Primary school place shortage in Crouch End September 2015

[cgehansen]

Hi, Has anyone been affected by the shortage of primary school places in Crouch End? We put the 6 closest schools to us by distance on our form which are Weston Park Primary, Rokesly Infant, Coleridge Primary, St Aidan's, Ashmount Primary and Campsbourne Infant. We've been turned down from all of them and instead have been offered a school in Wood Green which is a 48 minute walk away. I know of at least 5 others in the same situation.

I'm trying to get a group of us together to take this up with the Council so if you are in the same boat or know somebody else in this situation in Crouch End it would be great to hear from you. Only in large numbers can we make the Council take notice.

Yes they're obviously not all admissions cheats. But if even 10 of them bent the rules then stopping that happening makes a big difference to catchment areas. Also 10 families living more than a mile from a school that now has a .25 mile cut off distance isn't really on - which is why we've arrived where we are now.

But they're not even 'bending the rules'.

Neither will be families who move over a mile or even more away when their youngest child is allocated a place (should sibling priority be changed).

I think the debate about 'bending the rules' isn't relevant. The rules are what they are at the moment.

Families move for a variety of reasons. The question is whether it is fair to deprive a local child of a place for a sibling who lives miles away.

The current admissions process is far from ideal in its entirety. Ideally I would like the whole system overhauled.

The point that the 'bending the rules' debate is making that any change prioritised distance over siblings will ensure that local children are allocated places in reception, although they may well then move away, thus no longer being a 'local child' by the time they are in Y1.

I agree with maidenname that lots of families will delay any planned move until their youngest child is allocated a place a their desired school.

The current admission is indeed a nightmare for many families, but what would an overhaul of the entire system look like.

Is there actually any way of making it 'fair' in everyone's eyes?

I think a family who moves FURTHER away from the school in distance should loose it's right to a sibling place. People will live in uncomfortably unsuitable accommodation for a couple of years to get a place at a desired school - they would think much longer and harder if it was going to be more like 4 years!!!

Of course the real issue is a shortage of school places overall as well as some schools being much more desirable than others - which creates a self-fulfilling spiral of better performing schools.

I no longer live in the SE. The place where we live now is actually increasing capacity at several primary schools in ANTCIPATION of increased demand due to lots of house building, increased birth rates etc. I was just like

When you have a problem set as complicated as the current state of schools admissions, to state schools in London, the trick is not to try and solve it all at once, but to see if it is possible to break the problem up into bits, and then try to work out which bit to fix first - what the correct order would be.

What we have in the case of Crouch End, and not to beat about the bush, Coleridge, and (possibly it seems, Rokesely,) is a suspiciously high number of siblings. In the case of Coleridge, over half the intake with well over half of the siblings living further away than the last child admitted on distance, and with ten of them living over a mile away. The admissions radius this year being just under a third of a mile.

There will be cases where parents really were resident at the address that got their first child into Coleridge, and have now moved away from Coleridge for understandable reasons - for example if they were in a two bedroom flat with the first child, but then have a second child and move for more space.

BUT

There are persistent rumours of people "doing an Eleanor Palmer" that is renting temporary accomodation near Coleridge for the right period of time to get the first child in, then moving back to their long term address and relying on sibling preference. Deleting sibling preference will catch those people out, should have the effect of reducing the average length of journey to school, it seems sharply, and make school run motor traffic less of an issue...

It will also increase the admissions radius for Coleridge.

ALSO from the point of view of the school places problem, it will mean that a much better picture of "real demand" will appear.

The point is that maintaining a "cover" address for a few months or even a year is one thing, doing this for four or five years quite another.

Indeed there are lots of rumours about 'cover addresses' but it would seem rarely, if ever, enough evidence for people to report specific cases of suspected fraud to the LA.

And people most definitely would if they had even a sniff of a suspicion that their child was being 'deprived' of a reception school place.

The problem with 'cover addresses' is people live in them just long enough to get the school place and have an explanation about what their real address is being used for e.g. rented out or a being used as business address or building work being done etc. So they are breaking the rules but it doesn't count as admissions fraud as far as the council is concerned. Some people do get caught out if they haven't planned carefully enough but others get away with it because it's not possible to prove what they are doing is solely for the purpose of getting a school place.

That's the problem. They're not really 'breaking the rules' if no-one can prove or report a suspicion to the LA that they're behaving unlawfully.

Exactly. It's against the rules to use a temporary address to secure a school place but it's often not possible to prove that an arrangement is temporary. In practice the only way you'll get caught in Haringey is if your main home is empty for no reason and you've rented one next door to your preferred school which you use in your school application. Unless of course you just lie about your address in which case you'll get caught when your application is processed. So local kids miss out on a place because some people have enough money to play the system and secure their place at the particular school they want which is Coleridge. I've nothing against Coleridge and I'm sure it's a very good school but there are plenty of others in the area so am at a loss to understand why it attracts so many people desperate to get a place there!

Yes, although the 'cover address' theory doesn't explain why all the schools are so heavily oversubscribed.

There are also just a huge number of young families in the area, with demand for places outstripping supply despite the number of reception places having doubled over the last 5 years.

The people nlondondad describes (moving from 2 to 4 bedroom) will be the people most affected by these changes. Those not affected will be those able to pay the high price of buying a house close to the schools. So it will not stop those that can afford to move having an advantage. It will just be those that can afford to buy rather than rent. In a modern society people move for all sorts of reasons; getting married, having children, growing family, work, increase/decrease in financial situation etc. and this should be possible. Since the main concern is to benefit the local children from missing out because people move, would it be a better idea to make a rule that people who have moved within a certain timeframe before the application deadline, say 18 months/2 years do not have priority to their preferred schools. This deals with the problem before rather than after the event. But still allows people who genuinely want to move to an area.

