catchment areas - how is it measured?

[Mammina]

when a school says it accepts children from e.g. 2.2 miles from the school, is that as the crow flies or is it done by roads?
thanks

depends on the council

As EldonAve says diff council say diff things!

Check their website?

ok, thanks. might have to give them a call as it's unclear

Also, depending on entry criteria, the catchment area may increase or decrease, year on year.

Also worth asking what the school's actual intake area was last year. Our school's official catchment area is quite large, but in fact the furthest it took a child from last year was about 800 metres away, so a very small area in reality.

Our schools don't have catchments per se. Each year they have x number of spaces, and working on the criteria i.e. LA care, statement of special needs, siblings, proximity they work outwards as the crow flies from front door of school to front door of house until the spaces are filled. So one year they might go almost a mile. The next could be as little as 300m. All depends.

IME it's as the crow flies - so concentric circles with the school as the middle, depending on that year's applications after statemented children and siblings of pupils.

My council works on the actual walking distance measured by footpath or public road.

Does anyone know how the borough of Haringey, London, measures the distance from school to house?

Is it by council recognized footpath? or is it really as the crow flys?

and is it from the schools gate or front door of school building?

Many thanks!

For community schools in Haringey, it is straight line distance from the address point on the school to the address point of the individual house using a computerised system. This can be very accurate and only has a problem when you have flats etc. Not sure what Haringey do then.

However if you are looking at faith schools, then you need to look at the individual school admission arrangements - at least one uses school gate to house as the measure.

What is the address point exactly?(!) the gate to the school "grounds" from the pavement or the building itself?

Many thanks!!!

our local schools dont have catchment area which is very unfair. we now have local children unable to get into their local school as kids are travelling over 20 miles to get to it. which means that the local kids have to travel upto and over 20 miles to the next secondary schools which is pushing the local kids their out and they have to travel miles to a school.

Ed Balls et all only considered schools in major cities forgetting that in many rural towns there are is generally only one and sometimes two secondary schools. eac with limited places. as many of these do far better than the ones in the cities we get the yummy mummies bringing their kids to the better school.
there is a need to to return to catchment areas for rural communities and stop townies grabbing places

CasperTFG - The address point is defined by the Ordnance Survey. It is an arbitrary point within the building at the address. So the address point for the school will be somewhere within the school building and the address point for your home will b esomewhere within your house.

Thereiver - Most LAs use distance from the school as a tie breaker rather than having formal catchment areas. You say there are children travelling over 20 miles to get into your local school. Unless they are high priority according to the admission criteria for that school (e.g. they have siblings already at the school) that won't happen in most LAs. The children who live closest to the school will get admitted. Some LAs, however, use a lottery as the tie breaker which means that local children don't get priority.