If State Education is for all and all are equal - how come people get 'priority' places?

[Fridayfeeling]

My DS2 has not got a place at the local nursery school because he does not meet the criteria. Most of which I can accept - children in danger at home etc. BUT.... I find it hard to accept that children are prioritised because they come from a family on income support and job seekers allowance - what does this have to do with a place at a nursery school? Is a child not a child? I thought state education provided for all equally?

Mercy, no-one is denying that it's an imperfect way of identifying children who are likely to underachieve in their education. Of course all children whose parents receive benefits are not in the same situation. In fact I have explicitly said that that is not the case.

TMF - I know you know that! There are plenty of people who don't though.

Anyway, I must be unusual in that my dc nursery school has no admission criteria, no admission forms. And it is over-subscribed.

We don't either. We do however hold open places for traveller children who are poor attenders (and who would consequently normally lose their place) and thereby deny another child the opportunity of that session at our oversubscribed preschool...

Lots of problems with the broad brush strokes approach.
The traveller children one for example - how do you define this group, and where do you draw the line? How about a parent who has a laid back approach and takes their child out of nursery pretty regularly for whatever reason? Would they have their place held open? I know some traveler families have fairly fixed patterns and travel around for seasonal work etc, but equally there are other families who travel because they want to. Tricky one.

We do it at the request of the traveller service. We don't make any judgements ourselves at all.

Our preschool has no admissions criteria.

Yeah, I wasnt meaning you personally were making any judgements TFM. It's just an interesting point. The traveller service, will, of course, fight the corner of all the families in their caseload. It just seems a shame that there arent systems for targeting support where it's needed in a more focused way.

littlelady: I do think it is worth thinking about how middle class academics and civil servants view the low income families - and as I have said all the way through this although my pain is short lived (and actually I am over it already) the labelling of low income families can last a lifetime and I think it will be in everyone's interest to examine why low income is seen as a 'need for educational assistance' in such circumstances. It may be a blessing in disguise for low income families to get priorities such as these.

The report I mentioned earlier is being discussed on another thread (lower IQ in working class families) and by assuming that low income families are not educating their children, they are kept in their place by the m/c academics and media.

If you think I actually think that I am resentful/jealous/want to be poor, you have totally misunderstood my argument. I think it is non-cohesive and ultimately harmful - but actually probably not for me.

Its really about positive discrimination Fridayfeeling, which, while necessary, is in itself a form of discrimination.

One person's positive discrimination is another person's negative.

What do you think of means testing? Poor people get more child tax credit.

This nursery is using means testing to decide which children need the free places the most. Children who do not go to this nursery still get nursery vouchers that they can use elsewhere.

Yes, it's fairly obvious that this nursery is using means testing. The whole thread centres around whether the methods used are appropriate. As has been pointed out, it seems a hugely innacurate process.