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

LOL Swedes but I think you are under a bit of an illusion here.

11 year olds have to make that journey too.

But surely it is not a good thing to have to use fossil fuels to get to school?

Ah yes, the green argument. The educational nimby's friend.

It's a very compelling one - not only in using less fuel, but also by avoiding traffic congestion and wasting time!

My 14 and 17 year olds managed at age 11 to get a train into a nearby city in order to get to school. And found their way home again, daily. I think it's good to have a sense of independence.

Don't educational nimbys' children have legs? Can't they walk to bus stops, train stations or to school itself. Do they only travel by car?

wicked couldn't agree more about the quality of the HT and SMT driving the school.

Sadly I've experienced schools taking a real nosedive following the appointment of a poor HT with weak yes-men governors. The calibre of the children hasn't changed, nor has the socio-economic background of the parents. But the attainment of the children has dropped due to the focus moving away from the staff and children and onto the empire building desires of the HT .

I'm absolutely with Swedes on this one. The 'bad'schools may have much better teachers, than those at the 'good' schools. There could be a lottery for the teachers too, that wouldn't be a bad idea.

Something has to be done, because the system isn't working at the moment particularly well is it??

I quite like the thought of my DCs walking to school. Their high school catchment is neither great nor crap.

In Edinburgh if you live in the catchment area the school has to find a place. However if you move siblings are not guaranteed a place. If there are any places left over then siblings are given priority.

I would love if my ds's could get into our nearest state secondary school - but it is so oversubscribed that we probably won't get in even though it's our nearest.

The thing is, what is a 'good' school?

The 'good' schools in my area are deemed to be the ones accessed by the Boden wearing type parents who have somehow decided their school is the 'best', competitive parenting coming to the fore. OK they get good results (but wouldn't they just, with all the clever children there). There are plenty of other schools which are perfectly acceptable but in less affluent areas of the town. As different areas of the town become more affluent, so the schools become more desirable.

As a somewhat older parent (ahem) and with older grown up children, I see these 'good' schools going in phases, one year it's XXXX school, and the next it's all moved on to another, which ten years ago would have been unacceptable to most parents.

The "educational nimby" crack is cheap and inaccurate. It's not just a question of one child popping to a bus stop and sitting on a nice quiet bus for 20 minutes. It would be every child in the city doing so - getting 2, 3 buses, trams, trains... and for what? To pander to some ridiculous pseudo-utopianist bullshit idea that we are all more "equal" if we all have to travel across town to school?

(Except those who go private, of course. Let's not forget they've conveniently risen above it all and will probably be sailing past in Mummy's 4x4, cocking a snook at the "bus wankers" like on "The Inbetweeners". Talk about Nimby.)

A lottery system lets the government off the hook. It means it can pretend all schools are equal by distributing people - at great inconvenience, as if people were cattle (maybe that's all state school pupils are to some people), across the city or borough. And thereby not actually have to address the problem of failing schools.

Plus I'm well aware of other men including ABetadad here - we have had exchanges often enough - I just didn't see him on this thread. (Exasperated sigh.)

The system works fine here thank you. Some people are unable to look out of their inner city world. It does not appear newsworthy to publish stories of areas where people are happy with schools and don't have admissions problems.

Whilst some children travel a long way to secondary school I don't think its a good idea.

I grew up in the sticks and went to a private secondary school 13 miles away. The journey was tedious and I didn't have any local friends..some of my friends lived 30 miles away. It was a great school and I was lucky to have a good education.

However when it comes to my DCs I like the idea that I can send them to a good comp 10 minutes walk away and that they will have local friends.

The green issue is important. Do people want our roads to be even more congested and polluted so we can all drive our children to schools miles away.

I had a similar experience to womble - grew up in sticks, went to grammar (mine was state) 15 miles away, tedious journey, no local friends in my village, great academic education but don't want that experience for my children.

So if there was a grammar school in your area UQD, but it was a bus ride away, would you not enter your children for admission to it?

Anybody who wants a bloody lottery should be prepared to put their own children through such a system. Put up or shut up.

How is answering that hypothetical question going to help, pumpkineater? I can't say I wouldn't. But it would be under a totally different system.

This thread was supposed to be about the ethics of lying to get into catchment, but has somehow got diverted into discussing the silly idea of a lottery.

I'm not sure how many areas are even operating a lottery, apart from Brighton. I keep reading that Herts does, but that is only for 2 single-sex schools, and is used as a tie-break on criteria 6 or 7, by which point the schools are almost certainly full.

But to answer the OP, no it's not illegal to let your house and rent somewhere else short-term, if the County concerned do not specifically state their policy on it (as Bucks does, I believe, but the stakes are higher there as it has the 11+ system). If they want to stamp out that practice, then they need to word their admissions criteria accordingly.

To go back to OP I think it is morally wrong to rent a house near a school you want with no intention of buying or renting long term in that area.

Abetadad's suggestion was good..that if people move away from the school they should give up their child's place or at the very least not be given automatic places for younger siblings.

Likewise those whose children have church places should continue to take their children to church on a regular basis past reception age!

I was merely saying a lottery would be more fair than the current system which very clearly says: You can't afford to complain, so sink school it is, matey. It's a shit system and appallingly unfair.

You have a warped view of fairness, swede

I agree the current system is not ideal. But that's no reason for it to be deliberately replaced by something which would be just as wrong and would cause chaos.

Swedes is right of course. Lotteries are by far the fairest (if not necessarily the most practical) system, and would stand the best chance of narrowing the gap between the best and the worst schools.

Mind you, if dd were not barred on religious grounds from the excellent school that sits 20 yards from our house, I would certainly be utterly opposed to lotteries

Naturally enough, we all favour the system that would most benefit our own children however we like to rationalise it.