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.

The school we were describing with constant tutor groups has year groups of 360-400! So the tutor group is to keep a small setting, like a house type system, in an otherwise very big year group. The grammars my DC go to/went to have year groups that are tiny in comparison.

Classic, or classic Greek are not MFL offering.

Hopefully there will be more funding for Latin & Greek in comprehensives - given private school will be decimated, unis will have to close their Classics departments if there is nothing in the state sector across the board.

A lot of schools, including some comprehensive schools, have a house system (constant, vertical cross year groups, but again not grouping students based on abilities). These are different from tutor groups. Tutor groups are usually affiliated with one teacher and are much smaller, typically consisting of 20-60 students in the same year...

The fact there are different types of banding may actually help children individually!

How so? The whole point of a banding test is to balance the intake’s ability distribution when the lottery/random factor is introduced. For example, if based on NVR, it ensures that a school’s intake consists of students with top, middle, and bottom NVR innate abilities. It doesn’t favor or disadvantage a student based on their abilities, hence no incentive for parent external influence... Adding one or two subjects only adds more dimensions to the distribution and definitely doesn’t require many subjects to maintain a good balance

If there were GCSE subject for secondary admissions process, you'd better revise now..

MFL languages must be languages which are currently spoken in European countries, yes. I am aware that Latin is not an MFL subject, but my point is that not all grammars offer it.

If you stream for all core subjects, how does it benefit those who are in the middle sets that the children in the top sets are taught in the same building and not in another building across town?

the argument for comprehensive being better for the majority assumes the most able children are in the same class as the middle to lower ability, not streamed.

if you are pro streaming then you might as well have the 11+ with an additional 13+.

Because it allows for much more tailored streaming. Children can be in the top set for those subjects they excel at and much lower sets for those they don't.

Take my friend's son who has achieved grade 9 in maths and physics GCSE but only a grade 3 in English. He wouldn't have passed the 11+ bit he absolutely should be taught alongside the very brightest science and maths students.

But back to the original idea - distance from school is the most fair, straightforward and practical way to allocate school places.

outside of city centres, expecting children to travel vast distances to school, often without other children making the same journey is unfair and impractical.

in cities with a public bus service that will travel most of the route anyway it’s feasible but outside of that, the costs to put on transport for only a few children would be prohibitively expensive and so most parents would have to arrange transport.

my dd will have to use public transport for secondary and I’m really glad there are 5 other children from her primary class going to do the same journey so she’s not alone. (Others are going to the same school but will travel a different way). As it is she’s going to have to leave the house around 7:30am to get to school on time, if she was now having to go to a school the next town over so someone in that town can travel in the opposite direction, schools will have to rethink school hours, homework allocation, after school clubs etc.

Basically what works for London doesn’t work in a situation where children are already travelling an hour to get to school without a lottery system, not everyone’s local catchment school is a 10 minute walk away. (The nearest school we put on our list is a faith school that’s a 35 minute walk away, we timed it when visiting for a tour.)

Sorry that’s a really long post to say “fine to have a lottery between a 10 minute walk and 40 minute walk school options, not great for outside the city when it’s a 40 minute or 2 hour journey option.” (Unless everyone’s cool with their council tax bills going up and taxis for everyone)

A grade 9 in maths and 3 in English? That child has been failed by their school. A child that gets a 9 in maths is very intelligent, but obviously needed help and support for English. That’s a pretty shocking educational failure.

To help to establish a better discussion, here is my definition.

Streaming: Grouping students by overall academic ability for almost all subjects. Once group are formed, fixaed for multiple years and most subjects, indeed this is very similar to having a grammar class inside a comprehensive....

Setting: Grouping students by ability in specific subjects. Such group is mainly for teaching purpose, per subject, and can be updates and regroup in a regular interval.

Mixed Ability Teaching: Teaching students of varying abilities together in the same class. Typically benificial to have a more inclusive teaching environment and studnet can learn from each other.

I support using these two methods in a comprehensive setting, depending on the subject and year level.

I kind of agree, it is harder to implement in rural areas, so while introducing a lottery, a maximum travel time by reasonable transport should be applied define the catchment.

The child, for example, can be an immigrant speak EFL only recently, such as a refugee from Ukraine family.

I don’t want the Government to force my DC to go to a school 40 minutes walk away, when I can now have a 10 minute walk, if I so choose. Or I can choose a grammar 10 minutes away on the bus, or one 20 minutes away on the train etc.

I know my children best. I don’t need others to tell me what is best for my child. Neither do I need a pass in GCSE admissions for schools. I have a large community network of friends and acquaintances and teacher friends and I absolutely know what is best for my own DC. As do most people, taking into their particular family circumstances.

