bbc news tonight - parents lying to get into schools made me wonder...

[jollygumbear]

if you rent your house out and then rent yourself in catchment and live there for a year does that make the application for the school illegal?

i won't say "wrong" as that's another thread as its all about personal opinion!

thanks

UQD - abetadad is also on this thread if you look up just a few posts! I agree with abetadad's post above.

Swedes - I am completely opposed to lotteries..if one lives within 10 mins walk of a secondary school it would be very frustrating to have to get in the car to go to a further one. At secondary age children walk to school more so it is better if children in the same area go to the same school and can walk together.

I suspect most of the problems with school admissions are in cities. Where I live (town in home counties) there are good state primaries and secondaries and at secondary level people are allocated places at their nearest school and no one seems unhappy.

I will be furious if some kind of lottery is introduced nationwide as a result of a few disgruntled people in London. If you don't like the schools near you MOVE to a smaller house in a better area!

I live in the home counties and it's a nightmare as it has the 11+ which means everyone wants a good primary to stand a chance at getting into the grammar! I live (and we've sadly measured!) 2 mins walk from the nearest school...and that's not our catchment; our road isn't posh enough. We've been dragged into the 'bad area' school which is literally miles away Catchment has no bearing on distance for us. So, for us a lottery would make no difference, as we're not allowed the luxury of walking to school anyway.

Apologies to Abetadad! I think I hadn't looked all the way up.

It does seem bizarre that a government which claims to support "walk to school" initiatives is also trying out lotteries. The two are not exactly compatible.

I must admit that I watch all of this with bemusement - round here if you don't fancy your local school for some reason, there are usually places elsewhere. My DD's school is actively trying to recruit more children, and it's a wonderful school. Is this mainly a problem in large towns & cities?

I think you could be right Bramshott. We have just moved to a rural market town where there are 3 under subscribed Ofsted outstanding schools.

LOL at UQD thinking he's the only man in the village.

Before too long a state secondary education will be a series of online multiple choice worksheets, for which nothing less than an A* Gold grade will be awarded. The LEA will have a webcam view to ensure there are no Digestive crumbs on the students' keyboards, and the LEA will carry out Health and Safety checks ont he swivel chairs, not less than annually. Most swivel chairs will be upholstered in black boiled-wool-effect polyester but there will be a few in patent red leatherette, with brass casters. These will be reserved for children whose parents have a relationship with their local vicar.

Yes I think it tends to be a problem in towns and cities - and the other issue is that unfortunately schools tend to get "talked up" or "talked down" in some cases quite unfairly.

My inner cynic had to snigger a little at the head of the secondary near us who was being interviewed in the BBC studio, and who at least twice referred to his school as "one of the best schools in the country" whilst complaining that people lie to get their dcs in! Nothing like a bit of publicity to up the demand, eh?

agree with jeffvader, what is morally wrong and should be illegal is that parents have to resort to doing this

jeanjeannie - are you really saying that your road has been shifted from a school's catchment area because it's not posh enough? Or were you joking?

UQD - its OK I randomly answer your posts too.

happywomble - that is not a bad idea having a local lottery in a local area but overlayed with a rule forcing parents to move out of the school if they move out of the local area.

If it was also combined with classroom streaming so more able kids could go at a faster pace then kids who were struggling that might well work.

It would answer the 'ghetto' problem and also the problem of kids being shunted miles away to less popular schools. All kids should be able to go to school by one short bus ride or a walk.

Bonsoir - "And parents who would normally think of themselves as law-abiding will go to great lengths to secure a decent education for their children."

As the law says that it's a parent's duty to cause their child to receive a suitable education for their child, surely it would be breaking the law not to do the best they can to secure what they consider a suitable education.

Agree with stuffitllama that parents shouldn't have to resort to these things.

I think a lottery system would work in big towns and cities. The furthest of the 3 nearest high schools is less than 2 miles away which is easily walkable by most 11+ year olds or there are buses that cater for it.

I'm really have thought this through and am not in a convenient position to buy my self out of it. Our local school has a dire reputation. house prices are reflected by this. If our house was in the next street of identical houses it would be worth £75,000 more just because it was in the next catchment. I'm with Swiss, the people opposed to a lottery have already spent the money moving and are worried it will affect the house price.

Abetadad - I don't like the idea of a lottery full stop.

I agree with Bonsoir.

In extreme situations people will steal to feed ther DCs. Likewise, people will fiddle the system to get their DCs a decent education. As I said earlier, some people like my friends will also ditch their closely held principles, and even 'find God' in order to get their DCs an education.

Turning parents into criminals when all they are tryng to do is the best for their DCs is not the way to go.

I predict a riot over this. Parents are desperate and more kids are leaving private schools so the good schools are becoming more over subscribed. Some parents will just refuse to send their DCs to a bad school. In effect a parent strike.

The adudicator estimated in his report around 3000 cases of lying and other scams by parents - the comments on this thread suggest that it is more widespread problem than this, at least in some parts of the country. This behaviour is fraudulent and wrong and better sanctions are needed.

I would, however, that the increasing role of the adjudicator and state in local school admissions criteria may well have unintended consequences in terms (not of controlling or directing demand for school places) but also of changing the character and variety of supply - eg schools of a religious character, schools with a focus on music or schools with a particular strength. Say in SEN.

Sanction parents who lie but put the bossy adjudicator firmly back in his box for fear that he will exacerbate the source of the problem - too few schools that parents want to choose.

There were near-riots in Paris last summer when the newly-introduced computer system for the allocation of lycée (school for 15-18 year olds) failed to allocate places in reasonable schools close to home to a significant number of very bright pupils with good grades - in effect, some bright pupils got sent to the leftover places in sink schools because of weird criteria in the system. Parents went mad.

And don't even get me started on children applying to state lycées from private collèges. There were no places at all for them .

A lottery is not fair on the kid who has to go to a sink school. Having to travel across town to do so just rubs salt in the wound.

A lottery is wrong for so many reasons.

Wicked - But there would be no sink schools. That's the whole point.

So are you all conscienceless about people who live in not very nice areas having to go to sink schools, and continuing forever more to do so?

There are sink schools everywhere on the planet. They are unavoidable.

lottery might work for secondary, but not sure it's reasonable or practical to expect primary age children to travel across cities.

(My journey to secondary school was a 30 mile round trip - bit of a bugger but I survived.)

I didn't say anything about the area, swedes.

How does a lottery abolish sink schools? Does the same logic hold for good schools?

I think the thinking behind the lottery is that every school will have an equal mix of students (rich, poor, clever, dim, all the variants in the middle) and will "even schools out".

Even if that were true (it won't really happen because towns themselves are socially not equal) we all also know that pupils are not the only ingredient that counts in a school.

Indeed. The quality of the headteacher and SMT really drives a school.

Maybe they will have a lottery for staff too.

It would be very interesting to see what would happen if there wasn't a choice - that children simply had to attend the nearest school. The parents would have no choice but to get involved in supporting the school, rather than looking down their noses and calling it 'bad' or 'sink' or 'bog standard'. The schools would have a more level playing field and maybe people would start looking at what the school does for the kids that attend, rather than just the A-C pass rate.

Well they probably won't have an equal mix, but they will have a random mix of pupils. This randomness will make it impossible for the Boden classes to colonize a school. Which is why they have suddenly infantilised their 14 year olds by suggesting they can't possibly handle a short bus or train journey across town.