Katerina's school nightmare: advice needed, I'm desperate! :(

[Katerina384]

A few days ago I posted about having no school places for my DDs in September. We moved to the area a few months ago ( an oversubscribed area) and originally were offered no school places at all. I also can't find a nursery place for DS, but as I work from home and will soon be on maternity leave I'm not so worried about that for now.

I finally had an email from the LEA today. DD1 has been offered a place in year 3 at a school approx. 4 miles away, and DD2 a place in year 2 at a school 7 miles away in a different direction :( I will be given free transport to school on public buses for both DDs.

The issue here is how I'm going to be able to get both of them to school. I don't drive, so we will have to use public transport. I was speaking to a neighbour of mine whose DC was also offered a place at the school 7 miles away, she and her DC tried the route on public transport and it took them almost 2 hours I can't afford to put one DD into before and after school care to pick up the other as it is, but if it's a 4 hour round trip just to get DD2 to school then it's going to be impossible to get DD1 to school too. I would have to take one DD with me to drop the first one off too IYSWIM, as well as a 4 year old if no nursery place comes up soon and will be heavily pregnant/with a newborn. Surely this is never going to work?

The schools the DDs have been offered places at are both in speical measures and have horrible reputations, but at this moment in time I just want to get them in somewhere, I'll worry about trying to come up with something better later!

I know if I turn down one or more of the places then the LEA have no obligation to find me another one, but I just don't see how we could possibly make this work.

Advice greatly needed!
Katerina

Julia I have considered HE, the issue is I'll be working from home until November, and am due to have DC4 in November so I'll have a newborn taking up a lot of my time and effort, I'll also have 4 year old DS at home as I can't get him a nursery place. Most HE sites/online activities will be inaccessible for now as DDs don't have a lot of English. So all in all I can't see it working out.

The amount of actual 'education' is variable, nobody checks the LEA treated it as a tick box admin thing to show they had fulfilled obligations; then you can just hang on waiting for places at your chosen school

good luck

JuliaScurr might know if you can teach in another language. In many ways the curriculum will be hard to access until they have a good grasp of English, unless they have extra support (another aspect to see if your ideal school can provide more than allocated one). Have you looked to see if there is any online material in their mother tongue?

I think in your situation you couldn't accept the one 7 miles away, if you had a car it might be different, but as you don't even drive it wouldn't resolve anytime soon.

Sounds a bit more positive re the waiting list for the RC school, and at least they didn't know if the fair access protocol was applied (it clearly wasn't for dd1 as there was obviously a space anyway). Might give some room for them to have a rethink! I would leave dd2 on that list, as although far from ideal, they would be in the same school, and you might find someone doing a similar journey. If you are taking dd1 anyway, and your other option is home educating which doesn't sound as if you are too keen on for a long period of time.

Have you spoken to the church yet?

No, sorry, I don't know

hi, i just want to say a few things, my dd goes to a rc school, and they are really understanding about the pastoral care. i do think its worth trying like others have said about finding out if your priest is on the governors, usually they are and talk thru things as they will be able to contact the head even if you cant. the fact that a teacher speaks your dc language must be in your favour as if your dc are upset about not being understood on the playground/missing dad/ baby worries, then the teacher can talk to them. it might be worth seeing if the other schools you have been offered have any one on site who can do this as if you have to appeal then this is a reason why the rc school is more suited to your dc needs. as a mother, i have found our head to be incredibley understanding, but they do have to follow their rules aswell, when you get to speak to someone you need to ask if they have ever gone above the 30 cass rule and if so did this affect the class.
on another note, thou i would hate the idea myself, maybe home ed is the way till you can get them in as to be honest, i dont think it sounds like you will have alot of time at home to work anyway! remember, home ed is about more than sitting in front of books, it can be trips to museums and science is cooking, tesco is maths, it doesnt have to be 9am to 3pm, i am sure you will be tired with the pregnancy and doing the whole child routine on your own. maybe you can say this is not going to work in these schools, get yr name on every local school list, and then home ed till spaces come up. or even home ed the furthest away child? not ideal, but you have to think of yourself as well, it looks like you are going to burn out very easily with all that travelling in the dark. keep posting and let us know how it is going.

just an added idea, would the lea consider an hour a day home tuition as this is an unreasonable journey time till a school place comes more locally? surely thats not much expense compared to bus passess etc? also, what happens about the time your dc miss due to the traveling? is this classed as unauthorised absence? and arent their rules about how early/late a child should be commuting? probably not, but if older children arent allowed to be out doing paper rounds early, then how can they expect a child to be unaccompanied on transport at this time?

bonsoir how do french schoolds do assembly, gym or pe?
thats really sad no playspace.

was readinga bout another post about private schools in lomdon with no outdoor space yet 6grand a term!

