Tories want to abolish school catchment areas

[peanutbutterkid]

They say .

Am I the only one who thinks this is mostly looney? Schools will have to have lotteries about who gets in, so you could live next door but be stuffed and have to travel miles to get your child(ren) into any school.

School run madness and traffic will only get worse. What happend to the Tories' new green image??

It ignores the reality that "good" schools are usually only so "good" because of the social advantages of the people living in the surrounding area (middle class kids do better in school than poor kids, separate from what the schools are like). Getting poor kids into "good" schools will only bring the test scores of schools in good/bad areas closer together, not especially help the poor kids.

Rich Tory supporters won't care about this policy because they don't mind about state schools where they live, they send their kids private, anyway.

I live in catchment of average schools when I could have afforded catchemnt of excellent schools, btw, in case you just think I'm protecting my own interests.

Does everyone else like Tory idea, or think more like me?

The worst vomiting I ever had in my life was from drinking school milk. Glad they've got rid (although dd1 does have milk at snack time...)

Is it a pretty rural village near a city, nearly?

Tell me about it.

Yes. The tories decided to seta target for 50% owner occupation in teh uk (yep, the question is why)and brought in right-to-buy etc. And I didn't notice Labour trying very hard to overturn that one either.

I remember several years back that Switzerland was the country with highest rate of rented housing and something like Bangladesh had highest rate of home ownership. So why homeownership is such a sign of wealth in uk is by no means necessarily logical.

I'm with Voluptua. It's a crap idea.

I don't want parental choice. I want my catchment school ( and everyone else's) to be a good school then I won't need choice.

What happens when your child gets allocated a school miles from home and you have no means to get them there?

Pretty-ish, and great for commuting to two cities. But then so is every other village around here, and families are leaving them and coming here because of the school. We do happen to be under a flight path (much more than many other villages) which is supposed to knock 20% off your property but not here! Most people moving in are locals who have heard about the school and want to guarantee their place. The village wasn't anything like as popular when we moved in, the flurry of sales has all been over the spring and summer and the local estate agents are loving it. Young couples starting out can't get a foothold here and many are having to move away.

Hmmm and what happened? All the nice council houses were bought leaving only the really hellish ones so anyone wanting a council house could only get one in a shitty area; renting a council house became a stigma; councils had no money to build new housing stock and now there is a shortage of affordable housing ...... and is the UK a better place now that we all own our houses - no it's going down the cesspit

What a dumb fucking idea!

I mean, I thought they were going w/the good for the environment thing?

How's this going to help?

Are they smoking crack?

I think a lot of people secretly smoke crack, mostly b/c I hate to believe there really are that many morons in positions of power out there.

The report I saw (BBC news) said that this was an idea being put forward by one of DC's committees, but that DC hadn't adopted it as policy. In other words, he thinks it's unworkable too, but wants Labour to think he likes it.

cat64, we are in Scotland, the catchment areas are clearly defined but they were drawn up years ago and in a larger town can be ridiculous. I think there is something to be said for the English system but can see how it could cause problems.

Our catchment secondary is impossible to walk to, it's about 20 mins by car. The next closest is half an hour away.

The schools in my catchment are shit schools and have alot of students with problems etc etc i dont want my ds to go to these schools but as i aid in my last post i cant afford to move to a better area with better schools.So because im not wealthy my children should have to go to a crappy school. I dont think so

saggarmakersbottomknocker......I agree whole heartedly.

Surely if your catchment school is a drive away, there are free school buses?

In our area there are free school buses if your catchment school is 3 miles away - 'shortest walking distance' as defined by the council.

I think thats rather stupid if you ask me as your children could end up only getting into a school miles away which would effectively force you to move house or drive a ridiculously long way to take your child to school (which will really help the problems of climate change!)

Where we live there is a degree of flexibility, in so far as you can get in if you're just outside the catchment area.

We don't officially have catchment areas anyway in our area, which is just as well since we aren't in the catchment area for any secondary school where we live!

Seriously catchment areas are OK if they are drawn up properly but my argument against them has always been just because you can't afford a house in a "nice" area, why should your children have to go to a crap school?

When I went to school your parents were told which school you were going to- there was no choice- but from what I remember of my primary school the catchment area was drawn up in such a way that it took a mix of pupils from different bits of the district, so you had pupils whose father was a doctor and others whose parents were cleaners. Seems a fairer way of doing it. Then again we didn't have league tables and I don't remember there being any primary school that was considered "better" or "worse" than any other.

You don't get paid transport if there is a school closer to you than the one you end up in, even if that school is full and refuses to take your child (been there and done that )

I think the big question here is what makes a school crap.

Are all the good schools in areas where there are nice pricey houses and if, overall, yes then why.

But removing the catchment areas will just make things worse as everywhere would be a free for all. I think also the richer people would still benefit as they could do things to ensure that their children appear to be better candidates for the school.

The schools that we have in our catchment area are good & cover a wide range of housing, from council houses to those that cost well over £1m & I'm sure there are other similar areas.

They should just try to make all schools a similar standard - by improving "poor" schools. But unfortunately statistics show that a majority of children from poorer families don't do well at school for whatever reason so it is questionable whether schools from these areas are likely to improve. OK total generalisation taken from the news & not meant to cause offence in any way.

As regards buses - all our school buses were withdrawn by the bus company just before term started in September. The company said that the council subsidy wasn't enough to make it viable. We do have somw now but for the first couple of weeks there weren't any.

How will they subsidise buses to ferry many more children?

If you're unlucky and the school is 2.9 miles away - that's a long way with a heavy school bag in winter, at least a 40 minute walk I'd think.

And how will they actually allocate places I wonder........names in a hat or what?

a ballot was actually one of the suggestions on teh link that I posted :

Professor Burgess said part of the intention was to reduce the importance of income in allocating school places.

This could be done in two ways, he said - either through a "free-for-all" ballot or by allowing over-subscribed schools to expand.