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

Fairest for who?

For everybody, obviously. That's what fair means, isn't it?

But you see, it can't possibly be fair, because it isn't fair to those people who don't get a good school place, especially if they live nearby and have to travel to worse place.

You cannot have a win-win with a lottery. It's just not possible.

There are plenty of children not getting good school places now.

UQD I never get you mixed up with Betadad

I agree with you about impracticality of lottery.

Can I also say that having gone to a grammar school where friends lived up to 20 miles away from me, it was something that really blighted my childhood socially and I would never wish it for my DC.

I am delighted that they go to schools 10 mins' walk away.

Oh I see that happywomble says exactly the same thing.

The solution is not to have a different set of children with poor school places, and the added burden of being tired and cranky from having to commute.

The solution is to something that Labour does not have the stomach to tackle.

Clary - DW used to commute to grammar school 10 miles across town with 3 bus journeys. For that reason we are also very much against our 3 chldren commuting and drove our entire decision on where we live right next to the school.

Well that's all super if you have the resources to buy a house near a school that is acceptable to you, or happen to have got lucky and live near a good one anyway.

I know it's hard, but try to imagine for a moment that you were not in that fortunate position and your only choice was a relatively poor school. Would you prefer that school to be full of disadvantaged kids, because all the parents with the means to do so had done everything in their power to avoid it, or would you prefer your child to be in that same school but with children from a wide range of backgrounds and enough motivated parents on the pta to make a difference?

The discussion has got on to a lottery system because that is the only way it is going to stop people lying to get into schools in nice, affluent areas.

My point about travelling to a grammar school is that people will travel if they want to.

I think they should get rid of church schools (or at least abolish the religion entrance criteria). I've still never seen the point of having schools, paid for out of our taxes/council money that all children are not able to access. If you want a private religious school, go for it. But if a school is deemed to be a state school, then imo, all children should be eligible to go to it.

Making the church schools open to all would assist in the problems in certain parts of London.

Completely agree with Zephrine and foxinsocks.
And yes lotteries do operate in areas other than Brighton.
I'm in Southwark and know of one school in the borough and 2 in neighbouring boroughs that operate lotteries.
The one in this borough operates a banding system ( 3 bands ,no idea how they asses/rank them ) and then fill the bands by lottery.
Would have thought easier to operate lottery system in big cities ( in London good transport links ,free travel for students and kids seem to travel miles anyway to secondary schools ).
Imagine travel logistics more of a problem in rural areas.

The "fairest" system, if we are talking in ideals, is to have one in which there are no "good" and "bad" schools.

This is what the government should at least be trying to work towards - any other "solution" is a cop-out which acknowledges that "some schools are more equal than others". Parents know this to be the case, but the government try to tell us it's not. So if it's not, why would we need lotteries? QED.

Plus, it would just result in more parents being allocated schools in inconvenient places and therefore appealing. And an awful lot dropping out of the state system.

I'm not talking about London - I'm thinking of a city like Sheffield, where I live, or Manchester or Birmingham. If you live on one side of the city and are allocated a school on the other side, it;s quite possible ti could take 2 or 3 buses/trams and a journey of a couple of hours to get through the morning traffic - which would be horrendously increased anyway because everyone was doing it.

It may be that lotteries would work well in some areas and not in others.

The point about good and bad schools (which has been made several times already) is that bad schools get worse when they are avoided by all parents with the ability to do so. The lottery system is not just about an abstract idea of fairness, it is about narrowing the gap between the best and the worst.

Agree with foxinsocks that getting rid of the church schools' unique admissions policies would solve a few problems in a lot of areas of London.

As some one has already said, a lottery system is simply the local authority acknowledging that they have failed and are trying to put a sticking plaster on a horrible system.

Ask yourself why some schools are bad, and most people will, rightly, say that the problem is disruptive behaviour and, as a knock on, demotivated teachers and lack of real leadership and a viscous circle thereafter.

Spreading disruptive students evenly throughout a borough/lea will taint all schools, even the previously good ones. It only takes two or three students exhibiting 'low level disruption' to wreck a lesson and make the lives of fellow students and their teachers miserable and to interfere with their education.