To me that was in important factor when looking at schools.

katerina-thats sounds positive .

your english seems really good is engliush your 1st language?

do you speak the same language as your childdren fluently or did you and your husband do the 1parent speaks 1 language and the other english.

wonder if muzzy-bbc do english for non speaking english kids?
might eb worth googling as the most important part home ed i think over next few months is their language getting them speaking englush, socilaising, reading and writing.

what language do they speak spanish?

wonder if any ex pats in spain could help?

you know what would really benefit you is an international school as thats what lot of people do if relocate.

we live in city and think therss a few french and spanish playgroups.

Assembly is a non-existent concept in French schools.

Schools in Paris mostly use council gyms and swimming pools, if at all.

Is Home Education possible while you wait for a place somewhere better?

Argh, sorry, didn't see that there were more pages!

You need taxis for the both of them.I would write to your local councillor about this and get him/her to put pressure on the council to come up with a better solution.

What a nightmare! What makes me angry about the lack of school places is that when I was a chair of Govs way back when Brown was in charge, I recall our LA's director of education telling me an absolute pile of steaming brown stuff. I asked about the repercussions of cutting school places/amalgamating schools & rebuilding a smaller school with less classes. He said that there was nothing to indicate a baby boom & so there wasn't a problem. Oh how I wish I taped that conversation.

We are now in a disastrous state of affairs where a child cannot attend their local school. I like the French system (to an extent) as it sounds very much like how it used to be here before that 'parental preference' blurb came into play. It's a shame LA are so short sighted & that goes for governments too.

Rant over. OP, I hope you hear some good news pronto as this must be extremely stressful on top of what else has been happening in your life. I can understand that the authority cannot magic up a place, however they need to magic up some way for you to reasonably get your children to school.

Best of luck!

Another update: so yesterday I phoned the LEA to ask if the fair access protocol had been used, the woman I spoke to said she 'didn't have that imformation to hand' but would phone me back later in the day with it. SHe never did so I phoned back this morning, spoke to someone else and she's going to have to go and check for me, can I phone back later?

How exactly does the fair access protocol work? can they use this to get DD2 into a class of 30 already, so she is child 31? And does the school have to agree? Just trying to get my facts right before I speak to the LEA!

I'm not sure that 7 miles on its own is necessarily unreasonable. Up to an hour's journey each way is considered reasonable, even though that may mean parents travelling for 4 hours each day. In some areas 7 miles would be considerably less than 30 minutes each way. So I would concentrate on the time it will take and, more importantly, the fact they have allocated places for your daughters at different schools which are miles apart. I would argue that this decision was unreasonable and that they should have used the Fair Access Protocol to come up with places for both girls at the same school.

As Tiggytape says, the Fair Access Protocol allows them to admit your child even though the school is full. It exists to ensure places are found for difficult to place children and can allow a child to be admitted even though they are in a lower admission category than children on the waiting list. Schools have to accept children allocated under the FAP.

In terms of infant class size regulations, your daughter would be an excepted child if she was admitted under the FAP, which means she doesn't count towards the class size limit. Next year she would not be an excepted child but by then she will be in Y3 so infant class size regulations won't apply.

Katerina,
I think you know the answer to your query by the lack of ability to answer the question. No they have not considered using the fair access protocol, they have simply been panicked into allocating two really stupid unreasonable school places, as a means of getting the monkey of their back and hoping you would accept them.

A bit of a long shot, but, if you do have to put up with two schools miles apart for any length of time do you think the church might be able to rustle up a bit of help for you? As in a chaperone or something? I'm RC and i could imagine this might be a possibility at my church. SVP? I don't know how comfortable you'd feel though if you've not got to know the poeple well yet.