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.

Although I have absolutely no time for Haringey council ljnk, your comments are unfair.

The year that I applied for my eldest child to start school a family moved in locally and, as late applicants, had a choice of 4 schools within a mile in Tottenham and another few if they didn't mind going further afield.

Simultaneously, bulge classes were being established in several schools in the west and centre of the borough.

That's the description that nlondondad describes in Islington and fairly common practice.

I suppose the other time there's lots of movement on the waitlist is year 3 as those who say the 7+ will move on to independents. When I called the council (we live perilously close to one of these deadzones!) the woman advised that there's lots of movement in the west of the borough even in the most oversubscribed schools in year 3. If you really hate your allocated school you could always hold out until then.

hibble, the way waiting lists are managed are the reason to make sure that your child's name is on them.

At the moment, everyone who applied for a reception place in 2015 will automatically have been put on the waiting list for schools that they ranked as a higher preference. Check with the council when this changes (it used to be the December after September admissions). Your child will only remain on the waiting list if you actively ask for them to be.

My dd was 27th on the waiting list for our first preference of school at allocations and did indeed go down the list before September. I kept her on the list just to keep my options open and she was offered a place at beginning of Y1 (which I didn't take and I'm now very glad that she wasn't offered a place at our first preference).

A friend of mine was in an almost identical situation in regards to one of the most oversubscribed and coveted schools in Tottenham. Her child was offered a place halfway through Y1 which she took and now hates the school (but likes the social scene there) but that's another story!

Best of luck.

I will be in this position in Crouch End next year, my son will be starting school in September 2016. I would be very interested in @cgehansen in getting a group together to lobby the council. So far they have fobbed me off and I'm worried.

I know several people worried about next year so happy to pass on your details if you PM me. I can't see the Council doing very much about the issue though as they are meeting their statutory duties by offering places within 2 miles of home. I do think it's worth you contacting Catherine West as she does take the problem of school places seriously and is raising it with the council.

The Council will fob you off. Their favourite line was there's 'a lot of movement' on the waiting lists. They have dropped this line for 2015 now and admitted there is actually very little movement. This is because the last distances offered don't overlap with neighbouring schools in many parts of Crouch End. They will also keep suggesting applying for Whitehall Park School. Personally WPS just doesn't work for us.

@CGEhansen

The thing is that Whitehall Park School creates a surplus of places in its immediate area, and Haringey can argue that directing people there fulfills their legal duty to get people a place. Of course it is out of Borough being in Islington but whether that makes a difference to what Haringey are required to do by way of school place revision I do not know.

I know that an Islington plan, if demand in the area on the Islington side merited it, to create additional places by expanding Yerbury School is now on ice for the forseeable due to the surplus created by WPS.

This to my mind strengthens the need for prospective parents to scrutinise WPS carefully, as that may be the only school some people in Crouch End may get offered within reasonable distance, if Haringey regard it as part of the provision for Crouch End, and so relives them of the need to do anything themselves.

(Those interested in finding out more about WPS should look at this thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/2055379-Been-offered-brand-new-free-school-or-last-choice

Where all points of view both for and against are represented. if you have the stamina to read through it!)

I think it's a real shame that plans to expand an outstanding school have been put on hold because of Whitehall Park. They do seem to be pushing one view of primary education and you have no choice but to accept that if you live too far away from any other school to have a choice. I personally wouldn't send my 4 year old to a school that made him wear a tie. It all just feels very odd to me.

I was in a uniform shop in north london this week and picked up a blazer as a particularly egregious example of prep school poncery, only to realise it was from whitehall park. I can't see any justification for four-year-olds in blazers. Esp not in a state school. Even less so in a borough where schools either have no uniform or a relaxed sweatshirt and any only polo version.

The surrounding schools, (all rated "good" or "outstanding" by the way) do use a dress code policy which involves buying items that cost, at most between 25 and 35 pounds, and as the child has to be clothed anyway this represents very little additional expense for parents. The cost of buying all the Whitehall Park items is in the region of 200 pounds.

The EFFECT (whatever the intention) is exclusionary.

