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.

@Emotionalsupporthamster That’s why they could leave it as it is at primary level. That’s when you need local friends for playdates etc and a sense of community. Parents have little do to with schools at secondary level.

A fairer way would be for sibling catchment rules to change. That way renters can’t play the system - or will have to try harder for sure.

This would just put loads more vehicles on the roads at school times!

Tell me you live in London without telling me you live in London.

How would you expect this to work for the millions of families who live in more rural areas? Kids already need to catch the bus to school - school bus obviously, there's no public transport to most of the villages near me.

The person above who posted a 5-10 mile limit had a good idea. I’m just wondering what the fairest way is to allocate schools and distance to gates is not it! In some parts of London, houses can cost six figures more just for being in a good secondary catchment. How is that fair? I presume everyone arguing against this is either not a socialist or lives in a leafy catchment or has done some property planning to get their children into the best school for their budget. What about poor kids whose parents are not either financially or time rich or organised?

How about we just properly invest in all schools to make them (almost) equally good?

Local schools are important for safety, for fitness, for parental convenience, for cutting back on pollution ... The list goes on.

If some schools aren't so good as others then make the investments to address that, don't just randomly make millions of people's lives harder.

It is all pointless now. There is online after school tutoring and schooling and homeschooling available anyway. Even for poor kids, there are tons of resources online. Those who have an internet connection can learn if they want to. Schools should be making sure the vast majority of kids come out of primary with good numeracy and literary skills, this is already happening.
Government should work with online providers so all children have access to excellent online resources, including teaching videos. More transport and miles etc - it’s the opposite of what we should be doing with global warming.

But middle class folk will always find a way to give their kids a leg up so schools wouldn’t be equal based on pure investment if the middle class parents can continue to select by house price @woolflower

Wouldn't work in London, either. The sheer volume of kids that would have to travel across multiple bus routes (because trains are not free) and being stuck in traffic, waiting for multiple, already full to the brim, buses would render it impossible on any given school morning.

If they brought that in for my area (small city with large number of outlying villages and limited routes through the the centre), a large number of children wouldn't be able to go to school, or the council would go bankrupt trying to provide transport. Buses are almost non-existent and the extra traffic across the town centre at rush hour would bring the whole place to a standstill - rather than the near standstill we have at the moment.

We have catchment areas specifically designed to manage these problems, and the council still has to spend a fortune on getting children from some villages to school.

You realise not all parents drive?

Not every area has decent public transport and school transportation wouldn't work if pupils were coming from vastly different areas.

Most families have a single parent who works or both parents who work, the school run is a nightmare to coordinate around working hours, so it would be impossible to fit into the working day if the school was an hour away rather than 5 mins walk away.

I can understand your frustration at the situation but everyone knew if VAT was added to private school fees, then state schools would get more applications from wealthier families who were likely to be able to afford rent/mortgage near popular (& usually expensive) schools.

This was all debated before the election and it's what was voted for 🤷‍♀️

Think of the traffic, with kids going all across down when there's a school close to them. It's ridiculous

20% of kids are eatimated to be ND yet only a small number are diagnosed. We have an epemdic of anxiety in children, sending them to middle or secondary without friends won’t help.

But most kids don’t live in London….where I live no one gets a bus to primary or high school…..the furthest walk in our town ( 2 high school and 5 primaries) would be around 20 mins…..most walk around 10 mins

@Araminta1003 Jow many poor parents are time rich or have the mental energy to look up and organise after school free online tuition for teens who want do anything except homework, even the compulsory stuff set by schools? Of course resources are out there for poor kids to thrive if they by a stroke of luck have innate drive (mine don’t really) or parents equipped to organise and supervise it.

That's great in cities where there ARE buses and trains.

Your suggestion is nuts. Time and money wasting. Let's just make state schools better. Invest, invest, invest. It'll be better for all of us in the long run.

With you though on grammars. Let's get rid of the partial and unfair system

You seem to be personally hurt the catchment situation.

If you don't like something school related, try moving, try changing jobs etc. Get better qualifications.

It already takes me 35 minutes to get to work in the morning (a journey that takes 8-10 minutes when done at a non-school traffic time). If kids were all allocated a school 5-10 miles in some random direction, the roads would be mayhem.

I can never understand what people have against grammar schools.
Admittedly, I went to one.

Thee idea of kids going to nearest school works. Kids will be travelling too far otherwise. It's a good system in my opinion

Yeah that doesn't mean kids in towns want to travel an hour though does it. An 11 year old travelling miles and miles no you are being ridiculous

When mine went to secondary school we lived in 1 borough with 2 other boroughs close by. Had mine been forced to go to "our" borough schools and been allocated the school in the opposite end of the borough they would have been going to school 23 miles away as opposed to the 2 nearest schools 6 miles away. (Both in another borough) the nearest "borough school" would be 12 miles awat. Additionally there would have been no easy transport from where we lived to this (much larger) area and trains would have been 2 hours.

So in order to make it "fair" it would mean many children. Would be in schools hours away?

If you want fairness we would need to implement a system similar to Denmark (could never happen here) but basically you go to your nearest school and once a 27th child joins the class gets split into 2. So some years have 2-3 classes and others 1. Also no secondary schools or middle schools you go to the same school from reception to end. As I said it would not happen here as schools are set up differently.

I don't think there is a way to make it truly fair for anyone. I think your suggested way is unfair for more rural people.

@Monkeysatonthewall Why should I move when my whole point is that economic advantage should be eradicated. DC at primary - not closest one. Not the best but not the worst. They will be just fine as we are a 2 parent family on OK but not high income. I want them to live in a fairer society and Labour and especially Keir do not go far enough in ensuring this happens.

Do you have any idea how big some boroughs are? And how few busses/ public transport exist in most of the country??
Totally unworkable round here.