Scrap school catchments now

[Momentumummy]

If Labour wants to eventually end parents buying privilege through private schools, it needs to go after school catchments. How can it be fair to decide schools by distance to gates when it often depends on ability to pay rent or mortgage which will usually be higher in catchment for good schools?

The only fair system is a lottery one by borough (at least for secondary when kids are old enough to travel alone). You should be allocated a place within your borough but it should be randomized and not based on distance to gates.

That would be chaotic for so many people, and would completely mess up school transport etc.

I understand if you personally are frustrated about the VAT proposal, but this is not a practical suggestion really.

The distance between schools in rural counties can be huge, it would be quite hilarious to plot the travel if done by lottery.

So theoretically, a child should spend over an hour on a bus twice a day, instead of going to the school across the road, just to make things "fairer"?

No thanks...

How would you even organise school buses if all travel patterns are random? In many areas there is no available service bus between settlements so you'd have kids setting off at 5am to walk up A roads!

Would siblings be at different schools?

Not affected by the VAT policy. But think they need to be fair and scrap grammars and selection by house price. (Not a Labour voter under Keir - he’s too Tory for me). Kids in London and other cities often travel for an hour anyway by bus/train.

That's not going to work. You get a kid at one boundary and a school at the other end of a borough and that's a 14 mile round trip requiring 3 buses and a half hour walk every day. Going past somewhere in the region of 12/13 other secondary schools in the process.

Sibling, SEN and kids in care would continue to have priority. Only distance to gates would go. Brighton had it at one point I think. Not sure if they still do?

That would be nuts.

I once had a child in my year one class in who didn't get in to her village school because other people had cheated their way in by renting houses or using their MILs address. And this little girl had to come by taxi every day and not with her mum like everyone else whilst great big SUVs drove in the opposite direction ferrying children who should have been at my school to the village where the girl lived.

Or, put effort into sorting out less good schools rather than messing with transport logistics?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6403017.stm#:~:text=Places%20at%20some%20secondary%20schools,but%20some%20parents%20are%20protesting.

Obviously a popular move in the Brighton area...

And yes, in London, some pupils do travel a lot for school - but London has a transport system made viable by the sheer numbers potentially needing to use it for myriad purposes.

On a smaller scale it might work... 4 or 5 schools within a few miles of each other in a city area.

But not for great swathes of the country. Our area has fixed catchment areas (odd shapes, around village boundaries, not straight line distance) and school transport exists to get the more outlying children to their designing school... other 5+miles already. Why add another 30 miles to that to the opposite end of the district?

Everywhere in the world uses distance as a starting point as its logical!

I live in London so catchments are small and when DD was four I found we lived on the border of two catchments which meant she could have been offered a school in our borough or the next one 🤷‍♀️. I am lucky that she's has a good education though.

I come from a rural area and my old school catchment meant most of my village went to one school in the nearest town (Secondary). If you wanted your child to go somewhere else you had to arrange your own transport, tough nuts to you.

There is no true choice in state school education. You do the best you can. But if parents don't invest their time in state schools, they won't improve.

@Longma in case they need to be driven there I guess? Or for school events. Then again you may be right. Not as much of a priority as for primary.

Lol.

How do you see the practicalities of this working?

I’m picturing the government allocating children a school without parental involvement.

Exactly what I was going to say. If the whole point of your argument is that secondary can travel alone, why would having a sibling there make a difference?

I completely agree with abolishing grammar schools. In most major cities in England, there are scattered deprived areas. I believe defining a larger area, say 5-10 miles, and using random allocation for secondary state schools within the city (with exceptions for rural areas) would be effective.

This can ensure a more balanced distribution of students, it might help provide equal opportunities for all children, regardless of their background.

@savoycabbage Doesnt that prove my point that this child was priced out by other families?

Yes because bus fares across the borough is exactly what the poorest parents need, plus more time juggling work hours to get primary kids to and from school.

Who says Labour want to end privilege via private schools? That is your supposition. That makes no sf as: the most privileged will easily suck up the VAT.

Maybe they just want businesses (I.e private schools) to be VAT registered, and put an end to the loophole where the most privileged parents avoid tax in the form of VAT.

Replace your bitterness with common sense.

Oh, and round me in London there are plenty of Good and Outstanding schools with a majority demographic from disadvantaged estates etc. They are v good schools. Some Wealthy parents just prefer to keep their kids with ‘people like us’. They would still use private schools , while ordinary and poorer people are consigned, under your system, to buses and trains.

They don't need to and it wouldn't make things fairer.
Doing that would make things worse for everyone, but much more so for those on low incomes who have less time and money.

The VAT policy isn't even vaguely like this, and I'm so tired of reading nonsense about it.

(Leaving grammars aside because they should have all gone when most did, but the local politics is now complex).

@StormingNorman That’s exactly what should happen. Parental involvement - aka middle class elbowing - does not lead to a fair system or a just society.

Schools should be part of the community they’re in, and they’re really important for the making and maintaining of connections in local communities. I get what you mean, but I don’t think the alternative would help an awful lot. Our high school is the only one for 20 miles.

She wasn't priced out people just lied. And she was shunted back and forth for years. Nobody wants their child travelling forty minutes to a school whilst there is a school right there.