Yes but do they offer LATIN?

(Other favoured exclusionary/appealing tactic)

No Latin but they do have a 'look smart, think smart' philosophy. Sounds more like a firm of management consultants than a primary school to me. I do wonder what the motivation is of the private sponsors behind it.

I am so pleased I do not live in London or any other densely populated city.
I live in a village in the North but even my local school (50 place) is nearing the limit - first time in years! My DS starts school in September 2016. 99.5% sure he will get in but parents MUST, MUST put down all choices, not just their first choice.
In the town in which I teach (yes, am a teacher!) some parents put school A down and no other school in the misguided belief that because only one school was on their list, they would be accepted. Wrong. What happened was that they were not close enough but all other families who put down the 2nd and 3rd choice, got those instead. The parents who made only one choice were then given the 'sink school' - the school with surplus places because nobody wants to go there. Needless to say they were cross, believed an injustice had been served DESPITE it made clear to them what to do and are now home-schooling their children in the HOPE they get in to the other schools. unlikely. Movement has slowed down a lot and this year our school (which only 6 years previous had HALF the numbers it could take) now has a waiting list of 26 for this year's reception!!!

What is meant in that Time Out article linked to on 2/5 by "So in the end do you know how many offers my little Kitty Cat got?
None. What she got was an instruction to register at a terrifying mop-up joint for children with no school."

Does he mean they did get an offer of a school, but not one of their preferences? Or no offer?

@cgehansen you ask:

"I do wonder what the motivation is of the private sponsors behind it"

This story in Schools Week, link below, might provide some clues as to why two profit making companies might be interested in setting up a chain of Free Schools. (legally by the way, Free Schools and Academies are identical, just different names. In practice most Academies are pre existing schools that have been converted, whereas Free Schools are entirely new but thats just a naming convention)

schoolsweek.co.uk/academy-oversight-failings-exposed-as-hodges-pac-prepares-to-hear-evidence/

@carla

The questions you ask are spot on: In fact what tends to bedevil discussions of school places are the different things people say when they say the council had no place for their child.

They can mean:

There was no place at the ONE school that I wanted for my child

OR

I have been offered a place locally but its at a school I do not want

OR

There was no place available for my child within a reasonable distance. (That is at a "local school", CGEHANSEN started this thread because, as I understand it, that was the situation the OP was in)

Carla, I feel bad answering for Mr Coren, but this is as I understand it...

His daughter would have had very little real hope in the last 10 years of getting into the school he wanted for her. This is the school opposite the nursery she attends. They live too far away. He must have known this. It's a shame he let his daughter think she would be going there.

It's a very popular school with the NW London Media middle classes and people have done all sorts to get in there. It's also the state school of choice for some parents, it's that or private. Some parents pay the deposit on the private school place, enter the "lottery" of getting this one school, lets call it PE. If they get PE they are sending their child a local state " community is so important". If they don't get PE they then tell everyone who will listen how dreadful it is they didn't get a decent school,so very sadly they have had to pay.

I understand from GC partner's Twitter feed that in fact their daughter will not need to be home educated as she had a place at a private school on the state school offer day.

Unfortunately for him he doesn't live near enough to the schools he would have preferred. He wasn't near enough to the other schools he wouldn't have minded. Again that would have been easy to work out on previous years distances too.

Again, for the past 10 years or so the school he would have been guaranteed a place at school C, one that is very near as the crow flies, but not near to walk to. It is traditionally an unpopular school although it's results are similar or better than other more popular schools.

So, the long and short of it is that yes, his daughter was probably offered a very local school, probably school C. It was probably the school he knew she would be offered. It was probably not one of his preferences for whatever reason only he can know. I would imagine the facts wouldn't make good copy.

The things he wrote about the easily identifiable to locals school C were cruel, disingenuous, unnecessary and very sad for the children who do attend the school. I suppose he has to earn a living and now he needs to pay school fees on one of the most expensive private schools in the area.

THANK YOU Green Eggs.

