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 didn't start teaching until the youngest went to school. And to be fair my children are older now, 2 have even left home, but yes, life is busy!

I guess the point is just because it is difficult or an inconvenience, you can't just say it won't work.
We don't have that luxury. We have to make it work. There will be a way.

A few points.

1. the council can't make an exception for you because of limits on class sizes at that age and because if they set a precedent for you then other parents will demand the same. And there are likely to be others in similar situations for whatever reason
2. given that they can't give a place on the grounds of no current spaces, you need to get both kids on waiting lists for the other school immediately and see what happens. If the criteria for the school is that siblings get priority for in year transfer then you should be towards the top of lists. Some patience may be enough to resolve the issue.
3. limits on class sizes end at the end of infants - there is more flexibility from yr3.
4. as others have said, some of the problem here is of your own choice and by not going through the system of attempting a school in catchment you've made it more difficult in the long run
5. others are likely to be in a similar situation - especially near you. Work with other parents if you can to share transport
6. failing that breakfast and after school clubs are going to have to be used.

I think the point is that you are going to have to find a way to manage it because that's the reality of living rurally - there aren't local rural schools anymore and it's one reason young people have moved to more urban areas. Public transport and service provision just isn't up to scratch.

What neighbouring Counties do is irrelevant, maybe your area changed it like my rural area, that used to give non catchment sibling children priority and one year had 3 sets of parents 0.4 miles,from school, ending up having to travel 6 miles because in a high birth rate year 2011, the class had 6/15 children as siblings out of catchment, because there had been low birth rate over a couple of years earlier and outstanding school, attracted applications. It was changed 2 years later to prevent similar (as happened at several schools, not just our local).

the council can't make an exception for you because of limits on class sizes at that age and because if they set a precedent for you then other parents will demand the same. And there are likely to be others in similar situations for whatever reason

The council can’t make an exception but it will want to know if its own policies are affecting its staff to the extent that they are seriously considering resigning. If out of catchment siblings get the same priority as in catchment siblings in Suffolk and Norfolk the council may want to consider bringing its policies in line with these if it helps to retain staff. I would certainly speak to the councillors.

Hi Op

I think I may have the solution for you.

Cambridgeshire council should organize and pay for transport for your younger daughter since she is going to the nearest school.

I successfully fought my local council for a taxi to school because just after I accepted a secondary school place, the bus timetable was changed so my 11yo could not reasonably get the bus to school. The council spent ages telling me untruths about how they only have to help disabled children.

Here is the government statutory guidance

www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-to-school-travel-and-transport-guidance

I don’t think that’s fair at all. If he’s a partner in a farm, with a tied house and more income then of course it doesn’t make sense for him to quit rather than h8s wife! However I agree finding a childminder near the younger DD’s school makes more sense than the wife quitting work.

But a change to that May then disadvantage other staff members.

realistically when a school is over subscribed then there is always going to be people who feel they have been disadvantaged by the application system.

The appeal for your youngest was likely to be an infant class size appeal. That means it can only be won in limited circumstances. The "no other school in reasonable distance" bit you quote only applies to children admitted outside the normal admissions round. Even if it did apply, the distance is only classed as unreasonable if the home to school journey takes more than 45 minutes.

To win your appeal, you needed to show that the admission arrangements did not comply with the law or the Admissions Code, or that they were not administered correctly, or that the decision to refuse admission was unreasonable. I'm afraid nothing you have said indicates that you had a case that had any chance of success.

As @PatriciaHolm says, the fact the two schools are so far apart is due to your choice to send your eldest to your wife's school and gamble that your youngest would get a place there too. Appeal panels cannot take this into account. And the fact that neighbouring LAs have different admissions criteria is irrelevant. Different schools can have different admissions criteria. All that matters is that the criteria comply with the law and the Admissions Code. It is becoming increasingly common for schools to offer lower priority to out of catchment siblings to guard against parents moving close to a school to get a place for their eldest, then moving away and using sibling priority to get places for their other children.

This isn't a case of Cambridgeshire "hiding behind their protocols and passing the buck". This is a case of Cambridgeshire doing what is required by law. You clearly don't like it, but this is the way the system works.

I know it doesn't solve your problem, but your youngest is entitled to free transport by law. That entitlement was not dependent on you appealing the allocation.

I'm confused. Surely there's no advantage to the OPs wife giving up her job if the older sibling attends that school and there's no space in the younger siblings school? She will still be travelling the same distance to facilitate this?