What the government needs to tackle is why students are disruptive in the first place - the root causes (reckless home lives and poor parenting will cover most of them). But the government doesn't want to do this - they just want to throw more cash at these families so they can perpetuate the lifestyle.

"I'm not talking about London - I'm thinking of a city like Sheffield, where I live, or Manchester or Birmingham. If you live on one side of the city and are allocated a school on the other side, it;s quite possible ti could take 2 or 3 buses/trams and a journey of a couple of hours to get through the morning traffic - which would be horrendously increased anyway because everyone was doing it."

But the point is you only put down the three schools to which your child is willing and able to travel, so you enter the lottery for 1st choice and if that's not successful, lottery for 2nd choice etc. It's really not as complicated as some peoplea are making out.

As for abolishing church schools, why do you want to get rid of something that parents want?

They want church schools for a reason, and it is not coincidence that being a church school and these reasons are inter-twined.

If it weren't for the church, thsee schools wouldn't be there in the first place, so why not just pretend they don't exist?

So basically, wicked, you are advocating keeping the disruptive kids from chaotic backgrounds well away from the schools near the expensive houses, at least until such time as chaotic backgrounds and disruptive kids are eliminated from society.

And I don't think anyone has mentioned abolishing church schools, just bringing them into line with community schools on their admissions policies.

yes zephirine that's what I meant. I can't see the point of having them (with the admission criteria they have now) unless they conform to the way a normal state school works.

Do parents want them? I bet parents want them if they are perceived as good schools but not if they are perceived as bad schools which begs the question as to whether they should exist.

in the boroughs I've lived in in London, in all places, people were able to swing getting their kids into the religious schools because they did their church miles or made church donations and thus got a place. I'm sure there were some who were genuine church goers but there were certainly a large proportion who weren't.

And one church had to announce that it would no longer christen 4 year olds because it was, quite frankly, taking the piss to suddenly find god when your child was 4, around 3 months before the admission slips had to be in!

Faith schools admissions is one of my pet hates. I had the bizarre experience of all except 1 of DS2's state primary school mates going on to a faith secondary but DS2 being unable to apply for said school because I am not a regular church goer. Even though he is a church goer and member of choir and has since been confirmed etc.

Arf, anyway. Who would want to go to a school that imposed such arbitrary and stupid rules?

Aargh! That is bizarre and infuriating.

I believe there are some church schools that operate perfectly well without these patently unjust admission criteria. So it's not that hard. It is amazing to that this situation is deemed acceptable.

"What they could do (and should do imo) is to change the sibling criterion so that sibling priority would no longer apply if the family had moved to a new area since the original sibling had started school."

They do this in this LEA now, fantastic idea. I will certainly move near to a high performing secondary school in time for DDs application but this would not involve unusual upheaval for us as we rent and move around all the time anyway. We would remain open minded on the subject of staying beyond a 12 month tenancy. I think one of the worst way that the current system discriminates (against less organised families with a more peripatetic lifestyle) is with the time scales and planning involved. I can't see why there can't be a July/ August allocation of places based on comtemporary proof of address.

"So basically, wicked, you are advocating keeping the disruptive kids from chaotic backgrounds well away from the schools near the expensive houses, at least until such time as chaotic backgrounds and disruptive kids are eliminated from society."

No, not exactly. What I am advocating is not trying to say everything is OK by spreading disruptive pupils throughout every school, because that is exactly what a lottery is out to do.

And it is not a case of eliminating pupils that are already disruptive. It's a case of stopping innocent babies developing into disruptive older children.

I didn't say anything about expensive homes. I live in the catchment of a fairly shitty school, and I share that catchment area with one of the most expensive areas in the country. Expensive doees not mean a good catchment area.

Maybe once people can stop making sweeping generalisations and stupid assumptions, we can have a sensible debate.

I agree about church school admission. Heck, I even think it is a good idea not to let church children in. Let as many unchurched children as possible get exposed to the Christian faith through school, and let Christian children bear witness in their non-church school.

Some church schools do restrict places for churched children, btw. I know of a vicar who couldn't get his own children into his own parish school.