What is the fairest admission policy?

[AngelEyes46]

There seems to be so many dcs that don't get their first choice. In my la, one primary school admitted to 0.137 miles - it's madness! What is the fairest way? My children go to a VA state school and I know there's a lot of controversy and don't want go down the argument of faith/grammar/independent/state but what do people think? Should every school be based on distance or should it go back to the old days where children were interviewed? Since joining mnet and going through the admission process myself, I don't think anyone realizes how much stress is involved. My ds's are now at secondary and dd in year 6 (pri) but I still remember the worry for primary and in some ways secondary was even worse as the dcs have an input as to where they want to go.

What about faith schools though? Surely their admissions have to come into it as much unfairness can result from them eg if your nearest school is religious but you're not, you can't get over someone who is but then you're further away from the community school so can't get in there either.

Basically I've noticed people usually want the admissions changing to a "fairer" way, when their child hasn't/wouldn't get in and the "fairer" way would.

In the "old days" I don't know any school other than private that interviewed. When my dsis went to school you put your name down at the school of her choice and went there. this meant there were 43 in her class, and 20 in the other school in the village . The converse happened in the form above me.

I think the only thing I'd add to admissions is that I'd have a maximum distance the sibling rule counts for, say nearest school, or double the everyone else distance or something. Other than that there are changes you could make, but I don't see would be more fair, but possibly be "unfair" to a different set of people.

GnocchiNineDoors There's no way of knowing for certain if your DC's year will be oversubscribed. The only thing you can do is contact your LA and ask what priority criteria and distance did allocations, for particular schools, go to in the previous year(s). Even then, there is no guarantee that this year, or next, will be a reflection of the previous year(s).

The one fact that is never going to change is that parents will always want the best for their child and for too many the best means not the local school but the school that best suits them. That may be whats best for the parent in dropping off the child for school, what fits best with their child care arrangements or the nearest outstanding school according to Ofsted amongst the myriad of reasons for a particular school.

There is no doubt that the best system would be if there was no choice and you went to the nearest school, because all schools were outstanding but that is never going to happen in reality.

So in our in-perfect world we have to compromise. It has to be right that parents have an element of ability to state a preference, without having the absolute right of their choice just as it has to be right that your nearest school has to be given some preference. The right of parents to expect that siblings will go to the same school is also paramount. In my opinion the current rules that say Looked after children and those children with special needs statements have top priority are also sacrosanct. So to me the best compromise as admission criteria is

LAC and special needs statements
siblings in catchment
in catchment children
siblings out of catchment
out of catchment

The defining criteria has to be straight line distance to the school, because anything that is around shortest walking route is open to debate. All these schools with bizarre and complicated admission criteria should be removed. How you square that circle when you come to faith schools I don't know, that is another whole debate on its own.

However admission criteria is the easy part. The much more difficult part is making the parental choice much more obvious that it should be the local school. So for a start get rid of the infant class size regs and leave it to sensible decisions by appeal panels to admit above the PAN, based on the strength of the parental personal circumstances.

There is a need to ensure that there is sufficient local spaces available,so somebody needs to do their planning rather more carefully than has happened over recent years to ensure that there are enough spaces in schools. The other side of that particular issue is that poorly performing schools are not tolerated so those schools that are half full because of their bad reputation are not accepted and things do happen to make them better or they are closed. Whether forced academy status is the answer is another very different discussion. How small a school should be before it is also closed is another debate as the challenges within rural and urban communities are very different.

Schools also need to respond better to the needs of their customers. So there does need to be some kind of child care from 0800 to 1800 but not at the schools expense - the parents have to accept that if that is what they need then they will pay for it. Schools need to think about the decisions they make. So as an example in a more rural environment where a majority of pupils are bused in, there is no use having after school classes if all the buses leave immediately after the end of the school day leaving the parents / pupils to find their own way home. It is called customer care and schools generally do not do this well.

Some of these things are happening but just altering the admission criteria is not the whole answer. Everybody in education needs to take a long hard look and ask themselves are we actually doing everything we can to improve the life chances for all our pupils.

Admission - Where I live that is the admission policy.

As far as I can see, the majority of parents WANT their children to go to the local school. A large number of my friends have not got their child into their nearest school, and have been sent to a school much further away. That was never their choice.

DS's school is a good, popular school and is always oversubscribed. However places are not filled from catchment, as the area has a high elderly population and not that many children.

About 2 miles away however, there is a housing estate which seems to only have families with children. The 'nearest distance' catchment area for the school is about 150 metres.

So there is no choice for these parents, no preferred school.

The problem with choices, and Ofsted reports, is that it creates a downward spiral where everyone competes for a few schools, and are unhappy with the rest. Those few schools get the most conscientious and often affluent parents (through buying property specifically with the school in mind, attending feeder nurseries, badgering about the waiting list). And so it continues.

The only solution, as far as I can see, is massive investment in education to ensure that every child is guaranteed a place in their catchment school. If they don't want it, they can go on the waiting list at another school.

Investment in buildings so that bulge classes can be accommodated successfully if a particular year's intake demands it (or permanently). Investment in the school education and facilities itself so that every school is a school that parents would be happy with.

And it also needs to be joined up with a realistic social housing policy, so that houses are built with families in mind and that also catchment areas are diverse. Shipping people on housing benefit out of affluent areas with high rents is the opposite of this.

