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.

mine would be simple

anyone with social/medical need
siblings in catchment
catchment
siblings out of catchment
everyone else on distance

faith schools should only dictate places in accordance with the amount of money they put in. if the church contributes 10% of the running cost, they get to choose 10% of the places

and also, the flipping local authority should be able to look at govt statistics ( or indeed their own) and plan ahead. How hard can it be to survey the local health authority and work out how many 2 year olds there are and realise that they have 3 years to solve it, rather than offer people no school place? they should hang their heads in shame.

Oh, avivalabeaver - the LEA's DO know how many children will need school places, but sometimes their efforts to provide a school when it's needed are stymied, like in my local area.

As part of the planning rules on new housing developments, the builders have to pay money towards schools. The problem is that if they leave one house on the estate unbuilt, they can wait X amount of years to pay the money. Which is why it took ten years for the last school to be built here, and it's why the school we are waiting for won't be opened on time, when we actually NEED the school places. It's all red tape...

How do they know? Genuinely curious - the census is only every 10 years, and people move in and out of areas the whole time. I suppose number registered for ELG might be another indicator, but that's not comprehensive either.

And avivabeaver: I'd be wary of the argument - you could equally say 'if the church provided 100% of real estate, they have 100% of places'

My LEA go by GP registration as far as I am aware. They collate the info from the GP's well in advance. If you Google your County's 'Strategic Planning For Education' document, they will have projections for the next few years school places.

In the USA most places are not densely populated, so the schools are probably already fairly large, and to add an extra classroom won't make too much difference.

Nonsense (I grew up in the US.) There's 50 states so no single system but (except for the old desegregation court orders) pretty much everyone has a "catchment" school - like Scotland. If you move out of your catchment, you change schools.

I raised my kids in London and back in the day, families had a real choice. Most people who wanted got their closest school, or at worse second-closest. A few went further afield - but it was their choice.

The beauty of a true catchment system is that when there's stress, the schools pay the price - not the children. Yes, you get expense and portacabins. You also get fairness for the children and actual choice for families, who at least know what their local school is and have a few years to try to move if they wish - rather than the current system where the unfortunate losers in this lottery are destroyed - loosing their home, their community, their jobs - their entire life gone overnight - because this year, their child can't go to the same school as everyone else on their street, or even another nearby school, but is consigned to a sink school hours away on the other side of the borough. It's unjust, it's divisive, and in many areas it's destroying the sense of community.