Interesting! About what makes a 'good' school and vice versa

[faraday]

from the Guardian

What do you think?!

It has always occurred to me that the idea that if you take a popular, highly over-subscribed school and add say 50% to its intake that school may well soon cease to be so popular, assuming a school IS its student body, teachers and governors, not just a collection of buildings.

Link doesn't work for me....

doesn't work for me either.

But what you say about increasing size is a valid point. On the other hand, ds's excellent primary would love to expand from 45 intake to two forms - only the education authority has been blocking them year after year. Shame because it is so over-subscribed. I can't see why the council is so keen to piss parents off.

They used to claim there were spare places at other local schools - actually only at the ONE crap school in the whole town (out of about a dozen primaries) Clearly one crap school out of 12 is never going to be able to improve. This is a fairly affluent area so people who are allocated this school often just go private.

Now the birth rate has shot up, there won't be any spare places at all, I should think.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/secondary-school-admissions

or, to try again!

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/secondary-school-admissions

sorry!

he's right, of course.

Yes, I believe he is, too. The ishoo pervades ALL of modern British society, it's not just a school thing.

Have to say I read this article as softening people up for the roll out of the random allocations system.

But some schools really do have management issues. I can think of one "good" school near us which has lost its favoured status amongst concerned parents after several years of poor management.

And it takes years to turn a school around.

Mind you, I think "education, education, education" came about because there are very few forms of redistributive justice offered by New Labour, (though the lone parent/working families tax credit things have been good,) which leaves education as the primary motor and locus of social change. Which is rather a heavy burden for it to carry, imo.

There's a school like that round here, too. Got a bad Ofsted as it was relying on past glories (old head had left). Only in that school, it wasn't just management that were at fault - the treasurer of the PTA stole all the (PTA) funds!

Edam - that is not a nice thing for a PTA person to do! How awful.

I don't think the lottery situation will help. It will just mean that those middle class parents who don't get into the good schools will remortgage or whatever to go private. The lottery is environmentally unfriendly as it means siblings don't attend the same school and people don't get their nearest school.

No, the lottery isn't ideal at all, is it?

In reality perhaps a 'banding' intake has got merit- ie 10% of 'A' grade students, 10 of 'B' etc. Inevitably that would mean some travelling! There IS no doubt about it that middle class parents (read reasonably well off and 100% committed) WILL buy up all the houses in catchment- it's what we're in the process of doing which does mean that the school in question has a far easier ride of it academically and is far more likely to take in 'school-ready' DCs. To his credit, the HT of the school said on prospective parents day that he was aware the school did exceptionally well in the GCSE stakes, but so it should as its intake was 'well above average'.

What I want from the school isn't its 88% A-C, 'nice' though that is, I want 'rows of well-scrubbed, properly attired and well-behaved children sitting at desks, attentive to the teacher', thanks, a situation that might appear to be in shorter supply than I'd thought! I want no mobile phones and iPods in class as being non-negotiable, and standing up when a teacher enters the room a good starter!

To be honest I'm not that worried about the m/c parents who don't get what they want thus go private. Obviously it's their choice but I think fewer will HAVE that choice as many of the fee payers are in the job-losing classes right now. In some ways their DCs will bring up the standards in some of those state schools. But really, in the grand scheme of things, they only form 7% of the school going population, and of those, maybe a quarter to a fifth will ALWAYS be afford to go private, thus leaving an even smaller %age to accommodate.

Until someone comes up with a better idea, I'm going to go with lotteries. Of course a large intake of children of well-educated, highly-motivated parents is going to make a difference to a school's achievements and reputation but it becomes self-perpetuating. Yes, the lottery will have to be refined so that no child has to travel more than x miles (although many parents are perfectly happy to send their children xxx miles across a city or county to get them into a "good" school currently) but, ultimately, it will be a lot fairer than buying your way into a catchment area or pooh-poohing the local school because "it's a bit ethnic".

And, incidentally, we're talking about secondary schools here - do secondary school children really need to go to the same school as their siblings? It's not as if their parents will be dropping them off and picking them up every day, surely.

But why are children going to be bussed hither and thither when, as this article suggests, the problem lies with social inequality?

Why are children being asked to put right, with their schooldays, what the adults won't get a grip on in creating less social and economic disparity?

You think you're in favour of lotteries now but I wonder ... it will mean lotteries introduced into the system ... as it is now. In the hope that it will work ... maybe.

So your children will be going all over, split from their friends, into a range of quite different schools; different in terms of ethos and quality.

All on the hope that in five, ten years time ... it may be "better" and may achieve what is no longer being attempted by any other, perhaps better suited, means.

I personally find the 'lottery' system intereseting. When I was training to teach, I did an term teaching in a school in the states (I'm british and trained in the Uk - this was an exchange thing) and in this school district all school places were allocated by this system. It's perhaps worth noting that they also had a fantastic school bus system as well.

