The Sibling Rule

[knitcorner]

It's unfair right?

Primary schools should be for local kids not for those with older brothers and sisters who used to live in the area (or rented to get the school place) and are now driven to and from school, creating a 3.15 rush hour.

I just heard that my local school (700m away, not a cat in hells chance of getting a place) has 40% of pupils who live more than 1km away (ie somewhere much leafier and greener than where we live!)

40%!!

Surely it is fairer that if you move out of a catchment area, you go to your local school? That's how it works in Scotland, so why have we got different rules down here?

We moved 5 years ago when we did only 1 school localish had room for all 3 children. Our dc4 went into this school the year after under the sibling rule.
Had the rule been only sibling rule in nearest school we would not have qualified under that rule. However nearest school didn't have room for 2 of our children only 1.

Having said that the school we moved to have just proposed to change their admission to children in 4 named parish(CofE school) who are church goers (not how its said but how I say it) then children living in the 4 named parish then siblings before people outside.

People are up in arms but I am actually for this as I think it is fair a small (15 intake) local school gives priority to their local children. I also think it is fair that they give priority to CofE practicing children. (And personally I don't believe religion and schooling should be mixed) It is easy for me to say as I have no younger siblings waiting to go and I also live that close to the school we would still have got in on sibling rule.

Parents in the school are objecting but overall I think this is a fair way to do it and the school has to go on fair. In practice due to us living rually we will be talking 4-5 children a year so I suspect all siblings will get in anyway.

I teach in Edinburgh. We take catchment children first, then siblings/ ASN requests then others. It is very common to request an out of catchment place in Edinburgh but is becoming increasingly difficult to secure one.

In our local authority siblings out of catchment are lower priority than children in catchment, but ahead of out of catchment with no siblings, this seems a fair way of doing things to me.