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

I don't follow your logic, wicked. It's far easier for the chattering classes (us, natch) to "say everything is OK", and ignore the failing schools when we have a system in place that allows us to avoid them.

As for expensive houses, where I live there is a fairly close correlation between catchment area and house prices. I don't think this is unusual. Was this the "stupid assumption" you had in mind, or were there others you wanted to object to?

I don't think we are ignoring failing schools. The amount of money that is thrown their way is quite astounding.

But making children commute for an hour to and from these schools is not going to improve them very significantly. It is only going to make life miserable for these particular children.

Clearly then throwing money at them isn't enough. We need integration as well.

As for catchment areas, I live in a very densely populated area, served by a 1000 pupil school, and we have a very diverse catchement area. There are council house estates (the type where no one has exercised teh right to buy) cheek-by-jowl with multi-million pound mansions, and everything in between.

I expect, countrywde, most catchments are similar. Only in very populated cities are you going to have socially uniform catchments.

I think one of the problems that 'choice' in education has done is to take away traditional catchment areas so that families use to align with each other through the schools.

If you want to have a social mixed school, just revert to upholding catchment areas with every child going to their local school (or to independent). It would take away a lot of anguish and uncertainty too.

No, we are throwing money at the wrong place. Meddling with schools is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The problem has to be tackled in infancy (and even earlier).

Moving disruptive children to other schools without tackling the underlying cause of their disruptive behaviour is just moving the problem. These kids are suddenly going to be model students because they are sitting beside nice kids.

Abolish church schools, make everyone go to their local catchment school and get rid of "choice" (which is meaningless anyway). It's not rocket science. Lotteries are NOT the answer.

I really do hate that abolish word. We do live in a free country.

Usually abolish is used when talking about something that many people highly value.

Why don't we abolish all the horrible things in our country instead?

True, perhaps "abolish" is not the right word. But the system would undoubtedly make more sense with no faith schools in the state equation. I'm not in favour of closing them. Just making them secular.

I think I agree with that reverting to traditional catchment area. That wouold certainly enforce diversity in my area. I'm going through sec admission atm for DS2 and the notion of choice is fairly risible.

There is this notion of 'school specialisms'. Each school has an area of learning in which it calls itself strongest, and resources pertinent to that area of learning are concentrated on that school. But as far as I can see there is very little real possibility to choose a school according to specialism. In effect, parents just choose according to the school that is regarded as 'best'. And their perception of 'best' is ill-informed.

Where there is oversubscription to a preferred school children will in any case be allocated according to closest school (unless they fall under one of the acknowledged exceptions -- in LA care, special needs, sibling at the preferred school) so there is a catchment area by stealth. The effect of a catchment area (in my locality) is socially integrative, and it achieves that in a s=more sensible way than a lottery would.

But parents love faith schools! And they pay their taxes too.

I suspect "specialism" is just a dodgy government notion to try to get parents from the more middle-class areas to apply to under-subscribed schools in more "interesting" areas.

Anyway, DW used to teach in a "science specialist" school and said all it meant was that there were fewer resources for her subject.

I have often wondered about these specialisms, deadworm. Do the schools actual alter their admissions criteria for particular children?

I can see it being useful for something like a music specialism, where a child has a particular talent and commitment before joining. But something like science and tech, or even business and enterprise - sounds like window dressing and a big hole for money to be poured down.

"But parents love faith schools! And they pay their taxes too."

This argument has been rehearsed on here numerous times. Both religious and non-religious people pay taxes. There is no way to accommodate the needs of both apart from making education secular. Why do we not have faith buses, faith bin-men and faith hospitals?

But the ethos of your children's school is far more importnat than the religious beliefs of the bin men.

Parents want faith schools because they are faith schools - they deliver in key areas that families want. By making these schools secular changes them completely, and the families who value these schools lose out.

Wicked, all our local sec schools have specialisms but these weren't mentioned much at the open evening events and the admissions criteria in no way make space for you to improve your chances of admission at a particular school by citing your child's interests or aptitudes (which in any case aren't very often well-enough defined to be relevant).

I just don't understand the role of specialisms. It seems like an ex poste justification of the notion of 'choice'.

They impose choice out of Thatcherite market-mimicking dogma and then afterwards faff about with creating the illusion of distinct options to choose between.

Your school's ethos should not be dependent on what manner of god the parents of the children who go there happen to believe in. It's irrelevant. But this is just one of the many arguments here.

Loads of non Christian families are in church schools. They have no personal interest in the Christian faith but they choose the school because of its Christian ethos.

www.cofe.anglican.org/info/education/faqcofeschools/

That's a nice impartial link...

I have put a Catholic secondary school as a second choice for DS2, because I think that its religious dimension contributes to an improved ethos of pastoral care, and because I do attach value to the presumably better religious education he would get there.

I understand entirely that if the school is oversubscribed a baptised Catholic child would get a place above DS2. I don't mind that at all because the school couldn't be a religious school without making that kind of a preferential choice. If however I had chosen the school because it had reasonable academic standards and the alternative schools did not I suppose I would feel hard done by.

In other words, the existencce of faith schools only becomes a source of injustice where there is a scarcity of academically adequate schools. If we have allowed ourselves to come to a position where we can only address that injustice by abolishing the faith status of some schools, then that is a shame and a loss.

Deadworm - is your DS2 not going to the same school as your DS1? If yes, do they operate a sibling rule? If yes, you made your second and third choices based on principle alone.

I don't agree that a Catholic school would lose its religious identity if it took in children from the whole community without giving priority to churchgoers. Private religious schools who need the fees do this all the time. I went to a private convent where about 50% of pupils were non-Catholic.

I think faith schools should continue to exist as some people clearly want them but they should be open to all. If they were unable to control their intake, I imagine the appetite for them would be much reduced.

Not read the thread, but nice media furore over parents doing what they have to ensure they get their much-vaunted parental "choice". Can't blame them.

But it neatly veils the issue of there being "good" schools and "bad" schools, no? Prosecuting people has got to beat actually improving the schools. Nice one, Balls.

Has there actually been an Education Secretary in recent times who hasn't been an utter tosser?

Obviously we ultimately want a system without 'bad' schools, but that will happen when hell freezes over. In the mean time I think maybe UQD is right. The only fair way is to enforce catchment areas. I sent dd to a primary school in a neighbouring village because I had heard such bad things about the one in our village (mostly because of the intake of pupils, not the teaching or the facilities). We had to go to appeal to get her a place. As a teacher, I know that it's parents like me, choosing not to send their children to the local 'bad' school, who perpetuate the good school/ bad school problem. However, when it came down to it, I was not willing to sacrifice the education of my own child. In some ways it would be better if we didn't have a choice.

good post deadworm.

Its interesting that people are now bashing church schools. I wonder if there are any failing church schools? I doubt there are many.

The government should stop blaming parents and look into why there are failing schools and do something about them. The move to larger schools does not help. The issue of oversubscribed schools should be looked at on an area by area basis.