH and I lived apart during the week for 5 years because we needed to balance his employment and our DC’s continuity in education. Equally the house move before that - job move + a house move + my retraining - was entirely driven by the fact the school available to us was actively damaging DS.

While most examples won’t be as extreme as this, I think your anger / upset is driven by the belief that your situation is uniquely difficult and that if the world could only be organised just a little differently, your life would be as easy as everyone else’s is. While we would love our lives to be easy all the time, the fact is that many families have to readjust around education, or education adjust around other immovable commitments.

To be clear, the precise specifics of your situation - tied housing, inflexible jobs, order of admission priorities, choices made to date - are obviously unique. The juggle of jobs, transport, pick up times, luck of the draw on admissions each year, childcare costs and availability etc is very common.

@cantkeepawayforever Its hard work isn’t it? Everyone has to find a way to send Dc to school based on the decisions they make. That parents won’t take responsibility is not the fault of the LA. Tony Blair? How did his government affect this? That’s really grasping at straws.

what I’m saying is that we all have to compromise on career and housing decisions to facilitate our children’s education - it’s a juggle for everyone, you aren’t unique. We all have to some form of work flexibly / be paid less / not take the promotion / live in a smaller house in catchment / pay for after school child minders etc. You do come across as entitled and thought you think the world owes you a favour. Why is it all down to your wife to sort? You could get an assistant at your farm for the time you’d be doing the school run . Aren’t there breakfast clubs at the catchment school you could drop child off first before wife leaves for work with the other? We all have to flex in this way. We moved and changed jobs because the previous arrangement didn’t work. Not once did I blame anyone else. Where does it get you?

Hope would this be any different if your children were both at catchment school? They'd still need to get there and your wife would still need to get to the other school and you say you can't possibly be part of school runs.

Haven't read the full thread but so much sympathy OP.
Don't think Suffolk admissions wouldnt be awful too, we must live near you but just the other side of the border and they have screwed us over on DDs place this year and are completely incapable of understanding their own policies and processes. And it takes them 5 days to reply, with the wrong information.
School transports seems to be 'only if they can't find any way to wriggle out of it' so appeal that all the way.
All the pps saying 'find a childminder' are living in cloud cuckoo land. They just dont have space round here. We are on the waiting list for every childminder in the area and the area around the school DD has been placed at. She is on a waiting list for the before and after school club too. Childminder estimates a 2 year wait to get full time wraparound.
We have managed to juggle 3 days a week between us but neither of our jobs can flex on the remaining two. I'm a teacher too but secondary and if I go part time they wont guarantee any particular day/morning/afternoon off so that doesn't help with the problem.
We are looking at whether one of us is going to have to quit work too when my mat leave finishes at Christmas if she isnt into wraparound care or a childminder by then.

I'm guessing the point was that both kids would go to the wife's school.

I think someone has mentioned Hampshire - where I live we have infant and junior schools so you don't have through primary schools very often. So kids get allocated one school and then the next one come along and gets allocated to a different school, so you are trying to drop off one child at infants and one child at juniors. The catchments are a bit random and you can live very close to a school but not be in catchment for it. It is different to the OP's situation with large distances, but still very tricky to navigate. Sometimes people move their older child to the junior school attached to the infant school the younger one has got into.

If you want transport and live rurally it’s always been the case that there are rules. Cambridge is more flexible than my LA. It’s not a free for all and the op gambled with dc2 getting a place at non catchment school. It is completely a different matter if he has been turned down from catchment school and taken next one offered.

All parents must take all factors into account. Many infants and juniors are linked. My LA makes this clear and they often share a catchment or link via CofE MAT. If you do your own thing at junior and don’t do linked or catchment, you don’t get transport. Many village schools are infant but CofE has expanded a lot to combined. There’s been a limited need but they like to spread the word.