I can assure you that is not the case at all. He does have various SEN and he has had lots of support in school and in exams (extra time, a scribe or a laptop, a separate room). But English and subjects that require a lot of essay writing he is always going to struggle hugely with.

Far from being failed by the school, he has been given the opportunity to excel where he is able to.

Large schools don’t always mean sets with a narrower range of ability. Some larger schools split the year into 2 equal ability sides of the year then within each side. Some split the year into 3 and each third of the year has sets within it.

Kids in London have a selection of buses and trains to use. In my area there are still grammars but they only take a small proportion of children and the other schools are genuinely comprehensive (most have sixth forms). There are lots of rural villages and buses run to the main town schools from these, and some of them do take an hour. However, under your proposal, children would need to travel an hour into a travel hub and THEN half an hour on a school bus or a local bus, and school buses would need to run from each village with or without a school, to the central travel hub, and THEN to each larger village with a school again.

So currently if you live in large village A you tend to get a place at school A. If you want a place at town school B or C and you get a place, you get the school bus (which ONLY runs at that time). But if you live in village D without a secondary school, you are nearest to the town so you also get a school bus into the town. So that's bus 1 and bus 2.
Under your proposals SOME of the children from village D would be randomly allocated school A because it's random, and then there would ALSO need to be a third bus from village D earlier in the morning to get a fourth bus from town to village A to get the D children to A on time for school.

I don't think you quite understand how transport works outside London. Even in our old suburb E you could, in theory, walk to comprehensive F in about 40 minutes but there is no direct regular bus. A school bus leaves from the end of the road but only in the mornings, returning after school. There is no choice of public transport: it's walk, cycle, or get that specific bus.

Travelling on a bus when you have a childhood obesity crisis and could walk instead, what a fantastic idea! Not to mention zero sense of pedagogy and the issues buses create because there is no adult supervision. Absolutely not in the bests interests of children socially, physically nor emotionally. Plus it will make zero difference anyway to outcomes when outcomes are primarily dictated by parenting in the first place.

It’s worth noting that many students attending super-selective schools in London or its suburbs still travel to school by bus, with some regularly enduring journeys of like 90 minutes one way.

These comprehensive setting arguments can only even work in very large schools and therefore can only ever work in big cities. Smaller comps only have two or three classes per year group. That clearly isn't enough to provide a top set that stretches the brightest kids (maybe only one child per class and/or year group) or prevent kids ending up in unsuitable classes (e.g. bottom set kids ending up in the top set in order to even out the class sizes).

The only practical way to do this in rural areas is local comprehensives (let's hope they're not failing!) and grammars for the brightest kids. That way only the brightest and highest motivated kids/parents have to commute to the regional grammar. The other kids get to keep their existing commutes. Otherwise, you'd need a single huge comp with all the kids commuting from a vast geographical area.

As somebody else posted, disadvantaged kids are the least likely to attend school when a commute is required. The creation of giant rural comps would also result in the mass movement of parents to the town hosting the comp, with an associated increase in house prices, and it would be the poorest families saddled with the longest commutes. They'd also be isolated outside of school with all the associated problems that would create - rural ghettos? How would that help social mobility?

Those parents that don't want their kids to do the 11+ are free to just send their kids to the local comp.

Given how 'popular' the anti-grammar movement is in the minds of the detractors, the existence of a grammar schools should have negligible impact upon the surrounding comps...

That way only the brightest and highest motivated kids/parents have to commute to the regional grammar

What is the travel distance and time of the typical regional grammar for the rural area like? As you pointed out, disadvantage kids are less likely to attend further away, and you want to further cream off family who already have advantage move away from local school, how would that help social mobility?

There is no grammar schools in Scotland and Wales..

There is a sixth form entry for students who have matured and demonstrated strong academic standards, allowing them to attend larger regional sixth form schools.

By choice. Because their parents put a high value on that particular school. Not because they’ve been allocated it in a lottery, when the school down the road is just as good.

This years paper hasn’t been checked, but over the last 10 years where GCSE papers have been published (so not covid years) the GCSE maths paper had an English reading age of 15.5 years old on average. If you don’t have the ability to read English to the level of a 15 year old, you can’t pass GCSE maths at a high grade.

In all schools I'm familiar with, this "Form Tutor", as opposed to class teacher, has primary responsibility for keeping track of pastoral care for their form students. I think it's quite good if the same teacher can follow a student for all of senior school, i.e., the student stays in the same form group for five years.