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.

Just because some kids travel an hour to get to school, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. And most of the kids doing this in London are doing it to get to private schools.

pretty normal commute in London when you include faith schools, grammars & ones with grammar streams.

At the very least Labour should be scrapping faith schools as these generally lead to inequality.

You have a peculiar fixation with 'the middle classes' trying to get the best education for their kids as though that's a bad thing. Parental involvement is of course a big factor in a DC's success and the solution isn't to diminish that and stop those pesky middle classes (of which it ironically sounds like you are one), but to build on existing policies to engage disadvantaged pupils more, and make all schools capable of giving a decent education (you may have noticed there's a teaching crisis which is way more vital to address than fucking around with the catchment system). And your notions of bussing kids to impractical places based on ideology feels like some Maoist fantasy.

This is ridiculous. Why would I want to send my child across the city taking 2 buses every morning when we have a perfectly good school a 5 minute walk away? Why would I want to fund this journey when I have a school 5 minutes walk away? It would also mean they couldn't stay for after school activities at the school. Why would you want to increase traffic on the road at rush hour because many parents would be dropping of in cars?

London seems crazy to most of the UK. We only applied to one secondary and we knew she would get in... doesn't matter if you are age f catchment or next to school you get a place. In London you can apply for the 6 nearest schools and not get any of them.

This is a ridiculous idea

For fair banding and ballot admissions to work, there need to be no faith or grammar schools and means tested school transport.

No it wouldn't. I wouldn't be able to afford the bus fairs every day if they got a school across the city. I carnt drive due to a disability. How exactly does that make it fair and equal. I big clue for you, it dosent.

You're looking at this backwards.

Don't worry about making school allocation fair.

Worry about making crap schools better.

should be a lottery system with priority given to those kids within a 30 min travel time of the school or a flat catchment area of six miles.

Our catchment already includes places 6 miles from the school. It's 8 HOURS of public transport to make that journey (according to Google, and moving the date away from bank holiday monday). Or a 30 min cycle down the duel carriageway (which would include a prohibited route for cyclists). A 30 min journey time, to arrive at school by 9am basically means a 2 mile walk as a radius in many places.

@pinkdelight Completely agree (as a ‘pushy’ AKA invested middle class parent myself).

If this kind of policy came in we would personally just hedge our bets and move to a ‘naicer’ town where all the schools were of a similarly high standard, as would most of our local friends.

We will probably be moving for secondary anyway, but there no way I would accept DD being sent across our current London borough to an inferior school; school run time is a huge flash point here for muggings and assaults anyway, often involving weapons. Even as it stands, with most children attending a fairly local school, dedicated after school patrols are needed to keep the children safe, and they’re told to head straight home, avoid loitering in the town centre etc. This would dramatically worsen if children were having to schlep further across the borough on public transport.

The problems in our schools run way deeper than catchments and middle class parents playing the system.

accept

So you're basically saying that the schools with the middle class children are the good schools and those with poorer children are the bad ones?

It's a chicken and egg situation. Are the middle classes moving to good schools or are their schools better because of those middle class parents that you hate so much?

From memory it's largely too late before DC start primary school. The first three years are crucial for child development. The focus for attainment should be there. There were Sure Start centres started by Blair that were unfortunately closed during Cameron's time.

And even if you have a mix of backgrounds at secondary school, it doesn't mean that the children will mix.

There will be sets and streams separating different groups of children according to academic ability. Those children whose parents can afford a tutor or who help their DC are likely to be in higher sets.

In terms of friendships, birds of a feather stick together. In DC's schools and from friends with DC in the local high school, the wealthy kids socialise together, the DC from poorer backgrounds socialise together. They don't mix or have anything to do with eachother.

So by mixing things up you would just be adding to road congestion and pollution.

Who is going to beat the burden of working out the logistics of this - the mother. Even more women will compromise their job opportunities and careers because they need to get the DC to a primary school 10 miles away and home again.
They are disadvantages to every system we have to work which we would rather accept. Children going to school close to home ( in walking distance) that means they can have local friends and there is less burden on mothers is my choice.

Well we'd have no chance under that system here. The County Council lays on coaches to get the local secondary school pupils there as there are no buses at all. Not sure they have the funds to provide 150 students access to different schools instead of the 3 coaches currently used to get them to1 of the 2 schools within the catchment area.

Having grown up in the London system, getting g home at 4.30 at the earliest, nearer 6 if doing a club...
Then comparing that to my DDs, who have a 5min walk, getting home at 4 after a club... they are definitely getting the benefit of more time after school for homework and fun. So I would argue, a local school is beneficial academically for children

But this isn’t the majority of schools. Parents have made a very pro active choice to send a kid to a faith school such as the Oratory or a super selective grammar / grammar stream. Or private.

Our area has an ‘outstanding ‘ co Ed Catholic secondary but parents still slog it out at the flower arranging, mass attendance and alter boy support to get places at the Oratory or the big name girls Catholic schools, an hour in public transport away. We also have Good comprehensives that do very well with each ability band, the top sets getting comparable results with the grammar stream that some parents tutor for for 3 years and is a journey by public transport.

But this is a choice, they are not consigned to these journeys by lottery.

@CitronellaDeVille not every London faith school is the Oratory though…

I went to good (still are) Catholic schools in London simply because my parents were immigrants & the primary was the closest one. We went to Church regularly as we would have anyway, no alter work or flower arranging needed. London catholics tend to have a fairly high % of dc who are 2nd gen immigrants and higher FSM %.

I didn’t actually have any friends who weren’t 1st or 2nd gen immigrants until I went to uni but demographics in London were also slightly different then.

But this is a choice, they are not consigned to these journeys by lottery.

Where did I claim it was? I just said longer journeys in London for secondaries was pretty common because it is.

Of course "kids in London" can travel an hour or more...public transport in London is fantastic. Have you ever been anywhere else?

I didn’t say you did claim that.

I was just pointing out that while it does happen it isn’t by default it’s because a parent has made a particular decision.

Discussion isn’t just about arguing!

I don’t hate the mc - I am part of it. I don’t like the class system. What really intrigues me is that most arguments to keep parental choice equally applies to private schools.

The argument ‘don’t take away choice, invest in all schools first and make sure there are no shit schools’ can be applied to the policy of applying VAT on private schools. The sentiment that ‘life will always be unfair, why take away ‘good’ schools and make everything mediocre’ can apply to the private schools debate. The argument that parents should not be penalised for ‘wanting the best’ or ‘being involved’ can also be applied to private schools. It underlines my point that most of you want to clobber those who have chosen private schools but draw the line at giving up your own privilege which is far more widespread and would have a much broader and better impact on integration of classes.

@Momentumummy your missing the point with private schools fees. We could afford private school as it stands now with the 20% but worry what he will do next. It is out of reach for the majority of working middle class at £1800 per month on average for senior school. However adding 200k to the mortgage is only around £600 a month for a much better school catchment plus you can get that back when you sell. It's even cheaper say 3k for the year if you rent for year 6 and part of year 7 before buying back outside of catchment.

We've moved into catchment are renovating the house and will likely sell at the end of it, where we go next is debatable.