Never going to happen though

Admission, would you include a priority for children whose older siblings a) have a statment defining a particular school or b) were not allocated any of their preferences and were directed, by the LA, to the nearest available school? Our LA have and I think that's fair and keeps siblings together when the school allocated to the older sibling was the only school suitable or available at that point in time.

Our LA have also passed consultation plans to increase capacity at existing schools / build new schools to ease the burden, whether they have gone far enough remains to be seen...

Our secondary school has a small twist to the distance criteria which gets around the "good rural school near a big town" problem.

Very simply the chosen school being your nearest school gets priority before your actual distance from the school.
Otherwise school A would be full of town children, (who can all walk to it or to school B) while the children from the villages would have to drive past school A and right through the town to get to school B.

To find out the future plans on how many school places will be surplus or not, as the case may be, for your area, you need to Google the 'Strategic Planning Authority for Education documents for xxxx' with xxxx being your local County IYSWIM.

I have easily found Essex's, and it's shocking. But that is mostly due to the sheer level of houses being built down here due to some scheme or other...

Why the LEA seem to think that it is perfectly acceptable to allocate DC a school that, while it may be 1.998 miles away as the crow flies, is about 4 miles by car, and over 6 miles by the bus routes, is beyond me, rather than just building the much-needed new primary school one year earlier when they were actually MEANT to... when there will be a desperate need for it, is totally beyond me.

If my DS3 gets allocated the school that I suspect he will, then we will pass no less than 15 other primary schools, ALL with either 'Good' or 'Outstanding' Ofsted reports, to be sent to a school that has been in special measures for two years, closed down, had a complete change of staff, and has now been put in special measures AGAIN.

admission have you seen this? As a parent of a child with a statement with the majority of local (and not so local schools) becoming academies it appears the statement won't be a legal protection should we choose (we may not have a choice if all local schools are academies anyway) to place dd in an academy school.

In what way will it not be legal protection? The LA is still required to ensure that the support required by part 3 of the statement is delivered and you can take action against them if necessary. New academies are required by law to admit children with a statement of SEN naming the school. Almost all of the old academies set up under the last government have a similar requirement in their funding agreement and any transferring to the new funding agreement will be similarly bound by the changes introduced in the 2010 Academies Act.

But an academy can refuse to admit the child making part four useless and as the Tribunal have ruled that an academy cannot be forced to accept a statemented child then it has eroded the protection that a statement has previously offered.I wouldn't want to place my child in a school that didn't want them but if the only alternative was a long journey (particularly as our LA are looking to reduce SEN transport) then I may not have a choice.

Academies have to abide by the admission code (it is part of their funding agreement) and in the 2012 admission code paragraph 1.6 says very clearly all children whose statement of SEN names the school must be admitted.
So to me the academy cannot deny you a place, providing that you can persuade the LA to name the school.

I think fairest would be to define broad catchments then ( after kids in care, and SEN) siblings in the catchment, then lottery in the catchment.

So you have some measure of distance but not the clustered house price effect on the school's doorstep.

I think Surrey's new system for community schools is fairer - if the school is your closest school, you get into a higher admissions category, rather than having catchments per se.

Alexandra I liked that idea, I think it makes sense and would in effect encourage you to go to your nearest school and discourage you from deciding they one isn't good enough and picking one a but further away.

I can see from Tiggy's examples though that there are downsides. Although if enough school places were provided in conjunction with this kind if alteration to the criteria maybe that would help? Especially if the sibling problem could be minimised by some if the ideas further up the thread to deal with siblings from miles away taking preference over more local children.

So more planning, more school places, fairer admission system... Can't see it happening any time soon.

I went to a very ordinary primary school when I was a child. My mum didn't angst about it. Dont think anyone we knew did. Maybe we're all just a bit fussier now.

There definitely was a choice way back when, as my parents sent me to my dire primary over two others, one of which my father taught at and the other one hothoused for the 11+. They have spoken about why they sent me there, I imagine it was just less likely for people to go to other schools as with fewer second cars, you just couldn't get anywhere. We lived between 3 schools and heard recently is now a black hole for any school.

I replied to a comment about academies not taking pupils with a statement of special needs saying that they are covered. However I now have more information and it seems that any academy that was formed before the 2010 academy act came in (in other words sponsored academies) did not have anything in their funding agreement that they must abide by the admission code. So in theory they can refuse to take pupils with a statement of special need.

Those schools that have become academies after the 2010 act do have the restriction in place and therefore could be made to take the pupil by the LA, providing the LA name the school. However there is now a tribunal case that is around an academy which did not want to take a pupil and the LA did not insist on naming the academy on the statement. Will have to see what else comes out at the tribunal case, but it sends all the wrong messages and would I thought have been something that the DfE would be keen to stop happening.

I'd correct that slightly. Some academies did not have anything in their funding agreement but most did. Since the 2010 Academies Act all new academies are required to conform as are any old academies that adopt the new funding agreement.

Yes I think in an ideal world it would be

• nearest school + sibling link
• nearest school no sibling link
• not nearest school + sibling link
• not nearest school no sibling link

Alex - doesn't that take away the choice? What if i want my dc to go to not-nearest school?