The Giles Coren article made me rage, though probably not as much as the parents at the school he was offered, and which he derides so unfairly. GC without a doubt meant nlondondad's option A - he set his heart on one particular school and only that one was acceptable to him. An unwise choice, given that this school, let's call it EP, is one-form entry and therefore has an intake of only 30 per year, most of whom are siblings of existing pupils, and has a known problem with all manner of sleight-of-hand by prospective parents in terms of creative address management, thus further reducing the number of places actually available, and meaning that you have to live in a tent in the playground to be sure of getting a place.

The school he was offered is presumably school C, which has a current Ofsted rating of Good, despite not having an intake composed entirely of white middle-class children living in £1m+ houses.

The local CoE school offers at least 50% of places as Open, ie to people of any faith and none, so it's bollocks to say he wouldn't have been offered a place there because of being Jewish. If he lives near enough to EP to have thought he might get in, he would have almost certainly been offered places at B school, H school, and possibly TP school, not necessarily on offer day, but reasonably shortly thereafter. He would also, had he hung on a bit, been in with a chance at T school, and that's without even considering the various very good but not hugely over-subscribed church schools in the area.

What he actually wanted was a tiny school with an almost-exclusively m/c intake, which sends about 50% of dc to private secondary schools. And when he didn't get that, he threw a princessy strop about the unfairness of it all, and how he had no choice but to send his dc to private school.

FFS

No, thank you! I thought I might be alone in the outrage and bile I have been feeling since I read that article. As soon as I pressed "post message" I wondered if I had gone too far. I couldn't bring myself to mention the bit about "my child didn't get a school because i am Jewish" I found it so disrespectful, I can't think of the right word, not racist, not antisemetic, ...
whatever it took my breath away.

Oh, and what nlondondad said.

This isn't helping the Crouch End people though, so as you were. I must say I am surprised that it's impossible to get into Alexandra Primary, if not on offer day, then on the waiting list. Is it that it's considered too far from CE? Although not as far as Tottenham.

Was explaining to our crouch end neighbour who already has kids at a v v popular local school the struggle we may face when we begin the primary application process. Their response...

• Oh just rent short-term closer to the school
• Well that actually counts as a fraudulent application and besides is also pretty immoral
• Really? Well loads of our friends have done that.

???!!!

I think this is half the issue. Parents doing whatever it takes - even if that means breaking the rules- to send their precious ones to their most desired state school. Taking the places of local kids genuinely entitled to that place and setting a great example to their 4 year olds.

At least GC didn't stoop this low but sadly (and infuriatingly) it seems many do.

If you look at the admissions section of the EP website there is a message from a governor addressing the rumblings about people temporary renting to be in catchment and saying they are going to try and tighten things up next year. Thanks for the replies to my question by the way. I was genuinely wondering if there was some place people had to go and register if they'd been given no school offer at all.

Just reread it and it was actually written in 2013 and saying camden were going to do more thorough checks. So presumably this is already in place.

Yes, this is the theory. Who knows what is happening in reality. I certainly don't have trust in the Borough's Admisisons departmemt. Also nothing has been done about the sibling link; so eldest siblings that got in via their parental dodgy dealings are automatically followed by any number of younger siblings. This is one reason why many local children can't get local school places, as these have gone to siblings who live further away. Siblings are still a higher admissions criteria than distance in Camden Community Schools.

thenineties, find ut who these families are and report them. If they are investigated you may find that the Borough removes the sibling link for that family, if they don't remove the original child's place. This will give your child more of a chance of getting a local school. Although I think that every parent who gets their child into certain schools should be investigated as a matter of course!

No-one I've ever spoken to from abroad understands the English obsession with schools. My own personal view is it comes from the fact that schools vary in quality and ethos. Mix that up with a system that pretends to offer parental choice and allows people who have the money to get into their preferred school by moving next door to it, getting a place, then move away again and we end up with a system where a lot of people can't get into their local schools. Ofsted grades don't help either. If we had a qualitative reporting system without a grading it would encourage people to read the reports and visit schools. Although in reality if you don't have a choice of school that won't be much help. We need some decent investment in education to match that of other European countries with a standard high quality offering and we might then end up with a system that's simple and works.