Are there enough community school places in your area?

[bananaAddiction]

I live in an area of London where most primary schools (community as well as faith schools) are Ofsted Good+, very popular and oversubscribed. The one or two schools that 'Require Improvement', are less popular, but even they are filled on allocations, as there are no surplus places. Usually temporary bulge classes are needed to accommodate everyone. Many families are left without a place until late August, and as it is a relatively affluent area, some families end up going private to escape the systemic stress, when they would have preferred a state school.

The situation is complicated by the fact that there are a very high proportion of CE and RC faith school places, which have selective admissions. It makes the system more difficult for people who don't have highest priority in the admissions criteria (i.e. who haven't attended a named church regularly for a number of years).

Our local MP is sympathetic to the situation. He gets many letters from unhappy parents who find themselves at the back of the queue because they aren't churchgoers. If they can't get into one of the oversubscribed community schools locally they are allocated places a long way from home that they find logistically very difficult to accept (and of course, as they are allocations, they tend to be in the RI schools, which is no compensation). He has spoken out to try and persuade local church schools to relax their admissions policies and provide a greater number of community places, to ease the situation.

However, he has also made clear he thinks this situation is very unusual - a local problem that needs a local solution - rather than something that needs to be tackled at national level through changes in the Admissions Code.

Is he right? Or are other areas experiencing similar problems? Interested to hear where they are.

Issues where I am, too. PM me if you want to know which Local Authority.

Made worse because the new Free School, while offering community places (ie no religious admissions criteria) is run by a coalition of evangelical Christian organisations and says it will have a strong Christian ethos. So not a community school at all.

Even with that, and the various expansions, the LA Head of Education recently told a public
Meeting they expect to be about 70 places short for 2015 entry.

Not in the village schools further out of town, but in town there has been a lot of immigration that the LA have not planned for, so there is a shortage of places.

Further to Googleyeyes pointthere is also the little matter that the Government have changed the law in teo important respects:-

1. Local authorities are no longer allowed to open new schools. They can extend existing ones, but new schools have to be Free Schools and a high proportion of them have religious affiliations of various kinds (including Steiner)

1. Millions of pounds out of the (limited, of course!) budget for new schools has been spent setting up Free Schools in areas where there is no shortage of school places, in fact creating a surplus in the local area. So taxpayers in one area go without a place for their child, while money is spent "creating choice" for parents in another, and on the way creating surplus places which must be wastefully paid for...

Point 1 isn't quite right. If no sponsor can be found, then the LA can open a new school. They have to demonstrate (to a high standard) that they have exhausted all avenues in seeking a backer, so the process can be quite protracted which in itself can cause problems.

OP is in London, where there is a projected shortfall of over 100,000+ places. And as transport links are pretty easy, you could open a new school pretty much anywhere and it will be full as these larger cohorts move through.

It's perhaps different or less acute in other places (though increased demand is occurring across the whole country). It's quite a change to have policies which are creating more places other than at 11th hour.

It seems odd that your MP cannot access comprehensive data on this problem by contacting the Minister for Education's office. Also, the local government association (I think) did a survey on lack of school places a year or two back and the BBC and other news sites published the data. Of course it isn't a local problem - it's across London and other cities too. We are in Bromley and have reluctantly decided we will have to be prepared to go private, as we have been outside the 0.2 mile catchment of the community school for the last 3 years, while the population and house building are continuing to rise. The religious admissions issue seems like a bit of a red herring as the situation here is now that a lot of people have no choice (the council expect us to express a preference for 9 (!) schools so presumably expect us to visit even more than that, even though we wouldn't get into any of them on last year's distances. It is annoying as friends and neighbours' DC go to the community school but it seems very likely that option will be closed to us. Obviously we are lucky to have an alternative, or we would have to move.

It seems odd that your MP cannot access comprehensive data on this problem ...

I think the lack of places issue is well documented, but the complications caused by the faith school system are more emotive, and MPs are scared of speaking out about them. It's so easy to be accused of being anti-religious for pointing out the bleeding obvious - that in a over-stretched system it's not right to give religious communities privileges over others. It's a bit like automatically putting church-goers at the top of an NHS waiting list.

It is only a problem in cities. Rural areas generally have a Cof E school that is the only school and takes everyone. Community schools may well be more religious than a faith school anyway, depending on the Head.

It is only a problem in cities. Rural areas generally have a Cof E school that is the only school and takes everyone. Community schools may well be more religious than a faith school anyway, depending on the Head.

That's still a problem if you want your children going to a community not a CofE school.

Also when the village expands and then it's the non-religious children who're being bussed to the failing school in the nearest town. Not my personal experience but word of mouth.

Unfortunately, the majority of the population live in cities.

There is a huge overall shortage, but faith selection skews the situation further by taking some (or all!) local schools out of contention for local children unless they are of the 'right' faith.

@meditrina

Do you have any examples of an LA being allowed to open a new school because a Free School sponsor could not be found?

It is only a problem in cities. Rural areas generally have a Cof E school that is the only school and takes everyone. Community schools may well be more religious than a faith school anyway, depending on the Head.

This is the problem in our rural area. We couldn't look at certain villages as we wouldn't be happy for DD to go to a designated faith school. And a village faith school can decide to admit out of village faith pupils in preference to local pupils, leaving you rather stuffed.

I don't think the issue in rural areas is as bad as cities. But it is wrong to suggest that all is well with faith schools in rural areas.

There is only one Primary and one secondary in the whole of our borough that are over subscribed and they are both Catholic. This is because of genuine shortage not people fighting to get in because they are better.

Community and othe Faith schools are all undersubscribed typical 20 - 25 in each class, one class intake.

We are NWest / greater Manchester area

Community schools are not secular- just nondenominational and they have to follow the law on communal worship. Often they are more religious than a faith school.

The community schools near us seem to be less religious than the faith ones. Things like fewer displays about Jesus loving them, less overtly religious assemblies etc. But it is pot luck, often at the whim of the head. That is a problem itself.

Entirely up to how the Head interprets the law on collective worship.

Nlondondad in our area one free school is opening (CofE) but only half of places will be faith based. Another school is planned via a local academy sponser. The LA got round it that way

They are all christian anyway- just not a particular denomination.

Round here mehitabel there's definitely a lighter touch on the collective worship from the community schools. In part it depends on the head, but also CofE parents choosing CofE schools and the associated churches put pressure on for these schools to be make Christianity more central to their approach. Is that not the case where you are then?

At a community school my son is in theory withdrawn from collective worship, in practice he hasn't had to be removed from anything at all as far as I can tell.

You are lucky then catkin- it is not how it works in my area.

Thanks all - my original question is not so much the degree to which the community places are religious or not - that's a whole debate in itself. It's more to do with whether people have reasonable access to local school places.

So, if Family A is non church-going, surrounded by faith/community schools, but can still get their child a place at a school reasonably close to home, then they are a step ahead of Family B who can't, because all their local schools are all very oversubscribed and their lack of religious practice puts them at the very bottom of many of the waiting lists.

It's the areas that have a lot of Family B's that I'm trying to identify.

It is a town/countryside thing. Rurally every school in a 20 mile radius is likely to be CofE and top priority is living in the catchment area.
It all stems fro 1860 when board schools filled in where there were no schools- that tended to be the towns because nearly every village already had a church school.

I think it was more likely 1870