Given the number of appeals threads, what other system of admissions do people think would be better?

[bumpyboo]

Just wondered, given the number of threads regarding appeals. My idea would be a lottery for schools within one mile of your home. Obviously not for small village schools but in the inner city would certainly serve to create a more equal school setting.

I'm in England and our county has the same system as Scotland.
If you live in catchment, you get a place - end of. School expands to accommodate and you apply if you live out of catchment and only when all catchment children have been given a place are they allocated to others.

Primary Schools are feeders for Secondaries. Works well and most of the schools are excellent as they have a really good social mix.
Oh and the priority is :

Siblings within catchment.
catchment.
Siblings out of catchment.
Out of catchment.

Can't say fairer than that.

Greenstocking - your system looks like it should make sense but how big do the schools get though? DD1 is at a 90 intake infant school and it was suggested that it should take an extra class this year. 120 intake is huge and I'm personally glad they didn't do it. I can see it working in more rural areas but not in highly densely populated city locations. Are schools supposed to expand indefinitely? We used to have APRs (Areas of prime responsibility) but these were removed as the schools could not accomodate all of the children within their area.

Good point Runout.
Yes, we are very rural so never in real danger of massive over expansion but yeah, it wouldn't work in inner cities as well.
Except it would but the catchments would have to be that much tighter which , of course, gives rise to the social division you see in city schools and the driving across town.

I have no real idea of the answer, TBH. Although it is one of the millions of reasons why I dont live in a city or even a town.

Where we live (Isle of Man)children have the right to go to their catchment school (their local school). There is no selection on any other grounds (apart from one catholic school).
It can create problems if there is a bulk year, which happened when my daughter started school, so they had to lay on another class. Also it can mean the mix of children can be a bit narrow, our local school is in a middle class area, so most of the children are reasonably well off, which is a downside.
But there is no scrabbling for places, the schools on the whole are good and most kids can walk to school.

There isn't an easy answer but one thing that is definitely doable with minimal cost is to provide more information to parents about how the admission system actually works in their area. I know a number of 'well-educated' people who really messed up with the form (only putting one school down, not putting down a safe option) and are in a very undesirable situation. This could have been avoided if they'd had a better understanding of the system.

Our primary admission booklet explained everything but not in very accessible terms ie there were no 'case studies' and no 'disputing myths' section (I know a couple of people who thought that if you only put one school down the LEA would have to offer you a place in that one).

Just so there is no misunderstanding it is illegal for an admission authority in England or Wales to guarantee a place if you are in catchment for a school. This was outlawed by what is called the Rotherham judgement of 1997, which accepted the principle of giving priority to catchment pupils but not a guarantee.

As pointed out earlier the education authority/board in an area/s should know full well in advance how many children will be entering primary school the year beforehand by using their eyes and brain and counting how many preschoolers there are in an area and planning ahead to provide for their impending applications for P1. In northern Ireland it seems they are blind, cannot preform basic addition and do not plan ahead of their lunch break.

We live in a once rural area which had a lovely village school but developers moved in and built 155 houses. In 2007 the development was completed the Board closed our school down. If anybody can explain the thinking behind this I will give them my house. We are now stuck in a situation where our son has no school to go to and none of the neighbouring schools count us in their catchment area because they have never updated their criteria to allow for said closure. The new development of 155 families has now matured so their first children are of school age in Sept with no school to go to. This system if you can call it that is beyond stupid.. . . I hear a judicial review in the air and another great use of taxpayers money!

"the education authority/board in an area/s should know full well in advance how many children will be entering primary school"

How?

There is no excuse for getting it wrong at secondary school level but primary is another matter. The LA can find out how many children are at nurseries within its area but that may include children who are resident in neighbouring LAs. Equally a proportion of children from the LA will be going to nursery elsewhere and therefore won't be visible to the LA. Many children don't go to nursery or pre-school. The LA has no way of finding out about them.

Even if the LA could find out exactly how many children of pre-school age lived in their area and when they should start school, it has no way of knowing how many of the parents will choose to go private, home educate or, indeed, move out of the area before their child starts school. Changes to the economy can dramatically affect the decisions taken by parents. A recession, for example, can leave an LA suddenly having to find places for a lot of children who would previously have gone to independent schools.

I would agree that some LAs do a spectacularly bad job of planning primary school places and some can't even manage to get secondary school places right. But, particularly for primary schools, there is a certain amount of guesswork involved so it will go wrong sometimes even in the best managed authority.

There is also the problem that some LAs will have enough places but they won't necessarily be in the right place - schools will be where demand for places used to be high rather than where they are needed now.

"schools will be where demand for places used to be high rather than where they are needed now."

That's the situation in the junior school I work in - it's the school my children went to 15 years ago - but most of their friends' families still live in the same houses they did then, so there are no new young families moving in. This year our Year 3 intake had more children from outside the catchment than inside, some are travelling a long way to get there.