From the little I saw, it worked well. It meant that children who would never usually have mixed did, and everyone benefitted. The school I was in was a good school, and presumably there must be those that are not quite as good. But the real benefit that I saw was that all schools at least started on a level.

I've just moved to a rural area and it probably wouldn't work here, but when we did live in a city, it did seem like a fairer way of doing things

I live in London, children travelling all over the city and being split up from their friends happens anyway in their parents' quest to get them into the "right" school. If there is the possibility that chance would make our education system fairer to all and genuinely more mixed then I absolutely do not have a problem with it. And it is very difficult to create social and economic equality without the building blocks of education - education is the way out of the poverty cycle.

Fair point about sibling rule not being necessary at secondary - assuming there's a sensible public transport system that can get kids from their homes to whichever school they are allocated. (No idea whether sibling rules currently do or don't apply at secondary level, ds is only in Yr1.)

Would be interested to see how random allocation works but then, I've got several years before we need to worry about secondary for ds - guess people whose children are older will be VERY concerned.

London's a special case as children have always crossed boundaries, even under the ILEA and Ken L (the first time round). What works there isn't transferable to the rest of the country and answers to London's problems shouldn't be imposed on the rest of us either.

My LEA are bound to screw it up anyway. Every year the fatheads make a mess of secondary allocations, leaving children in the villages around my town and the nearest very small city without places in any of their chosen schools. THEN they try to make these children go to schools that you just can't reach on public transport. Child from village X supposed to go to school Y miles away on the other side of the city, rather than any of the half-dozen schools they have to go past on the way.

Council gives planning permission for a housing estate on an old secondary school site in one of the villages, then acts all surprised when there are more children than school places - well, who'd have thunk it...

Are there labour MPs on here. I can't believe anyone in their right mind would think lotteries for schools are a good idea...unless they are living next door to a sink school with nothing to lose!

You see, I don't think education, alone, is the way out of the poverty cycle.

I think that much, much more is needed. Probably requiring massive wealth redistribution, and from individuals into public goods.

The idea that education is going to be the motor of social change is just appalling. And I keep getting the feeling we're being sole this to keep our eyes off the bigger issues. New Labour abandoned the principle of large-scale redistribution because it became clear, in successive elections, that the majority of the electorate would not vote for it. Which I think is a bit of a shame.

Without redistribution, you're left with rather punier weapons such as "education".

It rests on a hope that if you take children in dire economic and social situation and place before them educational opportunities, all will be well. For some, this may well be the case, but for many, it is just too little and doesn't begin to address the realities of their social and economic lives.

I have a lot of time for Gordon Brown; his work surestart and so on was well-researched and well-implemented. It took seriously the idea of early intervention. Obviously, to do it really well would require a lot more money.

However, there has been no such concentration on the idea of education; remember, that was Tony's remit.

On its own, you cannot expect "education" to intervene to that extent in children's lives. A shiny sports hall and a range of GCSE subjects on offer simply cannot offset the effects of, say, third-generation drug dependence. It's simply not fair on the children to pretend otherwise.

I think I'm angry because it strikes me that it's a bright, shiney toy idea; there to take our minds off real problems, that require expensive, unpopular solutions. It won't work, it can't work. It's going to make a big mess and not help the children it's being done in the name of.

Instead of having lotteries, why not redraw the catchment areas? Our town has three secondary schools and three 'bad' estates. The catchment areas are drawn so that each school takes one of the 'bad' estates and also some 'nice' houses. Of course things are not equal and there is a definite pecking order of the schools but not to the extent that the bottom one is a sink or failing school.
Our town is not unique: plenty of places have posh and poor living in very close proximity. Redraw the maps to evenly share the pupils and you will eliminate the 'intake' factor.

That is a much better idea Senua.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that a decent sports hall will counter the problems of 3rd generation drug dependency but that is a pretty extreme example of the problems facing most children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Education - and its twin, aspiration - are the tools that will help the majority escape the poverty cycle.

I agree entirely, but I also think that we're wasting our time and a lot of money if the 3rd pillar of a successful educational experience is missing: Parental support. Child, teacher and parent need to be singing from the same hymn sheet. I believe that behind a vast number of delinquent children lie at best uninterested parents (usually one, father having scarpered, scot-free, long ago!) and at worst drug addiction, violence and neglect.

How are we as a society going to counter THAT?

Absolutely Faraday. I have always believed and know from personal experience that the most important influence comes from the parent.

The honest truth is that those schools with poor results have a high percentage of children with parents who have no interest in their child's education let alone in the child itself.

I think no interest is probably a bit harsh - quite often they just feel alienated from the whole experience because of their own poor education. I think schools could work a lot harder to make parents feel important - at my daughter's school, they pay a lot of lip service to "parents as partners" but are decidedly ambiguous if parents do come up with suggestions and want to become involved.