Both kids being in the catchment school will have the same issues for the wife, as her commute won't have changed?

56mile commute is only the two days she isn't working? It sounds counter intuitive, but can she increase her hours to boost her pay as she needs to be at both schools 5 days per week anyway. Might allow for a fund for buying in babysitting/farm relief as needed.

Hi all, thanks for your responses I cant reply to them all but to answer a few of the questions:

I am a tenant of Cambridgeshire County Council, I rent the farm from them and they stipulate that the tenant must live in the house that comes with the farm. We have been here 4.5 years and this March my wife and I agreed to take the farm on for a further 5 years. This means I can't just walk out. My wife is a teacher employed by Cambs LEA, she has to work up until Christmas but could then find alternative employment. We didn't find out that our youngest (who is a boy btw!) failed to get a place in our chosen school until May. The appeals process took until 3 days before the end of term before we got a response.

It has nothing to do with patriarchy or whatever else some have concluded.

As things stand both children will be in school this September, we will have to make it work, we have contacted a childminder and will try to put something in place, I will have to do some school runs, whatever.

Our wider family run a chicken farm about 5 miles away in Suffolk, at which I also work, it is a very small team of 3 full time, obviously we may have to recruit, which is always a nightmare! There is a school there which would reduce our school run by about 3 miles. My Mum could help with pickups occasionally but she isn't in the best of health. However this is an option we are exploring. Cambridgeshire told us to go to Suffolk and ask them for help, we did and they told us to apply through the Cambridgeshire system. Cambridgeshire admissions portal has crashed and still isn't fixed and so we have had to apply with a paper form via email. However should we have further children (?!) we are again at the mercy of the system.

As to the fact that we should have expected this, maybe we should, I grew up in the Suffolk system and only moved to Cambs 4.5 years ago, so I hadn't realised the system was different, my wife teaches year 6 so she isn't at the admissions end of the school. It would take a braver man than me at the moment to suggest it was her fault! When we applied for our eldest as I said it was mid covid, my wife was looking after our then 1 and 3 year olds whilst teaching her class online, I was still working full time on the farm, sales of potatoes and eggs had collapsed, it was full on and fraught for all of us, we weren't on furlough drinking G & T's. I don't say that to whine or be a toddler, but the fact is we missed the crucial difference in the admissions criteria.

All that said, yes I am hacked off about it, our eldest will spend 40 miles a day in the car every day, with 1 parent doing the school run, this is too much and the admissions policy should be written such that it can't happen. If we lived in a town and they were in different schools a mile or so apart then it would be manageable. But some people do have to live out in the countryside, and there should be a limit on the journey times infant siblings can be subjected to. It may be too late for us, but if we create enough fuss it may help get the policy tweaked for rural dwellers in future years and help other parents then that would be an achievement of sorts.

There are endless complaints about the difficulty of finding farm labour, and also rural teachers, and this system just makes that shortage more likely, it's hugely counterproductive. But the systems are designed by people who live in urban environments, so there we are.

Anyway, tea break over, back to the harvest, lovely weather at last. 😁

Ref the change in my wifes job, it's all up in the air. I find it mad that the authorities don't look after their teachers, those of you who aren't teachers will naturally think they should be treated the same as everyone else.

I also doubt very much that this system of splitting families up helps the schools in terms of parent involvement, certainly my intention to stand as a school governor has had to be canned, I can't do it in 2 places at once.

I sat on my local schools appeals tribunal panel this year. It is in an outer London suburb and so maybe what happened in my borough doesn’t translate. But with the majority of appeals, most parents were faced with difficult journeys to the children had been allocated to. Not one of the appeals succeeded. However, parents were advised that if they talked direct to the council’s education department, they would do their best to find a school that would work better in terms of journey.

Ours said the same and offered us schools that were even further afield, and said they wouldn’t guarantee both a place. I’m not sure they’d looked at a map, the council offices are a long way from here, perhaps they thought we weren’t part of Cambridgeshire?!

There is nothing but scattered houses and fields between us and either school, they can’t offer alternative options because there aren’t any. And I should be clear, both schools seem to be very well regarded. We looked round the catchment school on the open day, the staff were lovely. Apparently they constantly find themselves on the end of these oversubscription problems although our school run distance was the largest they’d yet seen.

You lost me at this bit:

As to the fact that we should have expected this, maybe we should, I grew up in the Suffolk system and only moved to Cambs 4.5 years ago, so I hadn't realised the system was different, my wife teaches year 6 so she isn't at the admissions end of the school.