However I still believe these are short sighted treatments of symptoms of a fundamentally flawed system.It still does not address the problem of those living in the black holes with no chance of getting in to local schools or those who don't have access to schools because of their lack of religion.
Perhaps a sort of 'pool' system would be better. So if you live in an area, say Crouch End, there are six schools and you get allocated one. End off. In this way it is more democratic and equal. You are not 'lucky' because you happen to live next to a school. In this way people are not killing themselves to get into a particular school. But attend the one they are given and do their best to support the school.
I also think religion should be scrapped as a priority to schools which will open up more school places for local children. Why is the focus only on changing the admission related to those who move house and not those who change or become religious? Everyone who lives in the community should have access. If this really is about local children getting a school place in local schools then is it fair that people outside the local communities have priority to those schools thereby denying local children a place? It would be interesting to find out the numbers of children outside of the local areas given places in church schools as well.

Eh? So if I moved into an area now, I wouldn't have any 'right' to apply for my 3/4 year old to go to her/his local school. Or even my 1/2 year old in 2 years time?

What about the 'local schools for local children' line?

I'll sit out the debate about faith schools though .

I have not seen this years figures, but the figures for the last three years before that do not support the view that the Crouch End demand is increasing. If you look at the totals for first preference applications in Crouch End only which is the best measure of how many individual CE children there are (recall that a single child can account for up to six applications) they fell slowly over those three years.

@Maidename the poposal being consulted on, the abolition of sibling preference, is on that Haringey could introduce, if it wanted to. Some Boroughs have already moved to restrict the rights of siblings. Abolition of religious preference would require a change in the law.

I dont know whether your "pooling idea" could be introduced without changing the law.

Christina I guess I did not formulate my thinking clearly enough ;-). I don't mean that you should not be able to apply if you move to a new area. But just that you should not be able to move in and get priority over those that have been living there their whole lives (of course for reception children this would be not be that many years). In effect what I am saying is actually local schools for local children. As in they are not put at the bottom of the list because people move in. But those that move in just to get a place and move out again are not the ones who get priority. So as in the case of the OP rather than people living in an area not having any school place possibly because lots of people have moved to rent, she would get a place over people who moved recently. so if at the time school places where allocated there were not enough places and someone was to be sent to school in another area (like the scary Wood Green) it would not be those that had lived in the area but those just moved in to take advantage of the schools. Does that make sense? It is of course more admin for the LA to deal with so that will probably not happen. But could easily be done with for example an earlier application deadline.

nlondondad the numbers I was wondering about was not the general demand in crouch end but the number of children admitted to religious schools that would not have been in the local area but come from elsewhere. As an example a child that lives in tottenham attends saint james in muswell hill (real example). So that takes a place away from a local muswell hill kid. There must still be over demand otherwise these threads would not exist…..

nlondondad I guess we cross posted. I do think a real overhaul of the whole system should be done and by law if needed rather than each borough having its own rules. Especially in London where there is a pan london admissions system and school catchments overlap boroughs. In Haringey border with Islington for example. There are a few schools very close to the border. What would it mean if Haringey had the sibling rule but islington did not. People living in Crouch End and attending Ashmount could move from their 2bedroom further away but not those attending Coleridge? (this is just as an example I don't know what the actual Islington rules are) but there are many such borders in London.

The pool system would simply do away with the insane post code lottery that currently exists and the advantages and disadvantages it gives people which in turn cause the problem of people trying to beat it. I am just trying to see how to solve what is causing the problem than treating the fall out of it.

I think the pool system sounds a great idea but it would require all schools to offer the same service though. So same quality of education, no religion and no expensive prep school uniforms like Whitehall Park. Similar systems work very successfully in other countries.

A pool system could work, but areas such as crouch end couldn't be treated in isolation, which is what it seems many parents their want. There are more children than schools places in crouch end, meaning the pool would have to include other areas and schools.

I think tower hamlets has a similar system.

I'm sure there are many who would like Crouch End to be treated in isolation! It would make sense to use the Haringey planning areas as the basis for one or two catchment areas depending on their size. So Hornsey could be one catchment area. I think the Tower Hamlets system still uses distance within the catchment area to prioritise places so that model wouldn't stop people trying to beat the system to get a place a Coleridge. I guess not prioritising siblings is a bit of blunt instrument but it looks like the best option to get more local kids into local schools.

Sorry, maidenhead, but going down the line that 'people who have lived in a place their whole life should have preference for schools places over people who moved in later' is a very dubious suggestion.

So immigrants shouldn't be allowed to access local schools? Or would that matter less because people who have moved from another part of London with a one year old wouldn't be able to either?

Tower Hamlets made some changes to their admissions criteria a few years ago, I think with 'catchment areas' for particular schools to avoid the situation of people being just out of distance catchment for all of their local schools (which is how this thread started).

Abolishing sibling preference is a blunt tool, and would lead to a difficult school run for many. Maybe tenable in CE and MH, but most definitely not suitable for other areas in Haringey where people in temporary accommodation frequently get moved all over the place. I feel very strongly that people in such vulnerable housing situations should have some certainty about siblings attending the same school.

Does anyone know is Haringey IS going to abolish the sibling preference rule? I heard from a mum today that it was going to be abolished with effect from 2017??

Is the plan to totally abolish sibling priority, or only for those who are over a set distance from a school? Does anyone know?