Growing up under one system is a pile of utter responsibility dodging bollocks. As is the fact that your wife works in yr6.

The admissions system is transparent to everyone. It is posted on council websites. Often individual schools are different. And they change. Admissions policies aren't the same as they were 20years ago - the irony here being you state the criteria should be rewritten to stop the issue you have! Thus making your argument that 'how am I supposed to know because the system was different in my home county 20 odd years ago' a load of rot.

Being a yr6 teacher doesn't mean your wife is unaware of admissions. The reception teacher probably is just as in tune. Because they don't do admissions. But it's within reasons that they would know how the system works in a rough manner due to in year transfers though not necessarily in full. A yr 6 teacher certainly should have some idea of the process for admissions to secondary school and from that be able to deduce that checking policies for reception might be an idea too.

The underlying problem is you think you should get an exception even though you've been unlucky with the process. The trouble is there will always be people who lose out with an oversubscribed school and however an admission policy is written it can't make everyone happy the whole time.

Instead of whinging and blaming everyone, go back and look at what options you have. This third school is a possibility for your younger one. Or sweating it out until a place becomes available on a waiting list so both kids can go to the same school.

The appeals system for infants is very strict and it's rare to win - victories are down to technical issues where people haven't been treated fairly and the rules have been applied wrongly. You don't fit into this.

It sucks but it ISN'T a system deliberate set up to disadvantage people who live rurally. They have to write a policy that is workable and can't be gamed. A 'rural workers' policy would inevitably be gamed unfortunately.

Ironically for you in this instance... but thats why some areas prioritise catchment over siblings... so the far flung bits of catchment don't get pushed out.

It would be an argument for staff children perhaps coming higher though! (Its above non catchment sibling where I am)

It IS set up in such a way that it DOES quite clearly disadvantage rural people, whether deliberately or not.

If you’re 6 miles from one school and 8 miles from another and both are regularly oversubscribed, you’re likely to fall foul of the system, because they’ll allocate places working out from the school, whether catchment or not.

I haven’t hidden our mistakes here, although to read half the replies here you’d think I was the most shameless chancer ever.

I’m well aware that when you live in the sticks you have to drive a lot, the family car already clocks up nearly 20k miles a year with school, work and all the other stuff, that’s fine, it is what it is.

Obviously in your mind another 4500 miles a year to the total and our eldest sitting in the car even longer every day is absolutely fine, entirely our fault and we should accept it without question, noted.

@Ruralparents i don’t know why you don’t seem to have considered my suggestion of just staying in preschool until Easter?

We have considered that but his preschool only takes them until the are eligible to start school. We could find another one but in reality, if he’s starting a new preschool we may as well start him in a school?

He’s eligible to start school in September though so that can’t be the rule. Do you mean compulsory school age? If so that’s the term after they turn 5 so if he turns 5 in may then he can stay for the whole of the next school year?

I get it, Op, it sucks for your family. Unfortunately this was foreseeable as a risk if you’d properly read the criteria and all the council has done is apply their published criteria. But you’re hardly the first family not to have properly read the admissions criteria fully, I see it near me in various ways each year near me when people make assumptions about how they think things should work out and learn the hard way.

On the up side for two years Dc1 has been able to go straight to work with your wife without you having to do any school runs. Which you would have had to if you’d picked the catchment school for them.

It’s just the rule at his pre-school, they’re private enterprises aren’t they? So I guess they do as they wish.

I’m afraid you lost me at the bit where you sniped at panel members sitting at home in the comfort of their home offices. If your LEA is like mine, panel members have to do the job from home because the LEA (except in very rare instances) no longer provides a venue for it. Anyway, listen to prh47bridge whose advice, as ever, is spot-on.

Just ask them for home to school transport. They usually have multiple pick ups so it’s likely to be before the other child leaves. What times do you actually work in the darker months?

No what I’m saying is that you’re stating “they’ll only take him until he’s eligible to start school” and I’m saying that if that was their rule, then he would only be able to stay until September whereas you’ve said Easter. So it’s not clear what their rule actually is because it’s not “until school eligibility age”. Surely it would be worth exploring this as an option if he already goes there, your wife can take him and he’s happy? As pp said that would buy you are extra year to try to get them both into the same school.

It's also worth remembering that panel members are volunteers. We do not get paid for sitting on panels. Most of us do paid work as well, often commuting, and fit the volunteering in around it!